In a few weeks, I'm giving a short talk for the graduate fellows at AIER about my reflections on academic life two years out. Basically, I'm going to give them a first-hand perspective on my successes, failures, and mistakes.

Given my offbeat interests, I don't think I really appreciated or internalized the core material in grad school as much as I should have. I don't have data on this, but I think that a lot of people outside of the mainstream of their disciplines make the same mistake.

A book I'm reviewing contains this sentence, which I take to heart as I develop as a scholar: "Jackson Pollock could draw like a camera, but instead he chose to splatter paint in a wild manner that pulsed with emotion." I've heard the same about Picasso and others. Their abstract expressions become much more meaningful, and they gain more credibility, when one considers them against the backdrop of their technical mastery.