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Does anybody have any advice for someone looking to become an academic? I know there's some college profs on LS, but I can't remember who all of you are right now. I'm considering going back to grad school, possibly with the eventual goal of becoming a prof or researcher. A lot of the things I've read have really been pretty negative, saying jobs are hard to come by and the politics make the jobs frustrating. I'm in the engineering field, so I would think the pay would be better than some of the other fields, but is it really worth it?

 

The reason I'm wondering is I've always been a really academically focused person. I got good grades in high school and undergrad and generally didn't mind doing homework. I've only been in the working world for about 6 months but am really missing the school atmosphere. I think some of it is nostalgia from my college days and how laid back they were, but I also miss being around other academically minded people.

 

So am I chasing a pipedream trying to somehow recreate how easy school life was or are my instincts right that I would enjoy a research position? I don't know. Does anybody have any thoughts?

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Does anybody have any advice for someone looking to become an academic? I know there's some college profs on LS, but I can't remember who all of you are right now. I'm considering going back to grad school, possibly with the eventual goal of becoming a prof or researcher. A lot of the things I've read have really been pretty negative, saying jobs are hard to come by and the politics make the jobs frustrating. I'm in the engineering field, so I would think the pay would be better than some of the other fields, but is it really worth it?

 

The reason I'm wondering is I've always been a really academically focused person. I got good grades in high school and undergrad and generally didn't mind doing homework. I've only been in the working world for about 6 months but am really missing the school atmosphere. I think some of it is nostalgia from my college days and how laid back they were, but I also miss being around other academically minded people.

 

So am I chasing a pipedream trying to somehow recreate how easy school life was or are my instincts right that I would enjoy a research position? I don't know. Does anybody have any thoughts?

 

I'm not a college professor, but the bolded part is my impression from what I saw and heard at my universities as an undergrad and graduate student. Especially the part about jobs being hard to come by, although I'm guessing (like many things) it would be easier to start at the bottom - become an adjunct professor; work for a community college, etc. rather than setting your sights first thing on Harvard or something.

 

I do know that in order to become a professor you have to have a masters degree in the field you want to teach at the bare minimum; most postings I've seen require a PhD, or that you have a masters and be working toward your PhD.

 

Couldn't tell you about research; however if you think you want to teach I strongly suggest you learn something about teaching/education before jumping into this. Teaching at the college level is different from teaching at the elementary/secondary level, but......you'll still be teaching.

 

You don't want to be one of those professors we've all had who doesn't give a crap about actually teaching or his/her students; they just want to research/write/get published while paying their bills....do you?

 

Good luck, whatever you decide.

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Engineering may be different, but in my area you usually sacrifice a bit of income to be in acadamia. However, the jobs are very flexible and loose usually.

 

I have no idea how many professor jobs are out there, but probably a lot. You need to have a Ph.D. to work for a University and a Master's to work at a Community College.

 

I don't think you're chasing a pipe dream. It's much easier to find a job with a Ph.D. than without one. I may be naive, but with a doctorate I don't believe you would ever be out of work for long.

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burning 4 revenge

Ive always liked college towns and am living in one right now. Unless you do do academic research though it is harder finding a job there because they are on the smaller side.

 

Ive recently gone back fo a second degree at the same university where I got my first and Im in my 30's so youre never too old. This one is in nursing though so hopefully I can find something either here or in the bigger college town 40 miles east.

 

If youre not sure you can go all the way to PhD level, but you like the college town atmosphere and dont want the stress of the big city maybe think of getting certified in something practical like healthcare or elementary education so you can find a position in a smaller community that gives you a decent living wage

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burning 4 revenge

Oh I just read you were in engineering.

 

Man with your background in math you can go into all kinds of things in academia, dont limit yourself

 

You can write your own ticket

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Professor's jobs will require a PhD. You'll gain valuable teaching experience during the PhD by assisting professors with classes, and some people even do additional teaching qualifications, plus the PhD establishes your research credentials.

 

Salaries are usually stardardised, so an engineering professor won't earn any more than a professor in another field; the university will pay all professors the same, although an engineering professor may have more scope to make money by doing consultancy or something on the side. You will definitely earn a lot less in academia, but you'll have a much cushier job with more flexible hours, and more autonomy and freedom to pursue your academic interests.

 

Jobs are only difficult to come by if you're inflexible about location - you may have to move to another city to find work, but once you find a job it's relatively stable.

 

It's true that the politics can be a bit of a nightmare sometimes, but it's the same in pretty much any job, and at least in academia you don't have to be in your office all day every day.

