Don't Gauge Yourself Against the Elite Posted on January 7, 2008 Comparisons to the top achievers in the field can be a deterrent to pursuit of a research career, warns Kenneth H. Rubin (bio).

So here’s a statistic. There is a statistic from the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, and it goes something like this: At around the age of 12 or 13, where they first introduce body-checking, there is, at the very elite level, a precipitous drop-out rate.

So the question is why do these kids drop out of hockey? And I think it has to do with social comparison and comparing yourself to that elite group, a very small group of individuals.

And you feel miserable about yourself because you’re not getting the playing time, you’re not getting the recognition time. And so you drop out — instead of comparing yourself to the 98 percent of people, of kids, who are performing at a less competent level, you compare yourself to that top 2 percent. So I think the same thing is probably true of young scholars. They may be comparing themselves to the wrong group, and there are different ways to acquire or to obtain research funding. It doesn't always have to be through the same sources.

There are other mechanisms that could get you jump-started through the system so that you don’t compare yourself to that elite, because you’re only going to do yourself a disservice, just like those 12- and 13-year-old kids who’ve been playing hockey.

You’ve got to find another source of support and then demonstrate that you can publish and do productive work. And it may not be the big longitudinal study, and it may not be the big fMRI study, but it could be little pieces that you do very, very well that gain you recognition. And it’s the recognition that you get from your scholarship that will get your foot in the door eventually. So be optimistic, but don’t be gauging yourself against that elite group because you’ll drive yourself crazy.

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