00:11
If somebody is able to perhaps have grad school as an option,
but I think that's okay if the person is also okay with leaving the program.
I would say it's actually better to be in the position you were in
versus somebody who's like, well, I'll just go to grad school.
Like, no, because I couldn't figure anything else out,
so I'm trying to go to this grad school thing because that seems consistent.
At least I'm smart.
At least I'm smart. I'm just like, and then, you know, there's this,
well, I'm smart and then you get to grad school and you feel like an idiot
and that can hurt your psyche and your sense of self,
but that's why those things should be separated.
But that's, I think, when you're there and you're going,
well, I don't really have a plan yet. That's not great, right?
Like it can make other people nervous, maybe.
It can make your family nervous and you nervous.
And it made me very uncomfortable.
I remember thinking it's kind of embarrassing,
but to me, that was better suffering than throwing myself
in yet another school program that I don't even know if I wanted to go to.
Yes.
And it helped also that there were a number of other friends,
you know, in a similar boat of me where like,
they didn't really know what they wanted to do after college.
And, you know, they were like, I'll get a summer job first
and see how that rolls. Right.
And I really am grateful for my parents that if they were nervous,
they didn't show it.
OK. Yep.
You know, you just poured a ton of money for this girl to graduate
a really expensive school and she doesn't have a job lineup.
Actually, she kicked a job offer and she has nothing lined up.
Like I turned down a finance job offer and I was jobless.
Well, you know, a finance job, you, you,
well, maybe you didn't choose it for this reason.
But if you turned down a finance job,
you were probably just looking after your own character, you know.
Sorry to anybody in finance.
That was that was a harsh joke to anyone who is also a very nice person
in finance. But like, maybe you understand where I'm coming from.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's that.
That would be like a multiverse of Asami.
You know what would have happened if I had said yes to that job.
You'd be like a crypto or something. That would be funny.
I don't know. I could have been a bad ass, you know,
derivative trader or something.
03:00
You could have. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. You would have had all these.
And making like five times more than I do now.
All the insider secrets, all the money.
And I mean, you probably would have been less happy maybe.
So, um, yeah.
But anyway, um, that's, that's definitely number one.
And then I think there's like a number two element
to think about is like, do you really need a PhD in your career?
Like in order to do what you want to do,
because some jobs require, uh, like a doctor, you know,
if you want to spend the rest of your life saving human lives,
I would hope that you have an accredited medical license.
One would hope that.
And, and, and maybe whether you like it or not,
you need to go to med school for that.
Um, and you know, like, like that, that just,
that just is a requirement.
Similarly, some jobs require a PhD,
but a lot of jobs don't require a PhD.
And, um, that's another thing because a lot of grad students,
incoming grad students, especially think, uh,
they just automatically want to become a professor
and to become a professor, you need a PhD.
Well, we live in the age of a chat GPT and 2024.
Uh, we don't like all become professors.
Just doesn't matter what great university you graduate from.
It doesn't matter how amazing and stellar of a grad student you are.
The chances of just being a good diligent grad student
and becoming a professor is just slim, slim, slim.
A lot slimmer than when your advisor got his job.
So really think about, do you really want to become a professor?
And because that's another easy trap for many of these kids
who are graduating university with 4.0,
like summa cum laude, whatever.
Um, and these things and like honors it's again,
everybody seems to think, well, you're smart.
You're academically successful.
You should want to be a professor, you know?
And, and that's, again, that's not the only way to do research first of all.
And that is like, that should not be your only goal
to become a professor if you wanted to do PhD.
In fact, I would even go as far as saying,
make sure you want to be things other than professors with your PhD,
06:01
because it's fine if you want to become a professor,
but you should also have other options.
And there are lots of other options of being a researcher outside of academia.
Yes. Um, if I can capture that sort of description,
it's having a direction on what you want in the end.
And I think this helps us remember that the program is not to improve you.
It's to gather and to investigate skills that you want for some type of end goal.
Um, and so if you go in with that, if you go in with,
I'm trying to gather a skillset to have this end goal.
And you know that that end goal is something you are currently very interested in
and that you want to pursue and that it does require the degree,
then that is likely the path you have to take. Right.
Um, but as you said, it's also good.
I don't think this is a separate point, maybe a sub point here,
that you're looking not just at the still traditionally default of PhD becomes professor,
because the chances of that are just statistically lower now.
Um, and that you see the PhD or advanced degree process
as a place you're trying to acquire skills and or a piece of paper
from an accredited institution that says you are eligible
to have access to like these types of careers.
And those are not just professorial roles. Right.
Yep. Yep. Yep. Thanks for summarizing my blabbering.
No, no, not not blabbering at all. It's I did this, right?
Asami, I did the part where I was like, I'm totally effed.
I didn't say the full swear there because demonetized or something. Right.
But like because I got to the end and I did have the general like,
you know, being a professor might be an interesting thing to do.
I also really liked teaching.
But if you really like teaching, be careful about the PhD program you select.
Um, there are different focuses depending on what you go into.
Research and teaching. Very different skills.
Yes. Very, very different skills.
Um, the whole idea of skills you can gather is its own studyable fields.
I know. But like, yes, um, you know, if you are,
if somebody is listening to this and you're in a PhD program,
there are a lot of at least English sources that I'm aware of,
which talk about alternative PhD careers.
Um, it took me a while to find this.
I think the website, it looks a little different than it used to,
09:01
but it was something like versatile PhD.