 

If you really want a job in academia, your first step is to look for a PhD position (you may have to do a masters degree before you'll be accepted to do a PhD). You can see the lifestyle that the professors have, and if you don't like it then you can leave with your masters or PhD and do something else, so it wouldn't be a waste of time if you eventually decided against an academic career.

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Thanks everybody for the great advice and words of encouragement! I've got some people telling me to work until I know what I want to do and others saying continue your education. I guess as long as I'm smart about it and find assistance for grad school, it can't be a bad thing to continue learning. Anybody else have any thoughts?

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Postgraduate education is expensive - think very carefully about whether you really want/need it. In addition to that, doing a PhD is probably the most stressful thing you'll ever do in your entire life, so you really need to think carefully about it and have a good support network in place beforehand.

 

Someone told me that before I started my PhD, and I thought "Bah, how hard can it be to write an extra-long dissertation?" I ended up suffering so badly from stress and depression that I developed food allergies and eczema, I had a nervous breakdown while writing the thesis and had to take time off to recover, and I burned through my entire savings and ended up broke. You really need to be sure about what you want before you invest a lot of time and money into it.

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SadandConfusedWA

Someone told me that before I started my PhD, and I thought "Bah, how hard can it be to write an extra-long dissertation?" I ended up suffering so badly from stress and depression that I developed food allergies and eczema, I had a nervous breakdown while writing the thesis and had to take time off to recover, and I burned through my entire savings and ended up broke. You really need to be sure about what you want before you invest a lot of time and money into it.

 

This is SO TRUE. I sailed through my undergrad and masters degrees with no stress and about 30% of my effort.

 

PhD is SO SO different. I can't emphasize how stressful and demanding it is. I developed panic attacks (never had them before in my life) and various other stress related conditions. When people tell you it's hard, well it's even worse than that. It's naive to think that just because you sailed through your other degrees, PhD will be the same. I just hope that you are prepared.

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This is SO TRUE. I sailed through my undergrad and masters degrees with no stress and about 30% of my effort.

 

PhD is SO SO different. I can't emphasize how stressful and demanding it is. I developed panic attacks (never had them before in my life) and various other stress related conditions. When people tell you it's hard, well it's even worse than that. It's naive to think that just because you sailed through your other degrees, PhD will be the same. I just hope that you are prepared.

 

Well, I had panic attacks for the first time in my life last summer when my company threw me into the field and told me to build something with basically no training. I've never been so stressed in my life. I'm usually pretty easy going but it was terrible. Why do you think PhD is so much different? Is it because you're expected to produce the knowledge yourself instead of learning from someone else? I could see how it would be bad defending at the end of your studies, but what's so hard about the whole process?

 

I guess I haven't been as worried about funding because it seems like a lot of engineering students get funding. Sure it's barely enough to get by, but it's not putting me in the hole like my undergrad did. Maybe this is naive thinking though, too.

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I guess I'm not sure I agree with the horror stories about getting a Ph.D., but I must admit I have only just begun. I think the hardest thing about it is that you are left to your own devices as much as you want to be. For some, this lack of guidance and structure will ultimately lead to their downfall. For those who are highly self-motivated and VERY good at managing their time, there should not be too much to worry about.

 

The biggest thing is you have to be wise about your dissertation. The more participants you have to get, helpers you have to recruit, material you have to teach to others, and data you have to collect the steeper your hill will be. I don't know if any of that is a factor in engineering. It isn't in my program so I'm happy. I'm actually allowed to make up my dissertation data. Pretty neat huh?

 

I once had a good friend of mine in my last grad school have to completely abandon his dissertation after 2 years because of the above factors. It is not pretty.

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I think it's partly the size of the project - it just becomes overwhelming - and partly the pressure and fear of failure. Imagine doing 5 years of work at great financial expense and under great stress, then failing right at the end because the examiner thinks your work is a load of rubbish. The examiner can basically dismiss you completely if he/she wants to, and either award you a masters or tell you to get lost. Plus the level of detail and accuracy required is frightening - if you make the slightest error you'll be pulled up on it, not just by your professor, but by the international research community. You have to watch every single word you write, and going through everything with a fine toothcomb is exhausting and stressful. Also as Krytie mentioned, being self motivated is very difficult and finding participants and helpers is a nightmare - the whole thing just feels like an uphill struggle. Not to mention that people often feel trapped by the PhD after a while, because they have to stay until they're finished, and finishing is such a big thing and seems so far away.

