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[post_functional]

MG and polly, thanks for reminding me why I keep coming back to the ol' CHE forums, exasperating as they can be sometimes.

[buglet]

"Say what you like first, say what you don't like second, and always say why, kindly."

This is the key.  These guidelines work with marking student papers, reviewing colleague's books, looking at manuscripts for publication.   I just received a review for my book manuscript which was a beautiful example of the above.  The book was a risk for me to write...outside what most would consider my area of expertise.  Luckily, the reviewer recommended publication and was positive about the scholarship, so the press is going for it, but the reviewer also gave me five pages of suggestions ranging from the picky to the profound about how to make the book better stylistically.   The review was done in a straightforward manner, with no ad hominem attacks and was perceptive.  I am thanking my lucky stars that I am being critiqued so thoroughly by a colleague who knew what constructive criticism is all about.  Now I have to get to work!

So, no, don't be afraid to criticize, and don't be afraid to tackle a new subfield/field.  As polly_mer indicated, you don't have to commit to the same specialism forever, and it seems to me that it is so important to take intellectual risks.  Once you stop exploring, you stop being a scholar.

[post_functional]

Neither does the confrontation with the fact that I've accepted the pragmatism of becoming a Y because there are vastly more jobs in Y than X; but as I become more and more established as a Y, it makes me feel like a failed X.  X is what I wanted to be when I grew up; not Y.  It's also very disconcerting to find that I'm probably a better Y than X.

I think you are framing this incorrectly.  You are not a failed X if you don't accept that label.  Instead, you are a person with an X history and training who is now exploring the wonderful world of Y.  In another few years, perhaps you will be a person with X training who spent some time in Y who is then exploring the wonderful world of Z.  Or maybe you will be a person with X training who spent some time in Y who returns to X or makes a fun leap over to epsilon.

Not doing the same thing forever doesn't make you a failure.  Deciding to explore other endeavors because what you thought might be a good idea turned out to be unfeasible in practice under one set of circumstances at one particular point in time also doesn't make you a failure.  You are only a failure if you give up trying so that you are just lying in the dirt waiting to die instead of trying something new from the vast offerings that are the world.  Not succeeding in a given endeavor is a reality that cannot be avoided, but not succeeding in achieving a certain goal in a certain way by a certain time is not the same as being a failure.

These are all good points.  The only nagging problem that returns me to my frame that I probably should have mentioned is that one can achieve some small measure of fame and fortune as an X, but there is absolutely no way--- none--- to achieve it as a Y.  Y is perhaps one of the most fameless academic fields one could possibly conceive.  That's why even if one is making a rational, even mature, choice to leave X for Y, it feels like failure because so many more people want to be a star as an X than an anonymous drone as a Y.  Perhaps I am framing things emotionally, but X and Y themselves are also framed, and they're not equal.  For one thing, the famelessness of Y is probably a component as to why there are more jobs in Y than X.  Supply and demand.  Fewer people want to be Ys because it's less attractive than being Xs, so, more jobs--- more jobs for the people who failed at being Xs and now must resort to being Ys.

[polly_mer]

The only nagging problem that returns me to my frame that I probably should have mentioned is that one can achieve some small measure of fame and fortune as an X, but there is absolutely no way--- none--- to achieve it as a Y.  Y is perhaps one of the most fameless academic fields one could possibly conceive.

Define fame for me and think about whether fame is as important as things like status and community respect.

Do random members of the general public know of most academic X's or are there just a handful of stars that do get known outside of the X community with that handful being more for X than for Y?  Could you be somewhat mislead by the fact that you have a lot invested in being a member of the X community, who view the Y community in a negative light, but that you could soon be an accepted member of the Y community and gain status there?

I don't know enough about your field to comment specifically, but I would bet folding money that the academic people you think of as "famous" are not people that I or anyone I know outside of the X community have ever even heard of.  I would also bet you folding money that many of the professionals who are very important and famous in the X community are also not people that most of the general public has heard of.  Status within the relevant community is important, but I guarantee you that some of the most important, high status in the technical research community, currently living scientists and engineers are people you've never heard of.  Many of the scientists you have heard of because they are famous to the general public are often mocked for being famous in that way or at least held in lower esteem by scientists in the relevant field than by the general public because they haven't paid their dues to have the "more important" status in the field.

For example, how many Nobel Prize winners can you name and did you know anything about any of the recent winners in physics, chemistry, or medicine before their winning was announced?  I'm betting the answers are: practically none and nothing.

The most harmful thing you can do for your own mental health when changing fields or focus is to keep measuring yourself against the X standards and checking on your status in the X community instead of doing a complete transfer to the Y community with their standards.  Your points sound just like the people who ended up at a primarily teaching school who keep trying to judge themselves by the research standards they know instead of trying to assimilate into the equally good, but different relevant teaching community and gaining status and respect there for the things they are doing.