I don't know if this is the same website as it used to be, though.
So maybe don't trust me on that, folks,
that it might be a slightly different website than it used to be.
Um, but you can look up alternative PhD pathways, careers,
and on all of like the journals that exist for publication and research,
you will also find articles about this topic.
Yes. It's, it's a very, very talked about topic.
Yes. Of where do our freshly minted PhDs end up in?
And you know, what other places outside of academia can they go?
And from that trend, it becomes, I think, apparent that, uh,
what you get in PhD is so much more than a foot inside in academia.
You can get a skill sets that is transferable outside of academia.
You can get the network that you can still access
when you leave academia as well.
And I think it's more important that you look at the program you,
and also the lab choices, right?
Like the, the different PIs you want to work with.
Um, you want to look at it as not just,
will this person hook me up to the most cushy academic job,
but like, will this person give me, by working with him or her,
will that give me the skill sets that I want to carry in future,
regardless of where I end up in. Right.
And that might look different for different people.
It could be, uh, data processing skills.
It could be experimental hands-on bench skills,
and it could be working collaboratively with different disciplines.
Uh, it could be mentoring undergrad students.
Like these can look so different for so many people.
Like if you know that that was your decision,
and if you know that that's what you wanted,
working hard for it is not so much work.
I mean, it's still work, but it's, it's a lot more enjoyable.
Even like the whole process of it.
Um, what it does become unbearable is not knowing
what you're doing all of this hard work for.
Right. And that's, that's truly really hard.
And sometimes you do question like, why am I doing this for?
And sometimes it's okay.
But if it becomes the default mode, you might want to question.
Like you're in trouble. You, you need to be,
you need to check in with yourself.
Yeah. The checking in has to happen. Right.
Um, I think the recognition, right.
Of, of getting to a point in say a PhD program where you,
12:08
if you have a goal, if you have an end point,
or at least you're checking in and you know that like,
you know what turns out I don't actually need this.
Right. Like the thing that I want to get to now is maybe
different than it was before.
Or you've learned something by talking with, you know,
experts and, and the colleagues that you have.
Um, it is fine to just leave.
Yeah. Like it is fine to leave.
It's fine to take a break.
Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. You don't have to leave. Right.
You can, you can also take a break. Right.
But you can also take a break and just remove yourself from that
environment to really get in touch with yourself.
Yeah. Because you'll need some pressure cooker of an environment.
It is very easy to like get influenced by other stressed
kids or other pressured people.
Even your bosses,
your advisors are probably really stressed about that grant that they need
to get because otherwise they don't have any money next year. Right.
And so, so everyone is stressed in some way or form.
And I guess, you know,
that doesn't make it a nicest place to hang out all the time.
Right. Misery loves company,
but it doesn't necessarily help you recover from the misery.
Exactly. And, and so it is sometimes fun, not fun, I guess.
It is definitely comforting to have somebody else going through the same thing
and you know, you're not alone. Yeah. Yeah.
But it is also important that all of these advices that's coming from are also
from a stressed people, you know, all of your surrounded stressed people.
So sometimes it's a lot more useful to remove yourself and talk to your friend
who's working corporate job or talk to your friend who is not working at all.
Anyone who has no clue what you're doing behind those like closed, you know,
radiation protected walls.
So now you figure out you really want to do this. You go into PhD,
but know that you can always exit.
You can know that you can always take a break because you are doing this for
you. And if there is no you, then there's no point in doing any of this.
So do, do, do I feel like,
and that doesn't always get emphasized throughout the grad school.
No. In fact, I won't go on too much of a side piece here, but like it's,
yeah, it's not something talked about because there's a whole complicated.
15:04
Because they don't want you to. Yeah. But that's, that's the short answer.
Right? They don't want you to.
And by they it does kind of mean the people you're working for,
the university itself,
like because it causes an added level of complexity for them,
which is minimal, minimal,
minimal. They will make it sound like it's a fire alarm that is getting pulled.
That is because they themselves are panicking and all of these other ways,
right? Things can be complicated.
You are not the first person. You are not the first.
You are not the last person. Absolutely not. Yeah. So
like people will figure it out. Um, it is better for you. And I,
anybody who's listening who may experience be experiencing this,
have experienced this. It's hard to hear somebody say what we're saying
because it doesn't sound real, right?
It doesn't sound like we understand the situation to,
to make it clear the situation is bad, right?
The situation might not be good for you to be in there.
And you actually might be in a situation where like,
maybe there's no option, right?
Maybe you have to push in order to survive out of a particular like status that
you're currently in. Yeah. That is different.
But if you are in a position before this,
especially like before going into the program, go ahead and look,
ask other students,
see how easy it was to maybe get like these sort of time offs and things
because like it's better to know ahead of time how helpful and
accommodating this place actually is than it is during the middle of it.
Um, in the middle of it, especially if you're in the States,
we're not necessarily talking about the other complexities that come from being
in different social or educational cultures here.
This is something I'm aware of recently. Um, that can be a lot messier,
but when it comes to the States, for instance, like, I mean, I don't know.
How many people in the States are like,
you got to just say what you're going to be saying, you know,
and you gotta, you gotta do what you're gonna, you know, take that,
take it in a positive way and be like, this is important for me right now.
I need to take this so that I can be a better, you know,
me and find out what I want to do. Right. Um, yeah.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us at Eigo de Science on Twitter.
That is E I G O D E S C I E N C E. See you next time.
