Overview of RickyRoma on PostgraduateForum.com

Overview of RickyRoma

Signup date: 24 Jun 2011 at 12:01am

Last login: 29 Jun 2011 at 3:22pm

Post count: 4

Recent Posts

PhD vs Experience

RickyRoma 4 posts
13 years ago

======= Date Modified 24 Jun 2011 01:45:51 =======
If you don't like academic work then a PhD is certainly not for you.
Having worked in a reasonably large engineering company before I started my PhD, I think your Prof is way off with his assessment of where he expects you to fit into a company after a PhD.

Where I worked we had PhD students join the company, a couple from Cambridge even, and they started in graduate positions. Your starting position will depend on your industry experience even more so than technical knowledge.

Think about this, even if you have a lot of technical information, you need to know how to function inside your employer;s company. That can only come from experience within the organisation, or organisations within the industry of choice.

I think the exception to this is if you join a company as a researcher (such as a Pharma company), or perhaps a highly science based company spin out or some such enterprise which is very scientifically driven. Generally, engineering companies are driven more by money than science.

The moaning thread

RickyRoma 4 posts
13 years ago

Quote From labpixie:

*blinks in shock* I'm actually allowed to say it????

I HATE my PhD. ---- Me Too.

There.

18 months in and looking forward to getting out. --- To where? The job market is awful.

I hate the experiments that take forever, the hours I spend mindlessly browsing the internet because I have to press a stupid button every couple of minutes and my supervisor refuses to let us install any useful programs on the computer.

---- You have to give it to the internet; it never gets boring.

I hate that at the end of that all I get is spectra. No graphs. No equations. Just another sheet of A4 paper with yet another spectrum on it.

---I love Spectra, you need to love spectra.

I hate that half the reason I wanted to do a PhD is because I wanted to have a go at academia, but if that means I have to stick with this topic then when I graduate I'm getting a normal job.

--- BEWARE A "normal" job is much worse than a PhD.

I hate that there is no space in the building for me to have a seat in an office so I have to wander back and forth between campus and home.

---- You should raise this, its really unfair, infact it the cost maybe even accounted for in your tuition fee.

I hate that most of the other PhD students are very cliquey and have their groups so don't ever talk to me.

---- Just walk up to them and say "Hi", force the words out of your mouth. Ask about something, anything, their desks, computer screen, fancy plots, you have a lot in common after all you're all doing PhD's. They probably aren't being cliquey on purpose, they just don't know who you are and probably don't want to disturb you.

I hate that my housemate doing a PhD in another department seems to be having the best time ever.
---- He's on something.

Most of all I hate that I went to a departmental talk on the topic that several people hinted that I should look at *years* ago and it was the most fascinatingly beautiful thing I have seen in ages and I could feel all of the old love for my subject coming back, but I'm so far away from that topic I can't see how it'll ever be possible to get back there.

---Yes, the professor's always glam it up don't they.