I need to update this. I've put a lot of thought and effort into this subject, especially over the last few weeks. Writing about it all should be good to help get my head together and also to get advice from people. The very short story is that I'm leaning away from Economics and towards Anthropology, and considering trying to get an application together in the next few months to start in fall 2007.
update April 15: leaving for Vegas in about 12 hours, but wanted to get a few ideas down. I'll fit them into the rest of this later.
- One thought that has occurred to me over the last month or so is that I've never been a "motivated self-starter," which is mentioned somewhere below as important for a career in academia. How much does it matter that I never have been? Could I be? What happens if I can't be? On the other hand, when I was working and I had stretches where I was really busy for a while, I started to feel antsy when I finally didn't have much to do. So maybe once I got used to being busy all the time, I'd keep up that inertia?
- A PhD in psychology or economics seems more widely marketable outside the academic world than philosophy or anthropology, at least in areas that interest me or that I have some experience with. I think it would also be easier for me to get into an economics or psychology program than something else.
- The comment conversation that developed in this post was very interesting I thought. Thanks to steak for his input. The idea I came up with at the end intrigues me, and seems like the kind of idea I could take and make a thesis out of. That would probably fit best into an economics program, but I could probably make it work somewhere else as well.
- I still don't really know what I'm talking about, because all these ideas are mostly just in my head. I don't have much idea how anything works. If I want to make something happen it is going to require me breaking out of the protective cocoon I've built around myself over the last year. I'll need to actually talk to people. I don't really like talking to people. I hate picking up a phone and calling anyone. This is a hurdle I'll have to get over.
I don't expect that I could indefinitely make a living playing poker, which is convenient because I don't want to. I'm considering going back to school to pursue a Ph.D.
I'm going to use this entry to keep track of my thoughts on the matter. I'll keep updating it as I think about and research things.. I'd much appreciate any comments on any of it - ideas for how I should approach the decisions, questions I should ask, reasons why this is a terrible idea, programs I should consider, etc.
So you want to do a PhD? (funny)
What can I get from a Ph.D.?
I got this from here.
The Ph.D experience is about much more than learning to do deep work in some technical area. Here are some of the more general things I expect you to get.Sounds pretty good, right?
You should get a sense of confidence in the power of rational thought and the range of its applicability. Everything in life is a problem of some sort of the other. How often do we think about it that way, and approach methodically the job of solving it? After a Ph.D you should have the inclination and ability to research anything, whether it be mortgages, biology, cooking or Toyota engines, and the expectation that you will understand it.
You should get the confidence and inclination to question all that is around you and seek out new ways of doing it or seeing it. You should be more likely to ask why things are done a certain why, and how it could be made better.
A Ph. D should give you the confidence that you can jump into a new area, pick it up quickly, and have something interesting to say about it, even if other people have looked at this area for a long time. More than depth in any one area it should give you the courage to jump from area to area.
You might increase your appreciation for creativity, in other people and in all areas of life. You might view art differently, or think differently about music you hear, more appreciative of what it took to do this and how it departed from the previous works. You should learn to value creativity and seek it out.
It will install a sense of taste and a critical sense. It should make you unwilling to accept the common standards and norms, and to put them to the test of your own intellect and opinions. You should naturally find yourself questioning things. You should be willing to contradict conventional widsom. That doesn't mean being a rebel just for the sake of it; you are too mature for that. It just means being constructively critical.
What do I do with a Ph.D.?
The most obvious career path is being a professor.
- On Being a Professor
- Teaching, Scholarly activity, Service
- Career Profile: Professor -
- "a professor’s time is largely spent on research, preparing class material, meeting with students, or however else she chooses"
- "this profession is thus best suited for motivated self-starters"
- "The most difficult years of being a professor are the early ones, when there is great pressure to publish a significant body of work to establish the credentials that lead to tenure."
- "the profession offers intellectual stimulation and freedom to all its members."
What should I study?
Ok so I think I'm more likely to enjoy an academic career than any of the careers I've tried so far, and I believe in the power of rational thought, questioning and creativity. Now I need to figure out what to study. And I'm not sure how.
I know I want something scientific and focussed on people. I think I want interdisciplinary freedom. I want a central goal of my career to be encouraging people to think and act rationally - probably not just through teaching but through the research I do as well..
I have a broad idea of the kinds of programs that interest me - anthropology, psychology, philosophy, economics...
I know some slightly more specific topics that interest me - evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, consciousness, belief, science education, game theory...
I don't really know very what very specific topics interest me enough to do my doctoral thesis, but I don't imagine I have to figure that out yet.
Where should I study?
It will depend on what I want to study probably. How much does a prestigeous name matter? Where would I like to be geographically?
How does this fit in with the reality of my life?
My girlfriend? Money? Relocation?
13 comments:
chicks dig PhDs. if your girlfriend doesn't like it you could find one who does.
