Sunday, July 15, 2007

I Can't Read Shit Anymore

Well, it looks like my superior powers of interpretation have lead me astray. It's not the first time, and I don't suppose it'll be the last. Remember that grad student in theoretical physics whose comments I was chewing on yesterday? Turns out she's not a grad student. Or in theoretical physics exactly. Now you know how my junior high quiz bowl teammates felt.

Anyway, Ponder Stibbons of The Truth Makes Me Fret was kind enough to set me straight about who she really is, an undergrad in physics and philosophy. Cool.

She also had some interesting things to add to my griping.
[U]ndergrads at my university had it drummed into their heads by grad school talks given by faculty that only about 10% of philosophy grad students end up as faculty in research universities. So my impression was that people were pretty aware.

Wow. Man, does that not track with my experience, but good for those profs. My sense is, there aren't enough of them.

And for today's hilarity, check out this advice about the theoretical physics job market: "there is no job market." God damn.

1 comment:

Himself said...

When I started my PhD, my assigned supervisor (I'm not in North America, so I started on my thesis straight away) gave me the following pep talk:
Him - Are you hoping to get a job in academia after this?
Me - I guess.
Him - Forget it.

This was good advice, although I didn't take it.