- #1
jack476
- 328
- 125
Since I was little I wanted to be a scientist. Ultimately though, I was talked into going for engineering because the jobs are apparently so much better.
Currently my major is electrical engineering and I'm interested in focusing on robotics. But there are parts of it I absolutely hate. Though I love electronics, technology, and most of all math, I find programming to be something to suffer through and I'm being warned that that is a significant warning sign that engineering isn't for me.
Anyway, so I started searching on the internet what other career paths were like, in particular what it's like to have a career in science. Very few people had positive things to say. Years of post doc work for very little pay because apparently it's so difficult to get a job as a scientist, and even when you do get the science job so little of the work is actual science compared to writing papers and applications for grants: this is a problem for me, because I dread the idea of a desk job. I want to work with my hands, and I've dreamed about having a lab since I was a child; but the people who are actually in the labs aren't making much more than minimum wage from the descriptions I found of post doc work.
One writer, a professor of physics, went so far as to say "I've seen more bright, talented young people have their lives ruined by PhDs in physics than by drugs" (Especially big downer, since physics is my favorite field).
Is the job market for scientists really that bad? Am I better off staying with the engineering career I'm less enthusiastic about? Is it possible to mix engineering and laboratory science somehow?
I really need some guidance on this; this whole process of researching has done nothing but leave me feeling even more overwhelmed and after the bleak outlook that some have expressed even a little depressed :/
Currently my major is electrical engineering and I'm interested in focusing on robotics. But there are parts of it I absolutely hate. Though I love electronics, technology, and most of all math, I find programming to be something to suffer through and I'm being warned that that is a significant warning sign that engineering isn't for me.
Anyway, so I started searching on the internet what other career paths were like, in particular what it's like to have a career in science. Very few people had positive things to say. Years of post doc work for very little pay because apparently it's so difficult to get a job as a scientist, and even when you do get the science job so little of the work is actual science compared to writing papers and applications for grants: this is a problem for me, because I dread the idea of a desk job. I want to work with my hands, and I've dreamed about having a lab since I was a child; but the people who are actually in the labs aren't making much more than minimum wage from the descriptions I found of post doc work.
One writer, a professor of physics, went so far as to say "I've seen more bright, talented young people have their lives ruined by PhDs in physics than by drugs" (Especially big downer, since physics is my favorite field).
Is the job market for scientists really that bad? Am I better off staying with the engineering career I'm less enthusiastic about? Is it possible to mix engineering and laboratory science somehow?
I really need some guidance on this; this whole process of researching has done nothing but leave me feeling even more overwhelmed and after the bleak outlook that some have expressed even a little depressed :/