We all had this talk when we were all young and fresh. Whether it was for truth or for a a laugh. When you were a young one, what did you want to be when you were older career wise?
When I was a kid I wanted to grow up to be a policeman. But as I grew up I realised I didn't want to be hated by everyone.
I have an itchy mod trigger finger Chi my old son! Anyway! I always wanted to be games magazine writer/reviewer when I was young, but that never happened because I was too lazy and never worked hard enough back in School to do it. I did however do a weeks year 10 work experience for a PS1 and also a PS2 walkthrough magazine which was amazing. So in a way I still got to do what I wanted. I even got my name and some work I did published in those magazines.
I always vacillated between a rough talkin' mountain man and a shower curtain ring salesman . It was so tough to choose between my two dreams that I abandoned both and decided to become a neuropsychologist instead. I'm damned to live a life of regret about what could have been as a result.
Well. I originally wanted to become an engineer, I hadn't decided on a dicipline though. Sometime more recently though I decided to persue a career as an acedemic. As such I am now studying Mathematical Physics at university.
So you plan to get the PhD and further? Keep my fingers crossed. As for me, I think I wanted to be a pilot. Then, being 10 years old and later, I thought of being a professional piano player. At the age of 12-13, when I started to write my first Basic programs on my cpc6128, I knew I would become a programmer.
Indeed I do. I just hope I am able to come up with something impressive for my doctoral thesis, so far I don't know enough about quantum mechanics (where the most development is occuring) to be able to think of something I could work on. Oh and I remember you saying that you were a lecturer; are you also an academic?
Theoretically, yes. I am 2.5 years after my PhD defense, I work as an academic lecturer. According to the academic statute, I have 8 years to complete my habilitation. This is however, rather difficult as it involves significant contribution to the scientific discipline. Beside some objective criteria (like the number of publications, the number of supported master theses), there's an open area for subjective evaluation of your contibution by fellow professors. And this is the most difficult part, as you have to devote your time to build up good relation among academics throughout your discipline. The truth is, however, that I do not feel I belong here and only here. I share my time between the university and the company I work for as a chief software architect. I am devoted to software engineering and, frankly, I prefer practice over theoretical studies. Also, I do not actively build up my academic position - I do not take part in conferences, I do not write new papers. Mostly because of the lack of time but I do not think it's my way of doing things. All this means that probably in 5 years I will be negatively evaluated and because of the lack of habilitation, my adventure in the university will end, just like it ends for quite a few of my fellow PhDs who do not get their habilitation. Some speculations arise that it will be possible to still work for the university even without the habilitation. The assumption is that some people want to be academics (and need habilitation) and some just want to be good lecturers (and do not need the habilitation). This will, however, mean that you'd have to work for 20+ hours per week which could make it harder for me to share the time between the university and the company. Now, as a possible candidate to get the habilitation I am supposed to work for 7 hours per week plus 2 hours of the office time. The assumption is that having only 9 hours in your timetable gives you time for scientific research. Which I spend for working in a company From my experience, getting a PhD was not difficult. Rather, it's just laborious. While working for the master thesis you are young and share your time between friends & parties, working for the PhD means that you share time between your family, probably kids, another job, a mortgage loan and so on. As long as you can handle this, writing your thesis is not much more difficult than writing your master thesis. You just study on your own, work with your supervisor, present some of our research outcome on conferences, pass your exams and there it goes.
Well thanks for that Torq; it's given me a look at how things may be when I go though the process of becoming an academic... and how not to go about doing it if I want to definitely want to become one lol!