3 ms·

I feel like he's leaving out something quite important, which is what he plans to do once he has his PhD. Professor (research or teaching?) or industry (big bus

by javert 13y ago

I feel like he's leaving out something quite important, which is what he plans to do once he has his PhD. Professor (research or teaching?) or industry (big business or startups?)?

tensor 13y ago
This isn't actually very important. At least if you are in STEM. The point of the PhD is to learn. That's valuable to all career paths.
- freyr 13y ago
  Wrong, it's extremely important. You're devoting the next 5+ years of your life to a single task. You're forgoing your programmer salary for the next 5+ years, which could easily add up to $300k - $500k in opportunity cost. Your forcing your wife and kids to come along for the ride. You're going to end up a world expert in a tiny niche that, quite possibly, nobody outside of academia cares about. You should have a pretty good idea where you want this all to lead. There are practical reasons for having a goal in mind: * If you want to land an academic job, you should be planning for that from day one. Academic positions are extremely competitive, and you need to make yourself an extremely competitive candidate. That means you must present and publish your work aggressively often, networking extensively, and choose a popular topic of research that will garner you many citations, etc. * You have to make many important decisions right from the start of grad school (who to choose as an advisor, what topic to research, etc.). Choosing poorly will have ramifications for many years to come. Having relevant criteria (such as some long-term goal) can help you with these decisions. * It's not entirely unusual for candidates to languish for 7+ years in their program, often due to lack of direction or because they expected their advisor to motivate them and keep them on track. You need to motivate yourself. Having some direction from the start can help with this motivation, and also help you from getting swallowed up by all the time-sinks that will eat away at your productivity.
  - tensor 13y ago
    This sounds a lot like you are telling us what you value in life. There are no rules in life and it's not a requirement to have your whole life planned out at every moment in time. Most people don't, including highly successful people. That's ok. What's important is taking advantage of opportunity when it is presented. If a goal of yours is to learn, then a PhD is a great opportunity for this. The value of the PhD is not even gaining expert knowledge in a small area. It's learning how to learn. It's learning how to focus so hard on one thing so as to surpass or build on what the best of those who've come before you have done. It teaches you do deal with the fear of not knowing and having nobody to tell you the answer. On the other hand, even if you end up coming to be concerned about money, it's still not a big deal. Sure, you don't go into a PhD for money. But wether you go into industry or succeed in academia afterwards, you won't be wanting for money. Hell, you can even leave part way through and get a well paying job! Besides, your counterparts who ran the corporate treadmill will only be incrementally richer than you anyways. If you really want to be rich, you need to take on big risks such as starting a company or the like. Talking about putting your wife and kids in a tough spot! That said, I hope you put something in life above money. Edit: Regarding your edits, those are concerns that you do need to consider. Though it's really not the end of the world if you don't. Simply always trying hard goes a long way to doing alright in most scenarios and there are always great fallback options.
    - omnisci 13y ago
      [bill lumbergh] I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on that. [/office space] (My PhD is in behavioral neuroscience, so YMMV) I've found that if people want to learn, then they will learn. You don't need a PhD for that, and the process of going through a PhD doesn't really teach you anything more than you couldn’t have gotten yourself. Passion drives someone to learn, not getting accepted into a PhD program.
      - tensor 13y ago
        It's about access to resources that you won't have not being part of a university. This is especially true for physical sciences that require expensive laboratory equipment. However, even for something like CS, having access to good lecturers and courses is very helpful. Of course, the open courses being put out for CS and Math is certainly is changing the picture for these fields. I think they are great. The point is, learning in a bubble is not nearly as useful as learning from peers and those more experienced as yourself. It's also the case that few people have the discipline to go through the important but sometimes dreary exercises required to learn these topics. Having structured learning programs helps with this too.
- javert 13y ago
  As someone currently in a PhD program, I strongly disagree with you. It looks like other people are carrying the torch for me pretty well. But I will say a couple of things. You seem to really value "learning for the sake of learning." If so, you already have it figured out that you want to spend 5+ years learning and that you don't care about planning ahead for your life after that. You already have a tentative life plan (though part of it is the default "null plan"). People who think they have a life plan figured out without going through a long, careful process of figuring it out, should still do so, just to make sure their assumptions are valid.

