Lessons Learned Late-ish

David Poeppel

In elementary school (in Cambridge, Massachusetts) and in high school (Gymnasium in München, Germany), I was quite good at sports and disruptive behavior, but quite mediocre at schoolwork. Under the (often contradictory) influence of my Venezuelan mother and German father, I managed to get through high school but without a clear intuition what to do next. After fleeing Germany for the US and floundering for a year or two, I started to study a not-entirely-coherent mixture of philosophy, cognitive science, linguistics, and neuroscience at MIT. However, my true passion was actually in other areas: acting and directing!

Dr. David Poeppel

I appeared in a number of plays and directed a few, as well. I toyed very seriously with the idea of pursuing this line of work, because I had great fun in that milieu and did not feel impostorish – but somehow the plan was derailed. (I still have “FOMO” about this.) After working in a monkey lab for a while (with Peter Schiller and Nikos Logothetis at MIT) and, crucially, after attending a bunch of lectures by Noam Chomsky on linguistics and cognitive science (which felt like a curtain was opened and a new intellectual vista presented), I ended up in graduate school at MIT. The cohort I was with in graduate school – as well as the faculty – were profoundly intimidating. They became good friends and colleagues, but the feeling of inadequacy never went away.

It’s OK not to be the smartest person in the room.

The solution was to put one foot in front of the other and pursue research projects that were modest and manageable. I picked topics that were conceptually controversial but did not require great technical facility (which I admit I lack). Two of the projects I worked on as a Ph.D. student (one on language acquisition, one on neuroimaging) led to papers that were discussed and criticized a lot, which had both good (recognition and job offers) and bad (reputation as cranky) consequences. This ultimately led to a weird couple of years as post-doc at UCSF, where I ended up not having a PI in charge (due to an unexpected PI move) and had to become the architect of my own research program – and my own undoing.

As an assistant, associate, and full professor at the University of Maryland College Park, I finally learned four key things. First, it’s OK not to be the smartest person in the room. It’s liberating to admit ignorance and not feel embarrassed. Second, be a closer. Finish your projects and papers and grants at a decent pace. Third, hire people that are really nice (the most important criterion), dedicated, have a sense of humor, and are smarter than you (in some clear way). Fourth, if you are lucky, someone senior who champions your work can have a huge influence – by pointing out grant opportunities, supporting you in front of others, believing in your work. After 8 or so years, my wife, our three sons, and I moved to New York City, which is more exciting than suburban Washington DC. The colleagues at NYU were and still are as intimidating as the folks from MIT, but I didn’t care anymore – I had finally learned that I was good at some things and lousy at others, and that’s OK…

Of the work that I have produced, there are 10 or so papers over the course of my career that I am genuinely proud of. What has given me the most professional pleasure is the group of graduate students and post-docs that I have had the fortune to work with over the years. I am acutely aware of the fact – in large part based on my pervasive and long-lasting impostor syndrome – that my professional success derives almost entirely from my lab members’ originality, creativity, hard work, and the generation of a truly fun, funny, and productive work environment.