Grad school/career change after 5 years of working. Sanity check.

AI Thread Summary
The discussion centers on the considerations of pursuing graduate school and a career change after five years in the workforce. The original poster reflects on their decision-making process, feeling reassured after articulating their thoughts and reading other perspectives. They recognize that their potential career shift isn’t as risky as it may seem, given their youth and lack of family obligations. However, another participant highlights the significant risks associated with graduate school, particularly in fields like physics, where competition for tenure-track positions is fierce. The conversation also touches on the poster's background in computer engineering and their interest in transitioning to nanotechnology or micro electromechanical systems, emphasizing the need to tackle one step at a time in their career journey.
dighn
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[Delete] Grad school/career change after 5 years of working. Sanity check.

Edit: I guess I was just trying to convince myself, and I think I'm convinced.

Will probably post specific questions later.
 
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:smile: Nice...so just by writing the question, you got your answer. Glad PF helped, in some capacity :smile:.
 
lisab said:
:smile: Nice...so just by writing the question, you got your answer. Glad PF helped, in some capacity :smile:.

Yeah thanks PF :)

Seriously though, reading some of the other posts put me into perspective. What I'm thinking of doing isn't that risky. Still young, no family responsibilities etc.
 
dighn said:
Yeah thanks PF :)

Seriously though, reading some of the other posts put me into perspective. What I'm thinking of doing isn't that risky. Still young, no family responsibilities etc.

Heh, I'm not sure about that. Grad school sure seems risky to me. Investing six years of your life just so that you can compete with 2,000 other physicists for 300 tenure-track jobs seems like quite a risk (scary part: I did not pull those numbers out of my ***, they're real statistics from AIP). But hey, if you want to make a trade, I'll give you my spot in grad school for your job. :smile:
 
arunma said:
Heh, I'm not sure about that. Grad school sure seems risky to me. Investing six years of your life just so that you can compete with 2,000 other physicists for 300 tenure-track jobs seems like quite a risk (scary part: I did not pull those numbers out of my ***, they're real statistics from AIP). But hey, if you want to make a trade, I'll give you my spot in grad school for your job. :smile:

Yeah there is certainly risks involved. BTW I'm not considering graduate school in physics right now, even though I love it and planned to be a physicist before undergrad. For reasons I won't go into, I went into Comp Eng and am working as a software engineer instead for various reasons (this has caused me some grief, though I still teach myself higher physics). What I'm considering is nanotech/micro electromechanical systems, which falls under ECE. Whether I can get in though is another topic. One thing at a time.
 
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For some background, I'm currently a 3rd year physics major with an astro specialization studying in Canada, and as undergraduates are want to do I'm regularly evaluating my career prospects down the road. I also plan on pursuing grad school when I've completed my degree. It might just be my anxiety acting up a little, but with a lot of the government funding drying up for public science research broadly in the US, the 'industry' everyone keeps talking about when questions like this are...
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