[post_functional]

The only nagging problem that returns me to my frame that I probably should have mentioned is that one can achieve some small measure of fame and fortune as an X, but there is absolutely no way--- none--- to achieve it as a Y.  Y is perhaps one of the most fameless academic fields one could possibly conceive.

Define fame for me and think about whether fame is as important as things like status and community respect.

Do random members of the general public know of most academic X's or are there just a handful of stars that do get known outside of the X community with that handful being more for X than for Y?  Could you be somewhat mislead by the fact that you have a lot invested in being a member of the X community, who view the Y community in a negative light, but that you could soon be an accepted member of the Y community and gain status there?

I don't know enough about your field to comment specifically, but I would bet folding money that the academic people you think of as "famous" are not people that I or anyone I know outside of the X community have ever even heard of.  I would also bet you folding money that many of the professionals who are very important and famous in the X community are also not people that most of the general public has heard of.  Status within the relevant community is important, but I guarantee you that some of the most important, high status in the technical research community, currently living scientists and engineers are people you've never heard of.  Many of the scientists you have heard of because they are famous to the general public are often mocked for being famous in that way or at least held in lower esteem by scientists in the relevant field than by the general public because they haven't paid their dues to have the "more important" status in the field.

For example, how many Nobel Prize winners can you name and did you know anything about any of the recent winners in physics, chemistry, or medicine before their winning was announced?  I'm betting the answers are: practically none and nothing.

The most harmful thing you can do for your own mental health when changing fields or focus is to keep measuring yourself against the X standards and checking on your status in the X community instead of doing a complete transfer to the Y community with their standards.  Your points sound just like the people who ended up at a primarily teaching school who keep trying to judge themselves by the research standards they know instead of trying to assimilate into the equally good, but different relevant teaching community and gaining status and respect there for the things they are doing.

I'll define "fame" for you: the motive of everyone who decides to be a professional in music.

[lolar2]

I think a good example here is that it is possible to get a Grammy for X but not for Y.

[post_functional]

Good point, lolar2.  That's exactly what I'm saying.

I don't want to say what X is, because that would out me too much, but Y is music theory (as anyone could figure out following my posts).  I appreciate your trying to make me feel better, polly, but science and music are different.  The minute anyone decides to become a musician he or she is inherently seeking an audience.  A scientist is not seeking recognition per se and a musician is.  The scientists says, these are the results, the results matter.  A musician says, this is my composition, this is my interpretation, my take, my creative interaction.

I am mourning the loss of my audience, whatever little one I had.  A music theorist has no audience except other theorists, and that sucks.  To go with lolar2's grammy analogy, when a flutist chooses repertoire in preparation for a concert, when a composer writes his or her next work, when a musicologist writes a book about what Beethoven liked to eat for breakfast, with all of these endeavors there is some small chance through some small miracle that it might reach a mainstream audience.  If the musicologist is sifting through Beethoven's cookbooks in a dusty attic in Dresden and uncovers the completed Tenth Symphony, guess what--- that musicologist is going to get five minutes on NPR.  Musicologists can write about composers in the way that people can read about and relate--- what did they eat for breakfast?  Who were their lovers?  Susan McClary has had a huge career writing about who's gay and who isn't, and her books get reviewed by the New York Times.  A new book by a music theorist about Klumpenhouwer networks is not getting reviewed by the Times and it's not finding its way onto Book Notes on CSPAN.  

Music theory is an inherently cruel discipline.  It takes people who were, almost all of them to a person, motivated to seek an audience at one point in their lives, and then hermetically seals them.

[buglet]

Comparing yourself to others is a recipe for depression.  Doing the work only to satisfy a mainstream audience or for the sake of fame would also seem to lead one down the same path.  Sure, there are professional standards and such, but whatever happened to doing the work  because it brings you joy?  Does doing music theory bring you joy?  If so, who the heck cares if you get on NPR?  If not, why are you doing it? 

[polly_mer]

I think a good example here is that it is possible to get a Grammy for X but not for Y.

So what?  Are prizes really the goal?  Trying to earn prizes is a poor goal for any endeavor.

PF, if you don't think that everyone everywhere wants some recognition for work performed, you are fooling yourself.  Scientists do perform for each other.  That's why we have dozens of conferences and why publication is such a big deal.  The first thing anyone does when an experiment works out is run down the hall to find someone to share it with.  The kind of performance is different, but the motivations are the same:  to have the joy of doing the work (even with all the heartbreak and grueling effort) and then to get the ego feedback from other people in a public venue.