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SadandConfusedWA
I guess I'm not sure I agree with the horror stories about getting a Ph.D., but I must admit I have only just begun. I think the hardest thing about it is that you are left to your own devices as much as you want to be. For some, this lack of guidance and structure will ultimately lead to their downfall. For those who are highly self-motivated and VERY good at managing their time, there should not be too much to worry about.

 

The biggest thing is you have to be wise about your dissertation. The more participants you have to get, helpers you have to recruit, material you have to teach to others, and data you have to collect the steeper your hill will be. I don't know if any of that is a factor in engineering. It isn't in my program so I'm happy. I'm actually allowed to make up my dissertation data. Pretty neat huh?

 

I once had a good friend of mine in my last grad school have to completely abandon his dissertation after 2 years because of the above factors. It is not pretty.

 

 

To me, it was dealing with supervisors. I had 4, one was a control freak, and the other 3 couldn't give a f@ck. I also had to liaise with others about my data and deal with various frustrations with people not getting back to me, canceling meetings etc. Supervisor's would also not give me prompt feedback. The control freak one would monitor my time at the university, I had to report to him every day and he would get pissed at me if I chose to miss one day or suggest working from home (all I need is a computer so I felt like it really doesn't matter where I am - I even had fewer distractions at home). Yet, the control freak would offer no help with the actual thesis.

 

Then, whenever I wanted to submit a paper for publication I had to include 6 other authors on average, who were involved in the study at some point and yet did nothing in terms of help on analysis or writing the paper. So it would take me up to a year to chase them all around because they weren't responding to e-mails and get their approval to finally submit the paper.

 

It is dependence on other people that really didn't care about supervising students that was the main problem.

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Haha, I had similar difficulties! My supervisor went through a period of monitoring my hours on campus, and he once formally disciplined me for being absent due to illness. He then went through a period of ignoring me completely and refusing to be helpful, and finally retired a year before I finished, leaving me stranded with a replacement supervisor. Then after two years of research my client insisted I had to throw away all my data and not publish it because I hadn't found the results they wanted! (after some effort on the part of the research school they eventually allowed me to publish as long as the source of the data remained anonymous). My second supervisor then submitted the research paper and changed the order of authors so her name was first, despite the fact it was my PhD and I'd gathered and analysed the data. Not to mention the petty antics of some people in the department who didn't like me - and I couldn't leave to escape them because I was tied into doing the PhD there. The constant stress was unbelievable and it totally destroyed me.

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SadandConfusedWA

And, I second all that Thornton said. Sometimes, when I managed to get some feedback and criticism it was very depressing. The world class experts are extremely intimidating which would make me have near panic attacks before I had to give any talks..Overwhelming feelings of failure if I didn't manage to respond to even one of the questions during my talks were too much to bear.

 

Mid-way through my PhD, I started to feel truly trapped. Almost like I am in an airless chamber with no way out. I could not quit and disappoint many people (including myself), yet going on was next to impossible. I was on the verge of quitting so many times. So I felt stuck and unhappy, yet forced to keep going. It's an awful feeling.

 

BTW sorry for grammar mistakes, English is not my first language.

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Thornton or S&C, have either of you been in the working world or just in academia? I guess some of the horror stories you describe sound like problems that could be encountered in any job where you're expected to perform.

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SadandConfusedWA
Thornton or S&C, have either of you been in the working world or just in academia? I guess some of the horror stories you describe sound like problems that could be encountered in any job where you're expected to perform.

 

Yes and have never felt like this. For some reason criticisms and sense of failure are more personal.

 

You should also note that you are not just expected to perform. Like Thornton said, every word you write is looked at under a microscope and criticized. Giving talks in front of world class experts and having them grill you in front of everyone you work with is nerve wrecking to say the least. I was a member of PhD forums for years, and all have said that they never expected things to be that bad. Many, many share similar experiences. The standard of performance expected of you is much, much higher than at a job with your undergrad/grad degree.

 

Also with the job, if you don't like it you simply quit and look for another one. If you quit the PhD on the other hand, you will have to live with being a failed PhD student for the rest of your life. Did you know that around 50% of PhD students never complete?

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I can understand what you're saying. You're essentially presenting your research as you own beliefs, and , often they directly challenge what someone else has asserted. My perception is that there are a lot of strong egos in academia, and they won't just 'accept' anyone into the brotherhood.

 

I could understand how that would define the contrast between a master's and a PhD, as well. When you earn your PhD, you are essentially entering the same playing field as the same people who are 'above' you when you defend your master's thesis, so their position is not threatened.

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