“conformity is not a trait/skill that makes a good scientist or artist or inventor or pretty much anything that anyone in my family is going to become.”
This is what I would have thought at 15 and why I would have loved the idea of such a school.
40 years later, working in an academic career and loving what I do, I realise how impossible that career would have been if I had grown up incapable or unwilling to adapt myself to people who were different to me- including ones who were less gifted.
To put it simply- no one these days is going to pay you to do research if you are not also prepared to teach students of varying ability, promote your institution to the general public, give talks to schools, do LOTS of admin, write frequent research grant applications which, as Namenic points out, have to fit in with what the funding body wants to see, work with others in group projects, provide pastoral support to students from various backgrounds and with various problems, some of which you may struggle to sympathise with, others which will break your heart.
And no, it doesn't get any better when you get a more permanent career- at my institution, applying for large research grants is now expected of anyone at the level of senior lecturer or professor, and you can expect to be called in for a (no doubt very uncomfortable) chat if that doesn't happen- it's not a case of having lots of money to do what you want with.
But within those limits of working with other people and meeting those needs, I can do some pretty amazing things.
My dd is training to be an actress. The first thing they get told is that acting is about the ensemble, it's about working with other people, it's about not letting yourself be thrown or making yourself unpopular if the other person doesn't meet you halfway, it's about networking. When you audition at drama school, they will be watching you and
judging you on how you speak to the cleaning staff and the people at reception.
My SIL is travelling all over the world doing some pretty advanced work on biochemistry. Again, it is team work, you have to work as a team, it's not about individual genius (STEM research very rarely is, these days). And to get there, she had to teach, often students who were moderately gifted and quite lazy.
I appreciate that this is a world that is very much harder for people who struggle socially. But it does no one any favours to pretend that research and scholarship are primarily the reserve of lone geniuses. Better to recognise what the difficulties might be and how you can work within those parameters. Like dd, who had to overcome both
physical disability (including severe chronic pain) and extreme social anxiety to study acting. Wouldn't have done herself any favours by thinking she was so gifted that those difficulties didn't matter.