I'm majoring in business manegment, which is kind of the same stuff. Working as a hotel manager would be awsome, i wish i could get send to manage a hotel somewhere in Europe or Australia, but landing a Houston job would be awsome too. i'm in my last year of collage, but since i'm 22 i probably won't get hired right away cuz of the whole experience thing. It sucks cuz i went to summer school every year for the last 3 years to finish earlier, but now i have to work in crappy jobs to get experience.
True. In biochemistry, you can get a Ph.D. in about five years without having to do a Master's along the way. I've known chemistry people who did it in four. This is why we chose the sciences. No, seriously there are a lot of reasons for this: the requirement in most humanities fields that you get a Master's first, and the fact that you work on your dissertation by just writing and doing research by yourself for years. I hear time can get away from you. We, on the other hand, are usually on research assistantships by then, and someone is going to notice and be unhappy if we're not in the lab on a fairly regular schedule producing results. Finally, most science Ph.D.'s do a postdoc before they look for a research or academic position. I teach at a college several hours away from Houston that is so small (and pays us so little) that most aspiring faculty wouldn't consider it, especially not in the early stages of their careers. It can be frustrating trying to build a fairly new department when your equipment doesn't work (and someone else is holding the purse strings to the grant money). However, we teach a wide variety of classes and offer BA and BS degrees in the sciences, which come with a great deal of personal attention. It's going to be a weird summer... my research undergrad is five years older than me and sometimes it's hard to remember which one of us is supposed to be what.
I go to Texas Tech. If I would have started as a RHIM major two years ago I'd probaly would have attended UofH. I've heard that they have one of the best Human Sciences in the nation. I briefly thought of transferring for the fall but didnt because I dont really want to live at home and I'd be leaving to many friends. Tech is supposed to have good a good human science reputation too so it should be alright. I also like history. I've noticed that they seem to have the most entertaining professors those were basically the only classes in two years that I attended on a regular basis.
Liberal Arts degree in Film(with a minor in music) which translates to HAHAHA! I mainly wanted to be in NYC, now that I am, I am happy. I had two major internships in college, one with a music publicity firm and another with a Talent Agency. All I wanted out of college were the experiences, the degree means nothing to me. I mean really, anyone who has a liberal arts degree will tell you it is a joke, but it all depends on what kind of path you are on. I discovered a great company that employed me in the summers as a camp counselor and during the school year at an afterschool program. As soon as i graduated, they made me supervisor of the afterschool program and i am about to enter my sixth year at camp, this year with a real title. I will be the "Pioneering Specialist." think boy scouts: orienteering, tying slip knots, pitching tents, making camp fires, perfect for a good old boy from Texas.
Well, the average at BCM was 5.9 years when I started. I knew some 8th, 9th, 10th year students.. I was lucky enough to get out in about 4 and a half years. As for being more concentrated/intense, can't really say, since I don't know anyone who went in for a Ph.D. in humanities. I can tell you that my work hours varied a lot, but I was in lab pretty much seven days a week, ranging from 40-80 hours a week or so.. Sometimes weird hours (like having to go back to lab at 1 am, 2:30 am to do time-dependent things). And I spent a good portion of my time outside the lab either reading, writing, or thinking about my projects.
This is a good point, I forgot to mention it. I finished my Ph.D. in 4.5 years, but the lab moved, and I moved with it to NY for 1 year, now I'm starting my postdoc, which will be at least 3 years (most likely 5 or so), THEN I willbe looking for a job. So entering grad school to looking for a job= 10 years or so. How much research do they expect you to accomplish? Are you expected to get your own grants? Publish X papers a year? It sounds like it could be a rewarding experience, teaching-wise, but a tough one, research-wise.
I majored in Finance and work in the energy industry doing Financial Analysis, budgeting, etc... I love numbers and analyzing deals... Funny thing, I didn't know what I wanted to major in, but I said, hmm.. I love money, finance is about money, presto...
It's nice to see some PhD types in the sciences on this board. My route is as follows: BSE - Chemical Engineering Then switched fields a bit to biomedical sciences. Straight from college I entered a MD/PhD Program (average length for finishing both degrees at our program is about 8 years = 3.5 MD + 4.5 PhD but can vary quite a bit for the PhD - yes, it is quite a masochistic training program) I am finishing my 6th year in the program (first 2 in medical school) and will be defending my PhD dissertation this fall. Still have about 2 years of medical school left...feeling like an eternal student right now...After I finish the "school-degree gathering" portion, I will probably do a combined residency/post-doc (add another 5 or 6 years there before I see my first "real" job). Anyway, Isabel, it sounds like you have a very interesting position. I can imagine that it can be rewarding but very tough. Good luck with it.
