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I agree with your thoughts on this being Naive. As an undergrad I wrote off the idea of pursuing a Phd (my initial intent) because I saw how the senior profess
by mathattack 13y ago
I agree with your thoughts on this being Naive. As an undergrad I wrote off the idea of pursuing a Phd (my initial intent) because I saw how the senior professor I assisted spent his time. A lot more mental energy went to grant writing than teaching or research.
The other thing is it will be very hard to do this at 30 with kids. Best of luck with this!
- javert 13y ago> A lot more mental energy went to grant writing than teaching or research. As a PhD student, I can tell you firsthand that that is not true for all professors. I was naturally very skeptical of the academic-governmental complex, but it turns out that academia can come fairly close to the idealized image people have of it. The professor I work for spend around 10% of his time on grant funding, and gets plenty.
- mathattack 13y agoI was very poor at applying my stats knowledge at the time, a sample size of one is hard to draw conclusions from. One thing that is very true is there is not a lot of control over research. As a Phd you are bound to your advisor (which you can choose) and as a non-tenured faculty you are bounded by what can get funded. As an undergrad I thought, "Being a faculty member is great, you get to create whatever you want in Computer Science." Once I realized that it was indeed a real job, my enthusiasm wrenched very (too?) hard in the other direction.