What are some potential career options for a 27 year old physics grad in the UK?

[physgeekgeek]

Hi,

I'm a 27 year old with undergraduate masters in physics. I am currently working as a process engineer in UK and trying to write up a phd in semiconductor physics. However, I'm seriously lacking the motivation to write up and wondering if there is something better I could do as a career - I want to design things. Any suggestions? Should I forget about the PhD?

 

[cristo]

If you've got to the stage of writing up, I would advise you to knuckle down for a few more months and complete the PhD. You can always change field afterwards, or assess your career goals then, but if you've put this much effort in you might as well finish.

 

[fantispug]

I'm with cristo in that I think given you would've put in a couple years of hard work to get to the writing up stage of your thesis it's probably worth putting in the last few months to finish it - it will look a lot better on your resume (you can always sell a PhD as "I spent 3 years working hard to create new research", it doesn't matter if it isn't precisely in the field you're going to work in - it's pretty rare it would be).

But that doesn't mean you can't look around for other options now - and since it normally takes at least a couple of months to get a job it's probably a good idea to spend a little time now scoping the scene.

Any idea of what you want to design? Do you mean technical design? Given you're working in semiconductor physics electronics wouldn't be a huge jump - you could write to some companies, and outline the type of thing you want to do for them (either levelled as a job application or as an internship so you can get a bit of experience to smooth the transition).