My wife took 5 years to get a PhD is Organic Chemistry and did a post-doc for 2 years. She is now a research scientist at a pharmaceutical company. Several of her colleagues did not do a post-doc. I think that for jobs in industry, the necessity for doing a post-doc depends on what the job maket is like at the time. Me: BS Electrical Engineering. I am a software engineer.
Come on now, it is not just a liaziness thing in all cases. Learning multiple languages, struggling to gather enough money/grants to do research abroad (a must for anyone not studying US- based areas), long dissertations (which, by nature, are never finished), etc. make for slow moving. We are a miserable lot. But, yeah, scientists probably have better chances at employment after completion. Stupid baby boomers (and the generation before) either won't die or won't retire.
Graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from UT in December 2002. I now work as a Reliability Engineer for a Fortune-500 company here in Austin.
I started out a Pre-Med major, switched to Information systems my real love. Started doing Graphic design and ended up starting a computer consulting company while i was working for compaq and other places. Still do that, eventually took some of our money and we bought into this sports bar and i have been running both ever since.
BBA Accounting - Univ of Texas JD - UH Currently working as the Agency Director of Financial Planning (fee based financial planning for high net worth clients) for MassMutual's 3rd largest agency in the U.S.
It's all right. I love the job, but I hate the fact that even though I work two jobs, my wife still makes over twice what I do as a buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue.
Wow. Of course, BCM is competitive. I didn't get into that grad school, and have been thankful ever since... honestly, no sour grapes here. If I'd gone there, I think I would have just transferred. It's good if you want to be on the research fast track, though. The only reason I applied is that I didn't want to leave Houston at the time. Finally realized I should just suck it up and move to Austin. UT was a good choice for me because I still wanted to stay in touch with the traditional university environment, try teaching, and be associated with a chemistry department instead of just a biochemistry department. I made sure to join a pretty laid-back lab. I doubt we worked much more than 40 hours a week, and since we were on a big campus with a lot of stuff to do, a lot of our time there was spent working out or running errands. There weren't too many people there on weekends. Everyone had an outside interest or hobby. Best of all, the boss wasn't about to pick up and move, and he tried to get everyone through in about 5 years. OK, so we weren't on the cutting edge of research, but we managed. Since I've never wanted to be on the "fast track", it worked for me. Most of our graduates did a postdoc and will probably work in industry or research institutes after that. Some of the above posts have mentioned the perils of grad school... long hours, lab picking up and moving (which I wouldn't have liked, since the place I live and the people I live close to are important to me), and then difficult bosses/ difficult research/ getting "scooped", and all those other things that can keep you there for many years. And then there's the postdoc. Some people get on the "postdoc wheel" and go round and round for many years, while trying to find the perfect job. Of course, by that time you might be turning 40 and have kids to support. I got lucky in not having to do a postdoc; it just seemed like it would have been more of the same, and wouldn't have particularly helped me get teaching experience. If you want to do what I did, I advise getting an adjunct course or two to teach before you graduate. I teach at such a "podunk" institution (well, I don't think so, but some observers might) that we're not expected to produce that many results. We don't even have to publish every year, and when we do, we don't have to send it to the major journals. They just want to make sure that <i>something</i> is getting done. We're on a Welch grant (chemistry money for liberal arts colleges in Texas) which takes care of everything, but you're not supposed to have any other grants. Which is actually good, since that's the worst part of a lot of professors' jobs. (trying to get grants; my graduate advisor was always stressed about it) The bad thing is that our boss controls the grant, so I don't have a final say on what we buy/use. [CHEMISTRY STUFF] The lab supposedly came with a lot of equipment. I didn't realize at first that none of it worked. The GC (gas chromatograph) is probably best; still, when I actually tried to get reproducible numbers out of it, it wasn't great. I've been working on a cheap HPLC for a year; one part after another keeps breaking. We have some old ones that were donated to us; of course, they're essentially useless in 2004, but we're supposed to do something with them (other than making pretty junk sculptures). The scanning UV-Vis has been broken for a while. My colleague fried his capillary electrophoresis system, which was cheap/old/donated anyway. (glad I'm not the one working with that kind of electricity...) Our IR needs to be fixed. We use the NMR at another institution (long drive, but at least it works). I'm ordering an AA - new, so hopefully this one will work out better. [/CHEMISTRY STUFF]