You probably won't like being an academic that much more than you like doing anything else, particularly when you have to teach and you get to put your desire to educate people in critical and logical thinking to the test with a room full of mouth-breathers who literally have no greater desire in the world than for the ceiling to collapse and kill you so they can go back to their dorm room and play doom 3.
What you will like is the freedom associated with grad school - which unfortunately exacts a terrible price of self-loathing every 6 days or so when you realize you've been on a 3 day bender instead of using the fancy microscope like you should have been. But once you get used to that, it's not so bad.
PS Sally good to know I have a viable backup plan.
I am all for this course of action. I don't pretend to know the workings of your mind, but it would seem to me that this would suit you. Think about all of the autonomy you would have in the things you will come to understand and the manner in which you come to understand it.
What do you think about teaching in general? Would you enjoy sharing facts and deductions with persons of lesser intellectual caliber, or would they just annoy the piss out of you?
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/chmess.htm
interesting words on studying philosophy.
I find your indecisiveness and lack of direction very intriguing. (I'm sorry you're going through it, though.) I always knew what I wanted to be (doctor), and I was always aimed in the right direction, and even when I had a little setback (didn't get in the first time around), I just did the thing that was second on my list (MPH) for two years and refocused my efforts. Luckily, the setback made me stronger (cliche, I know), and my MPH work made me see the healthcare system a little differently, so I have a more concrete idea of what I want to do as a physician. I know why I decided to be a doctor when I was 6 years old, and it's not a logical reason to choose a career (especially not at age 6), but sometimes I wonder what I would be doing if that hadn't been my goal for the last 19 years. Anyway, I'm interested in the process you're going through, and I really really hope that you come to a decision soon, for your sanity and happiness!
By the way, I think anthropology sounds very appropriate for you -- you like to discuss people and their thoughts a lot.
Don't know about anthropology. To be perfectly honest, I'd advocate economics, but that might just be because I think I want to be an economist. I think economists that focus on behavior rather than the market, math etc. actually add a lot more to our understanding of human nature than sociologists and anthropologists (full disclosure - I'm not a big sociology/anthropology fan). I think you'd find behavior-focused econ (like that neuroeconomics we were talking about the other day) much more logical and rigorous, which would probably suit you. All else fails, I'd advocate taking a look at cognitive science, developmental psychology, even evolutionary psychology. If you're interested in how people think, make decisions, develop beliefs, how their brains are related to their behavior, etc. then I think these are the way to go. You might run into some issues with lacking prerequisites in these fields though, which is probably another argument in favor of econ in one form or another.
Mario,
In light of those comments, I'd be curious to see what you think of a program like this:
Penn State Biological Anthropology
Particularly:
Dr Weis
interests:
"Dr. Weiss is interested in the evolution of complex traits. His work is largely in genetics and involves studies of human polymorphisms and the amount of variation in genes related to human phenotypes, including disease-related traits. He is also interested in the development, genetics, and evolution of complex morphological traits. Finally, he is involved with faculty, students, and post-doctoral fellows in Anthropology and in other departments in aspects of the phiolosphy and history of science, particularly, in studies of the nature of inference (epistemology) in evolutionary biology and human genetics, and the roles of history and culture in our views and research strategies in these sciences."
Or Dr Durrenberger
who lists his interests including: "Noncapitalist and capitalist economic systems, stateless societies, states, cognitive anthropology, symbolism, religion, the relationships among political and economic forms and ideological and cognitive systems, economic anthropology, law, political anthropology, maritime anthropology, historical processes, applied anthropology."
Those 2 guys sound like they're into a lot of stuff that I would really dig.
In some ways I agree with your thoughts, in regards to behavioral economics being more radical that anthropology or sociology. But that's almost why I want to go to anthro - there seems like a lot of opportunity to make a splash, and there are some anthropologists out there doing some interesting shit. I started looking at Anthro in the first place because a lot of evolutionary psychologists are in anthro - look at Toobey.
The problem for me with econ is that I actually don't have the math background at this point. Its been too long since I did calculus and stats, I didn't pay too much attention to my linear algebra class cause it was the spring semester of my senior year, and I haven't ever taken differential equations or multivariate calculus. Plus the first year of grad econ is highly technical and pretty boring. But looking at the classes in anthropology programs they look so much more interesting.
The other upside I see to Anthro compared to econ or even psych is more opportunity to work outside. While the output of the research could be more interesting in neuroecon or developmental psychology, I at least have a picture that the time spent doing research in Anthropology could be a lot more fun.
Thanks for your thoughts, and I'd like to hear more what you think.
Holly,
I'm fairly amazed by people like you who've always known what they wanted to do. You sheepishly admit that your career choice might not have been logical, but I'm not sure there is a logical way to make career choices unless you're 7 feet tall and can hit a 15 foot jumper. I kinda wish I had some illogical career choice that I could enthusiastically pursue.
