A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

Re:A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing acad... by veritas3241 on Thursday August 09, 2018 @03:58PM (#17727940)

This is the _exact_ reason I went to grad school. I didn't believe I was a "good enough" chemical engineer so I went to grad school. About 2-3 years I was miserable but stuck with it to get the letters after my name. Thankfully my program pushes us to get out in under 5 years.

I also struggled with mental health during my PhD, but there were a lot of compounding factors. The PhD was fuel on the fire, but not the spark.

Now I've transitioned successfully into the "data science" field, so I'm much happier!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing acad... by shoguning on Thursday August 09, 2018 @04:33PM (#17728213)

This is scarily close to me.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing acad... by veritas3241 on Thursday August 09, 2018 @05:16PM (#17728587)

Not sure if you're talking about the Chemical Engineer part, but I've met a lot of people trained as ChemE's that have nothing to do with that profession. But maybe that's true of a lot of professions and I'm just biased!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing acad... by shoguning on Thursday August 09, 2018 @08:53PM (#17729851)

Did chem eng undergrad, a PhD (not fun), and am now a data scientist! I also worked on a website using public data and found out that only 7% of chem eng majors work in the field...

link: https://careertrend.com/major-chemical-engineering.html

Other majors (e.g. accounting, nursing) work much more in their field. There just arent many chem e jobs.

[ Parent | on HN ]