PF, I spent roughly my entire childhood (age 10 to 18) with musicians, not scientists.  I spent thousands of hours in practice halls before, during, and after school, on weekends, during holidays, and it was a huge chunk of my life at that time working toward that next performance.  I had more conversations than I can count about the sad truth regarding the trade-offs between the love of music and performance, the labor that went into trying to meet one's own standards because audiences were nice but not the point since a true artist doesn't accept good enough, and knowing that only a handful of people would become professional musicians in the handful of orchestras and vocal groups at the top.  I know the heartbreak of seeing people who are good, but not ridiculously lucky and extremely talented as well as hard working try to figure out what came next after high school since professional musician was such a risky path even if one did go to college as well.  I'm not knocking your struggle, even though I personally realized quite early that music wasn't going to be my path in later life so I just enjoyed the time I spent doing it for what it was.

However, you have to get out of the mindset that music theory is lesser than performance because it's not.  That's what performance people believe, but it's somewhat like saying that teaching is lesser than research or that research is lesser than teaching.  It's somewhat like saying that being a historian is lesser than being a novelist or that being a curator is lesser than being an academic.  They are different endeavors that happen to share some common ground, but they are different endeavors so that "lesser" is always the other camp.  You were on a thread where someone dismissed some musicians as "mere practitioners".  I don't suggest you pick up on that negative vibe, but to succeed as a theorist, you will have to stop accepting the practitioner description of a theorist as lesser.

[totoro]

My approach in writing my own articles nowadays is to generally ignore really poor research and to point out the good aspects of medium level work. Then I might say, "but y improves on x by doing z" rather than saying "x is junk then along came y and did things better". But right now I am revising a review/survey article where I ignored some work I think is problematic and then the senior author of that work refereed my paper and insists I cite him and his coauthors extensively (he wasn't ignored totally previously). As part of my rewrite I have to say what is wrong with his model. Sometimes people should be careful about what they wish for :)

In refereeing for journals etc. I am more critical, though I tend to temper the criticism in the report for the authors versus that for the editor and try to be constructive.

[rear_view_mirror]

There are always ways to keep yourself in front of an audience if you are a musician. You just won't be in front of the same size audience you were hoping for, or one containing a reviewer for the NY Times. So what? You can still communicate with people. I was going to say you could offer to perform in church but I believe you are an atheist, so you might not enjoy that. How about charity concerts/events. If you are a person with a solid income and no need to make money performing, you can accept only those performing situations that lend themselves to some facsimile of serious listening/presentation.
If you get too depressed about being a Y, instead of comparing yourself to a famous X, compare yourself to a struggling X. There are many more of those.
Criticizing people's work depresses me, and I'm surprised more people don't talk about the problem that you mention. It's universal and old. According to Dale Carnegie, all of us value the ability to take criticism with maturity and poise, but almost none of us do.

[post_functional]

However, you have to get out of the mindset that music theory is lesser than performance because it's not.  That's what performance people believe, but it's somewhat like saying that teaching is lesser than research or that research is lesser than teaching.  It's somewhat like saying that being a historian is lesser than being a novelist or that being a curator is lesser than being an academic.  They are different endeavors that happen to share some common ground, but they are different endeavors so that "lesser" is always the other camp.  You were on a thread where someone dismissed some musicians as "mere practitioners".  I don't suggest you pick up on that negative vibe, but to succeed as a theorist, you will have to stop accepting the practitioner description of a theorist as lesser.

Oddly enough, while musical practitioners are dismissive of theorists and musicologists as being lesser because they don't perform, and are often presumed to be failed practitioners of something else, plenty of theorists and musicologists are equally dismissive of any musical practitioners whose doctorates do not contain the letters "Ph." 

It's kind of a no-win buffalo all around.

[rear_view_mirror]

Oddly enough, while musical practitioners are dismissive of theorists and musicologists as being lesser because they don't perform, and are often presumed to be failed practitioners of something else, plenty of theorists and musicologists are equally dismissive of any musical practitioners whose doctorates do not contain the letters "Ph." 

Yo Yo Ma and Art Tatum would have something to say about that.

[post_functional]

There are musicians in a class of their own who transcend mere academic credentialing.  That's what is meant by "doctorate or life experience equivalent" in job ads.  If Yo Yo wants to teach cello at your school, you're going to let him.  You're not going to let the technicality of a lacking credential stand in the way of that.

[rear_view_mirror]

I could name a number of performers and composers who fit that category, but not too many music theorists.
So I think the theorists and musicologists are dismissive of any musical practitioners whose doctorates do not contain the letters "Ph" may have a bit of the sour grapes syndrome. Many people become stellar performers without going the distance in college.
Also, many music theory teachers would have preferred a career in performing, conducting, or composing but most practitioners are sticking with plan "A."
Also, not that you asked, but I think failure is more of a good thing than a bad one.