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My experience was different. 1. It's a way to (pointlessly) delay adulthood. adulthood != working for a company Developing the next CRISPR, detecting gravita

by tiplus 10y ago

My experience was different. 1. It's a way to (pointlessly) delay adulthood. adulthood != working for a company Developing the next CRISPR, detecting gravitational waves, or building a stellator is a pretty grown up thing. In the end there is a non zero chance of achieving or contributing to something exceptional during your 20s (depending on your field). 2. Fear of the job market. Well said. No other entity is recruiting young undergrads like academia does. Only topped by consulting firms, maybe. 3. Don't know what else to do. The fellow students I encountered (~30) were mostly driven/obsessed by curiosity (2-3 exceptions maybe). 4. Magical thinking Academia problem or society in general? This pattern prevails everywhere. disclaimer: physics PhD

jerf 10y ago
"Developing the next CRISPR, detecting gravitational waves, or building a stellator is a pretty grown up thing. In the end there is a non zero chance of achieving or contributing to something exceptional during your 20s (depending on your field)." It is a mistake to look at a field full of so many thousands of people and focus on the outliers. The common case of the PhD experience is proving cheap labor to a tenured professor on their projects while moving your own PhD process forward, in a field that lacks the hard science component that allows you to paint such a glowing image of the process. You dipped into physics twice, in fact; even accidentally, I'd suggest this means something. Further, both fields you named are fields where getting a PhD still leaves you quite eminently hireable even if you "fail out" of academia... this, too, is not the common experience. Someone getting their PhD needs to make sure they ask questions about what is most likely, not what the most awesome possibilities are, who are, by that very token, getting drowned in applications for those positions. Do you have a good story as to why you will get those positions?
msdos 10y ago
No other entity is recruiting young undergrads like academia does. The military does.

by tiplus 10y ago

jerf 10y ago

"Developing the next CRISPR, detecting gravitational waves, or building a stellator is a pretty grown up thing. In the end there is a non zero chance of achieving or contributing to something exceptional during your 20s (depending on your field)." It is a mistake to look at a field full of so many thousands of people and focus on the outliers. The common case of the PhD experience is proving cheap labor to a tenured professor on their projects while moving your own PhD process forward, in a field that lacks the hard science component that allows you to paint such a glowing image of the process. You dipped into physics twice, in fact; even accidentally, I'd suggest this means something. Further, both fields you named are fields where getting a PhD still leaves you quite eminently hireable even if you "fail out" of academia... this, too, is not the common experience. Someone getting their PhD needs to make sure they ask questions about what is most likely, not what the most awesome possibilities are, who are, by that very token, getting drowned in applications for those positions. Do you have a good story as to why you will get those positions?

msdos 10y ago

No other entity is recruiting young undergrads like academia does. The military does.