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eri
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OK, 'fess up. Which one of you made this?
I'm sending it around to the other grad students in my program.
I'm sending it around to the other grad students in my program.
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Phyisab**** said:I'll never understand why doing a PhD in physics is synonymous with doing cosmology or string theory and then doing post docs for the rest of your life because you can't get a tenure track position.
twofish-quant said:Doesn't matter much, because you'll be in post-doc hell regardless of what type of physics you go into.
The good news is that you won't be doing post-docs for the rest of your life. The bad news is that the reason you won't be doing post-docs for the rest of your life is that after the second one, you are not likely to get a third, and you certainly will not be getting a fourth. If you are totally desperate to stay in academia, then at that point you are teaching community college and making less money than a plumber.
Phyisab**** said:In my opinion, this video is attacking a strange, unrealistic perception of what a PhD in physics is for. It is funny only in the way it mocks the 15 year olds who routinely post here about how their dream is to study string theory.
RepoMan said:Hilarious vid! As I was watching some of the sidebar links I found a funny Simpsons clip along the same lines, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XViCOAu6UC0&feature=related"
Yes, they really are that hard to get. The people who end up in String Theory/Cosmology research positions were thinking about black hole collisions when they were 4 years old.Philosopher_k said:Guys, i am going to stand up for the minority here and say wtf is wrong with going for your dream. Some of us might be talented enough to land a tenure track position in string theory/cosmology and so on. If i wanted a boring job i would become an accountant.
Are postdocs really that hard to get?
My dream is to get a bs (mathematical physics) masters (cambridge tripos part 3 with distinction) PHD (DAMTP), professorship princeton (Institute of Advanced study)... is it really that unrealistic?
In a nutshell, yes. The odds are against you in many ways. You are in essence claiming that you are in the top 99.99999% or so of the population in terms of intelligence. I don't know you, so I might be wrong, but the odds are 9,999,999:1 against that you are not one in ten million type person in terms of intelligence, perspicacity, and persistence. Even if you are, the odds are still against you. There simply aren't that many tenured theoretical astrophysics chairs around.Philosopher_k said:My dream is to get a bs (mathematical physics) masters (cambridge tripos part 3 with distinction) PHD (DAMTP), professorship princeton (Institute of Advanced study)... is it really that unrealistic?
Caramon said:No, I'm not some programming monkey. I'm currently taking a Bsc Honours in Astrophysics at the University of Alberta. I'm doing extremely hard courses (at least from my perspective, as I am currently an undergraduate idiot that has never done any real research) and I realize that despite having a 3.6 GPA having taken Upper-division topology, 6 astrophysics courses, A+ in all Calculus courses, etc. that I am still too damn retarded to be able to be a professor at Princeton or be a scientific researcher at CERN.
If I'm extremely lucky and end up getting up accepted into what I consider the top-tier graduate schools:
I'll be done going to caltech or penn state for 4 years on 3 hours of sleep a night. After which I've researched my life away to publish my dissertation in some "narrow-narrow subfield" that no body really cares about so I can hope to somehow get observing time at the Keck telescope or work at the VLT for the rest of my life while publishing the most "impressive" papers possible so that someone takes me seriously and gives me some real telescope time.
...which they won't.
But I'm willing to try, and you should too. Because I love this stuff, and you should too.