I am a high school student, and similar to the "How to be a Scientist" post, I was wondering if scientific academia is still set up where you have to play the politics game to get anywhere.
Recently, I've been reading some history of science books, which are really good, except I've noticed that in the books, there is a heavy emphasis in the scientific community on whether you have good connections or not and whether you are a good self promoter.
This would be a problem for me as I do not like to do that sort of thing, but still want to succeed.