On a personal level, I found that one of the more frustrating aspects of academia (particularly in the hard sciences) was the need to accept many givens without being able to materially question assumptions in any sort of meaningful way. Not only that, but I often felt chastised for questioning assumptions.

I can certainly understand this line of thinking as a musician. It can be frustrating to talk about music with a non-musician because their questioning of the assumptions I took to be truth (or at least proved theorems) would often seem unfounded or at least ill-informed. But occasionally, either because of an extraordinary “outsider” perspective or because of my temporary willingness to try and hear out a layman, a rather beautiful interaction would occur and both of our minds would be opened a little bit more.