The Should I Become a Physicist? Thread

ZapperZ

When I wrote this essay, one of the "theme" that I try to always keep as an underlying message is that, while it is good that one has a particular ambition to go in a particular direction, or a strong idea on what type of physics career one wants to go into, a "backup" plan must always be in place. One can maximize one's "employability" (something that I've always stressed throughout the essay) but not limiting oneself to only the narrow field of study or the narrow range of skills involved in that field. I've advised people to learn computer skills, do more experimental work even if you plan to be a theorist, go learn a characterization measurement even if that work will not end up in your dissertation, etc. In other words, don't hedge your bet all in one basket.

One of the most common career track for physicists is to go into academia. Getting a faculty position, doing (hopefully) minimal teaching load, and spending time with research work. The problem with this is that, even under the best of times, the number of positions available at various universities (especially here in the US) has always been small when compared to the pool of applicants. In many cases, a position opens only when a faculty member retires or leaves the department. This overall impression is supported by the recent physics faculty data from the AIP. If one looks at Table 1 and Figure 1, there has been no significant change in the total number of physics faculty since 1998. There is even less of a change between 2006 and 2008.

One could argue that during those years, funding for physics had been very challenging, and that certainly was true. While funding for NIH went through the roof, funding for the physical science via the NSF and DOE's Office of Science had either been flat, or even decreased. So, with the recent influx of funding with the Obama administration, will things change? We don't know yet. Recent reports has shown that things are still very tight, and tenure-track jobs remain scarce. With the economy the way it is, and with the knowledge that many of the recent influx of money is primarily due to a one-time shot-in-the-arm via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, such "prosperity" might not last very long. The state of the economy also weighs down heavily, since many state universities depend on state budgets for support. Private institutions also are not immune to the crisis - many major private schools have seen their endowments took a deep plunge after the stock market crash.

The moral of the story has always been that, one must try to diversify oneself as much as possible during one's schooling years. There should be a conscious effort to think about life after graduation, and the possibility that what one is aiming for may not be achievable. It isn't enough to simply be good at something and think that one qualifies to work as so-and-so at such-and-such a place. There must also be an available position.

The small glimmer of silver lining in all of this is that, for students who still have a few more years before they enter the job market, things can easily change for the better. The economy continues to recover slowly, and the reinvestment in sciences is pushing ahead with many major science projects that would have languished. These projects are expected to start operations within the next few years and would need postdocs and full-time employees. So there are indications that things are improving .... just not at this very moment.

Zz.

ZapperZ

If you are thinking of doing theoretical high energy physics, you might want to read this first:

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/sciencec...gh-energy.html

Zz.

Brown399

Great read.
Bravo, and thank you.

ZapperZ

Thank you for reading.

This is a good time to remind people who don't wish to read this thread from the beginning that the entire essay can be found at this link:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=df5w5j9q_5gj6wmt

I continue to get queries on where the "rest of the essay" is located, or if I've written anymore beyond Chapter so-and-so. So if you've missed the entire essay, that's the link to follow.

Zz.

Brown399

That format is so much better =p

Agent M27

I just finished reading your essay and I can honestly say I am more excited to be a physicist than I was previously! Thank you for your time and effort to give us a true inside look at the entire process. I am only in my second year so I still have some years to go, but an attempt at a PhD is deffinitely in my future. If I may ask where did you get your PhD and in what area? Thanks.

Joe

physics_pupil

Excellent material!!I really enjoyed reading it.

yukawa_m

i liked these articles.i hope they'll be useful

ZapperZ

Homework copiers, BEWARE!

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ans...ent-cheat.html

This study has been accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Sp. Topics - Physics Education Research, but has not appeared in print yet as of today (contrary to the report). I'll update this when it appears online. Papers from this journal are available for free.

Edit: the paper is now available online:

http://prst-per.aps.org/abstract/PRSTPER/v6/i1/e010104

Zz.

Who Am I

Great info, however, it needs some grammar correction and then it can be put into a book.

I'm glad I have the internet and interest on my side as far as getting into grad school goes. That's considering that I am a high-school senior and I won't start my undergraduate degree for another 5 months.

I might start here and begin to suck up information until I am an expert on getting into the program that I want.

Stanford, MIT, Columbia and Caltech are my top choices. I will be attending the University of Arizona for my undergrad degree, which means that it will be a bit more of a stretch to get into those programs compared to a school ranked in the top 20 or 30.

So, I'll need all the help I can get.

Daytripper17

In your essay, you recommend inquiring about research work around the middle of year 3...but I've always heard that it's quite important to start doing some work (be it lab work or data analysis) during the summer after your first year or at the latest the summer after your second year. The idea is to be involved in three research projects by the time you apply to grad school so that you can have your three letters of recommendation from the three professors you did work for. What are your thoughts on this?

ZapperZ

I am in the camp where I dislike the idea of freshman and sophomores already seeking "lab work" that is outside of the class work. I would rather such students pay attention to their classes and get their grades up as high as possible. Aim for straight A's! As I've said, these are going to be the easiest of all the classes that you will encounter. No amount of "research work" is going to mask bad grades when you apply for graduate school.

When I was going through all the application for summer internships, practically all of the students who applied got good letters of recommendations from their class instructors, not from instructors who worked with them in some research project. These students somehow left a very good impression on the instructors, all within the framework of a class. They talked to the instructors, ask questions in class, see them during their office hours, etc. In other words, you do not have to do some research work for someone just so you can have excellent letter of recommendations.

Besides, and I'm being blunt here, what exactly is the type of "research work" that you can do as a freshman or a sophomore? Again, I've supervised many undergraduate summer interns, and most of them require a lot of hand-holding, even when we give them a very limited task to do. And these are juniors and seniors.

The #1 criteria in getting into a good graduate program is.... GRADES. Everything else is icing on the cake.

Zz.

Sunmaz

This is a wonderful resource. I am currently reading through it (I'm on part IX) and I have some constructive criticism: there are numerous grammatical errors that at times cause me to have a quizzical look and be forced to reread the sentence/passage. The errors are mainly issues with plural versus singular verbs and nouns but also a few more pervasive sentence structure issues. Thus while I find the text excellent, I strongly recommend that you thoroughly edit the English in it and perhaps get it proof read by a friend as well.
I hope you do not let that detract from my compliment - it is a refreshing and informative text that I am thoroughly enjoying.

ZapperZ

Many of these were written "on the fly", i.e. while I have some structure that I follow, the actual writing were done "as is". So I'm not surprised that there are a lot of typos and grammatical errors, which I do correct whenever I find them upon re-reading.

I did say that I will need a proof-reader if I ever want to turn this into a more "serious" document. At this point, I really do not have a lot of time to go over the whole document carefully. I can't do the proof-reading myself, because often, I'm reading what I THINK I wrote, not what I actually wrote.

Zz.

Sunmaz

Fair enough. Like I said it is excellent nonetheless.

ZapperZ

A good, FREE book for anyone to download from the National Academies Press.

On Being A Scientist : A Guide To Responsible Conduct in Research

Zz.

ZapperZ

A new statistics has been published at AIP. This time, it surveys Physics Bachelor degree holder, one year later.

The complete data are not out yet. So far, the available data are on the initial status of the physics bachelor upon graduation. So keep an eye on the page for the next release, which is "forthcoming", it says.

Zz.