Instead my story since graduating high school has been to systematically avoid hard work, commitment, and tough decisions. It all happened without my fully realizing what was happening. It has been a gutless way to spend 8 years. The only thing I can say I'm proud of is my honest self-evaluation, but even wasn't really hard, in that it comes fairly easy to me. I guess the whole trick is to find something that other people think is hard work but for me would just seem easy. That will be my illogical career choice maybe. Eh, its late and I can't sleep and I'm rambling.
Anyway, thanks for all your support lately. Its been cool to have you kind of pop up suddenly as a regular here and share some ideas and encouragement.
Pardon my late entry, but since I constantly work with academics, you are missing a vital piece of information for your section of this post that lists what professors do...you list "research, teach..." etc. I'm being kinda blithe but I can't get back to the original post without losing my text.
Anyway, at least in the sciences (incl. engineering, medicine,), professors spend much of their time writing proposals for funding, attending meetings, dealing with logistical and administrative headaches, and other non-research-oriented tasks. From what I've come to know, it's the grad students and postdocs that actually conduct the exciting research, and it's the professors who guide them. Young associate professors (non-tenured) also push the scientific frontiers, but are far more wrapped around the axel trying to secure funding than their grad student counterparts.
I'm not sure what insitution funding for philosophy and economic researhers comes from, so it may be far different...though I doubt it.
Dave's right, I guess I kind of just assumed that's what you meant by "research." Basically, once you get any kind of tenure track job and a lab with grads, technicians, post-docs to staff it, you're pretty much done with your hands-on research career. Although I don't think it's so bad to mentor and direct others to do research for you, and you end up getting even more time to write and think about broad directions you want to take your lab. Which is not at all to say that there isn't a ton of grant writing and administrative bullshit.
Anyway back to the question at hand, the first guy seems pretty active, kind of goofy (which probably means he's a decent guy to work with), his recent publication record is pretty good from a biology standpoint (he's had a bunch of Nature Genetics and PNAS papers) - but I'm sure you don't want to do all the comparative genomics and gene expression stuff that he's into that's going into those publications. To be honest, this guy would fit right in as a faculty member of our department (I don't see a whole lot of anything to do with human beings on his research page that would suggest this guy should be in anthro instead of bio, except that little bioethics blurb at the end). Anyway as for his philosophy/history of science stuff, sounds like it might be up your alley. . . but I wonder how much time he actually devotes to that part of his interests. Certainly seems like it'd be worth a shot to email the guy, let him know you might be interested in applying, and seeing what kind of response you get (PS not sure if you know this or not, but in the sciences it would be expected that you contact and then meet the PI of the lab you want to work in either informally or as part of a recruitment weekend before the school considers your application, so don't hesitate to email these guys, they're probably used to it).
The second guy sounds like he's much more on the sociology side of things, has some radical politics, tons of publications in journals I can't offer an opinion on, since they aren't in my field - might be a fun ride, but I personally can't tell from his website exactly what one of his grad students would "do" on a day to day basis.
I think I already understood Dave's point, and I'd probably prefer to guide and supervise over be in the trenches anyway. But thanks Dave for mentioning it, because I don't want you or anyone else to assume I already know something.
Mario, I definitely had no idea it was cool to contact these guys. In fact I had the exact opposite idea that it wasn't cool to contact these guys, which I think I specifically read in Economics so that is a huge difference.
I have another question that you could help me with - how do I figure out who I'd want to be in a lab with. Is it literally just a matter of reading papers and seeing what I like and looking up that prof and seeing where he is? And then looking through a works cited of a paper I liked and seeing who else I might like, and just keep doing that until I'm happy? I assume that's what I'd need to do. Thats a fucking lot to do. I feel like I'd need a couple years to read all kinds of shit and figure out who I like best. Thoughts?
Also I think in the vast majority of Anthropology isn't a lab, it would be a field site somewhere in the world. So I guess maybe a selection criteria would a school with a field site somewhere that I'd geographically like to work? (Or that has plenty of English-speaking sites since I don't want to HAVE to learn a language)
Interesting difference re: whether it's ok to contact faculty members between econ and bio. Like I said, I can only speak to my field, but I think you literally cannot get accepted to a grad program without first having personally met with at least one potential PI (and potentially, with a bunch of them at a formal recruitment).
One thing we didn't talk about earlier is that picking a PI you might want to work with certainly relies a lot on looking at what the guy does and deciding how close that is to what you want to do - but there are a whole host of other issues, especially personality issues between you and the advisor, that are very important. Some people excel with a hands-off advisor, some with a very hands-on advisor. . . and some advisors are just assholes. I don't have any real advice to give there - I'm not sure anyone really knows whether they will get along with their advisor before they start their degree, and I think pretty much everyone has gripes about their advisor. I just kind of winged it and everything turned out relatively ok. Maybe Cara can opine?
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