by javert 13y ago

I feel like he's leaving out something quite important, which is what he plans to do once he has his PhD. Professor (research or teaching?) or industry (big business or startups?)?

tensor 13y ago

This isn't actually very important. At least if you are in STEM. The point of the PhD is to learn. That's valuable to all career paths.

freyr 13y ago
Wrong, it's extremely important. You're devoting the next 5+ years of your life to a single task. You're forgoing your programmer salary for the next 5+ years, which could easily add up to $300k - $500k in opportunity cost. Your forcing your wife and kids to come along for the ride. You're going to end up a world expert in a tiny niche that, quite possibly, nobody outside of academia cares about. You should have a pretty good idea where you want this all to lead. There are practical reasons for having a goal in mind: * If you want to land an academic job, you should be planning for that from day one. Academic positions are extremely competitive, and you need to make yourself an extremely competitive candidate. That means you must present and publish your work aggressively often, networking extensively, and choose a popular topic of research that will garner you many citations, etc. * You have to make many important decisions right from the start of grad school (who to choose as an advisor, what topic to research, etc.). Choosing poorly will have ramifications for many years to come. Having relevant criteria (such as some long-term goal) can help you with these decisions. * It's not entirely unusual for candidates to languish for 7+ years in their program, often due to lack of direction or because they expected their advisor to motivate them and keep them on track. You need to motivate yourself. Having some direction from the start can help with this motivation, and also help you from getting swallowed up by all the time-sinks that will eat away at your productivity.
- tensor 13y ago
  This sounds a lot like you are telling us what you value in life. There are no rules in life and it's not a requirement to have your whole life planned out at every moment in time. Most people don't, including highly successful people. That's ok. What's important is taking advantage of opportunity when it is presented. If a goal of yours is to learn, then a PhD is a great opportunity for this. The value of the PhD is not even gaining expert knowledge in a small area. It's learning how to learn. It's learning how to focus so hard on one thing so as to surpass or build on what the best of those who've come before you have done. It teaches you do deal with the fear of not knowing and having nobody to tell you the answer. On the other hand, even if you end up coming to be concerned about money, it's still not a big deal. Sure, you don't go into a PhD for money. But wether you go into industry or succeed in academia afterwards, you won't be wanting for money. Hell, you can even leave part way through and get a well paying job! Besides, your counterparts who ran the corporate treadmill will only be incrementally richer than you anyways. If you really want to be rich, you need to take on big risks such as starting a company or the like. Talking about putting your wife and kids in a tough spot! That said, I hope you put something in life above money. Edit: Regarding your edits, those are concerns that you do need to consider. Though it's really not the end of the world if you don't. Simply always trying hard goes a long way to doing alright in most scenarios and there are always great fallback options.
  - omnisci 13y ago
    [bill lumbergh] I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on that. [/office space] (My PhD is in behavioral neuroscience, so YMMV) I've found that if people want to learn, then they will learn. You don't need a PhD for that, and the process of going through a PhD doesn't really teach you anything more than you couldn’t have gotten yourself. Passion drives someone to learn, not getting accepted into a PhD program.
    - tensor 13y ago
      It's about access to resources that you won't have not being part of a university. This is especially true for physical sciences that require expensive laboratory equipment. However, even for something like CS, having access to good lecturers and courses is very helpful. Of course, the open courses being put out for CS and Math is certainly is changing the picture for these fields. I think they are great. The point is, learning in a bubble is not nearly as useful as learning from peers and those more experienced as yourself. It's also the case that few people have the discipline to go through the important but sometimes dreary exercises required to learn these topics. Having structured learning programs helps with this too.
javert 13y ago
As someone currently in a PhD program, I strongly disagree with you. It looks like other people are carrying the torch for me pretty well. But I will say a couple of things. You seem to really value "learning for the sake of learning." If so, you already have it figured out that you want to spend 5+ years learning and that you don't care about planning ahead for your life after that. You already have a tentative life plan (though part of it is the default "null plan"). People who think they have a life plan figured out without going through a long, careful process of figuring it out, should still do so, just to make sure their assumptions are valid.