PhD

To those who studied for their PhD at university:

1) What did you study?

2) Did you ever regret doing it?

3) Afterwards, did it help or hurt with getting work outside of academia?

 

1) Evolutionary Biology/Genetics

2) No, I had fun, but it ultimately wasn't for me and I left after a year.

3) Has definitely helped, although I have not applied it for what I was trained to do.

 

Interesting! Why wasn't it for you? Did you bother with an MPhil or just move on?

 

I already had a masters from graduate school, so I didn't feel the need to get a second (especially because there was no funding for masters students). The combination of how tough the daily grind was, the fact that I didn't have time to pursue the things I really enjoyed and the poor job prospects all combined to make me think that leaving was the right choice for me. I'd normally wake up around 5 AM and work from 530-9 or so either doing field work or lab work, then I would quickly do my homework for my courses while guzzling coffee, then go teach a class or two, take my classes, attend to meetings and seminars all until 3PM-5PM. After that I would do lab work until 9-10PM, maybe steal away to a BJJ class when I was running a PCR of FACS analysis and read literature from my field. It's intense and I really admire the people who can keep that up.

The job market in my field is incredibly restrictive - although most biologists can count on applying to academia or industry, there's relatively few industry applications to evolutionary biology. Most academic positions are highly sought after, with thousands of qualified applicants. Many PhD graduates languish in adjunct positions, no job security, below poverty wages and no labs in which to conduct independent research.

Those that do make it into a professorship, well, I talked to one of my mentors about it and he said that he only has two priorities in life, his work and his family and his family comes second. I don't want to be that kind of father, I don't want that kind of life. I want to spend weekends in my garden, not over a lab bench.

 

1) Artificial Intelligence/Computational Sustainability

2) No, it's the most fun I've ever had being poor.

3) I'm not quite done, but my work is fairly applied, so I'm not too worried.

 

I understand that, it's not a great work/life balance.

Thanks for your input though, I really appreciate it.

 

Cool. You'll have little trouble getting work. AI is a hot area, like Cyber Security and Big Data.

I think the being poor thing would get to me most, having worked in IT for nearly 10 years I'd miss the paydays.

Thanks for the feedback folks.

 

Yeah, the money issue stings (it really stings), but I just try to remember that on any given day, I'm happier than I was when I was when I was wasting 40 hours a week in an office filled with boring people.

 

1) What did you study?
Neuropsychology

2) Did you ever regret doing it?
Yes. I should have studied something more applied instead. Architecture or law or electrical engineering - something with a career path.

3) Afterwards, did it help or hurt with getting work outside of academia?
No, I don't think it did any harm, but you do usually have to explain the change of careers. That usually pays off against someone wanting to hire someone smart. I'd say it's neutral to mild-positive, depending on what you want to do. I've often worked in science environments since leaving uni, just not as a scientist, so it's been an advantage to have some background in the field.

 

Thanks again. I'm finishing a masters part time which is a mixture of computer science (big data, sentiment mining, SEO) and digital marketing. I'm not keen on a PhD in marketing but I don't think there is enough computer science content in my masters to walk right on to a PhD program. So I might consider another masters first.

Thanks to everyone for their input.

 

Sounds like twitterology to me...

 

It's how it's ended up lol!

 

Thanks again folks, all very helpful. I had a look at the PhD projects that are going to be available in the Computer Science Faculty, there isn't much I could jump in to without a lot of further study. So it's either masters in September, self-funded PhD in Computer Science, or PhD in Marketing with a focus on Big Data/Sentiment Mining. A lot to think about!

 

1) What did you study?
Mediaeval history.

2) Did you ever regret doing it?
No.

3) Afterwards, did it help or hurt with getting work outside of academia?
It hurt in a few instances in outside-FE academia as some department heads were intimidated by the degree. Outside academia it has been very useful and has shaped a lot of the work I currently do in the martial arts (research skills).

 

It does sound like one area that would be fascinating to study!

Did you (or are you) have to do much teaching as part of your PhD? How did you find teaching?

 

I taught first year courses alongside my PhD research.

I didn't find the teaching too difficult. I was delivering tutorials rather than lecturing and I was already a qualified teacher prior to beginning my PhD. Most of the time it was asking questions, provoking debate, collating together the different information different students had gathered from their reading and directing them to other sources of information. The 'hardest' part was marking essays and giving feedback to them on their essay writing technique.

 

To all.... What were the deciding factors fir selecting the university you did your PhD at? Had you studied there are undergrad/masters level?

 

I did my masters here, but I did my masters here because it is was a world leading research group...at least it was when I arrived