Professorial duties and tests of limit

Quote from friend on why she's not planning to become a professor: "I don't want to my goal in life to be making other people feel stupid."

(...well, considering the job of a professor in training scientists is, in theory, to find where our limits are and to push us past them....) (In our program it seems to be, by consensus, a yearly pushing until we fall flat on our face and then wait, and then setting the point where we fail to get back up as the new limit.) (Have I mentioned that it's almost time for my yearly committee meeting? I'm told that I'm being pushed harder because I can "take it", which has yet ceased to be equally flattering and terrifying.)

It's a perfectly valid goal.


This comment came as a result of the first line of the introduction of a paper I'm reading, which says:

Mechanosensitive sensory hair cells represent an evolutionary successful concept used in many different mechanoreceptive organs ranging from the lateral line of aquatic animals to the complex inner ears of mammals with specialized vestibular and auditory organs.

Which essentially translates to "Hair-cells in ear-like organs are Very Useful."

Which prompted complaining about the law against using normal English in science, because it's Not Specific Enough. We agreed that all professors are obsessed with it and unless writing a popular science book (frowned upon generally as being frivolous, unless you're a Professor Emeritus or a Nobel laureate --then you can do whatever you want) common English is not allowed. Also most beginner scientists are trends toward incomprehensibility because it makes them sound smarter. (Though in my opinion, if writing is used to inform, communication is a way to pass on information, and you have failed to be understood, then you have failed at both informing and communication.)

And then we mused about how most professors we know tend to talk like they write (at least in lab) and it does indeed make the first month in a lab hell and how that probably means we'll never make good professors because we prefer layman speak to the science paper jargons and hence: goal in life.

(To be fair, I don't exactly speak normally either.)
(I'm actually not sure if people ever thought of my style of speaking as normal, given my personality and personal history.)