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Journeys within Academia E. Neely Atkinson, Ph.D. Professor, Statistics, Rice University
It took me a few years to discover what sort of mathematician that I want to be. It took me a few years to adjust and say; maybe you’re not going to be what you thought you were going to be. How did I deal with that? It was a matter of getting some more practical experience. I had in my head all sorts of ideas about what things would be like. I just needed a real-world experience to say, OK, what you had in your head is not going to happen, but look, there are all these wonderful sorts of things that you can still do, that would still give you the satisfaction and just because it doesn’t match the plan you had, doesn’t mean you can’t make it work.
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