Is it worth being a scientist these days

[chill_factor]

HEy umm Chill_Factor, are you physicist?

I am a graduate student in physics. why do you ask?

 

[Rika]

Many, myself included, did research in more practical and what we hoped was more marketable areas. My lab was actually half chemists and half physicists so most of us were marketable to industry. Not to do science really though, to do engineering and be technicians.

That's the reality through. Doesn't matter if it's academia or industry, HEP or solid state. You do a lot of grunt work.

If you want to have creative job in which you can show your individual skills - avoid science at any cost. It's not that in science there is no creativity at all. But it's a small margin comparing to the grunt work that you need to do.

In that regard being scientist is more like being an accountant rather than being an artist.

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

As Einstein is quoted:
"Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it."

http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html

 

[N5soulkishin]

Thank you everyone for your input. in retrospect, the truth hurts, especialy for my misguided view of being a scientist. again, thanks alot

 

[atyy]

Thank you everyone for your input. in retrospect, the truth hurts, especialy for my misguided view of being a scientist. again, thanks alot

Lots of other jobs involve science. Also, science itself involves a lot of politics and management. The Higgs boson could have been found 20 years ago, but it needed the political will to fund the experiements. Also, the experiments need the cooperation of many scientists, so good management was needed. You can find all these elements in jobs outside of "science" too. Video games, for example, really helped science - they caused GPUs to be invented:)