Career Goals and the Importance of Making Money: My Perspective

[flying fish]

To the people saying money is not important, you are living in denial. If it was not important, you would not be in college attempting to complete a degree; self study would suffice.

Maybe self-study would suffice for some...but personally I would not have learned quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, ODE's, PDE's, or any other college level topic in a mathematically and scientifically rigorous way if I did not have an academic gun to my head! There are lots of things I would not understand to a usefull degree (to the degree that I can easily apply these concepts to real problems and actually get something out of it) had I not gone through a structured program with required assignment and deadlines.

Not to mention, I would not have had hands-on experiences with things that you don't just import into your home...like Scanning electron microscopes, CO2 lasers, or Raman Spectrometers.

Furthermore...people (meaning researchers, professors, other students, etc) know things...that you just can't find (at least not easily or practically) through reading on your own - interesting things you learn by talking to people that you would have never found otherwise. Of course, now we have the forums for that...but I still believe talking to people in person about physics is important.

I do understand that money is relevant. This education allows me to pursue a career, which I assume will ultimately support me and my future family. But surely you must also understand that if money was the only thing I was after, I would not have chosen physics.

In any case, these are my opinions while being near the end of my undergraduate physics degree program. Regular internships have given me a taste of the real world, but I certainly don't claim to be experienced considering that there are probably some old timers (i.e. people over 25) posting here!