Crappy Majors: Math and Physics

I think math and physics are some of the hardest fields to get a PhD degree in. Yet those fields have some of the worst prospects in terms of pay and employment. I remember my math professor told us that a starting salary of a PhD graduate in their department was like 27K (I think he meant post-doc). I personally knew a PhD graduate in physics who was happy to find a job as a car salesman after 7 years in grad school!

Can someone please explain me this? You really have to be "one in a million" to be good in math in physics. I would think that those who are willing and able to do this would be in short supply and would get paid a lot. But this doesn't seem to be the case, right?

Interested in Psychology? Try Management Instead!

If you have interest in psychology, I suggest you major in management or marketing instead. Many areas of these two business disciplines are nothing but applied psychology. Yet both marketing and management are in business school. You may have much better employment and earning potential if you get a degree in one of the fields. As for psychology, I think there are more psychologists in the United States than dogs and cats combined.

Teaching

Make sure you don't put too much effort into teaching.

You may be tempted to do a great job teaching your classes. I think two factors may lie behind this drive. First of all, somewhere deeply in your mind you think that university is all about teaching. In fact, this is what you did as an undergraduate student - you took classes. You admired good teachers, and you loathed crappy ones. So you, as a teacher, may want to be among the good ones. Second, just like any responsible person, you may be too embarrassed to do a crappy job in front of several dozen people.

Putting a lot of effort into teaching is a big mistake. What really counts for your reputation in the program and your future employment prospects in academia is your research. I remember one of the top professors in our field told us the following:

"If you are one of the best teachers in the college, your dean may stop by and say 'you need to improve, buddy!' If you are one of the best teachers in the college, your dean will stop by and say 'great job, buddy!' And that's about it"

Of course, you shouldn't do a really crappy job teaching. Just make sure you do an OK job, may be even slightly below average. I think that some of the most successful students in the department did a really crappy job teaching. To the point where their students would go to out department chair to complain about their teachers dismissing them early from the class or hiding from them outside of classroom hours.

Sounds like a shady advice, but this is the sad reality my friend!

Academia is Business!

Academia is business. It's not your average American business. But more like an average Soviet business. It's big. It's usually state owned (or controlled). It's oligopolistic: schools use accreditation, strict licensing requirements for employees, etc. to keep others out the industry. Nevertheless, its business.

You, as a PhD student, is an employee of that business. Obviously, because it's a very inefficient business (mainly because it operates in the absence of free market) it cannot pay a PhD student what a personal of his or her qualifications would demand in the real world. So what is school's marketing strategy to attract PhD students?

First, academia creates this exclusivity aura around PhD. Their marketing message is that having a PhD is like having a Rolls-Royce. It's a sign of exclusivity. The reality is that you don't really need a Rolls-Royce. Hey, if Warren Buffet can get around in a Lincoln, so does everyone else. Pragmatically, the only reason to have a Rolls-Royce is to impress someone, to have that feeling of exclusivity. Similarly, the only reason to have a PhD is to have the privilege to be a professor.

Academia also promises you "eternal life" of a tenure professor. This will mean high pay for little work until you die. The trick here is that this offer is as alluring as a lottery prize. Very valuable, yet you are not likely to get it.

Very often this marketing message doesn't work well and schools have problems attracting PhD students. In this case, there's another source of PhD students: international students. For an international student PhD can be a valuable platform for immigration. Also they don't sacrifice as much financially. In countries like India, China, or Russia, 20,000K per year is really a salary of young professional. That's why there are so many international students in U.S. PhD programs. However, as the standard of living is rising in BRIC countries, there will be a dry-out in the stream of international PhD students (I think there are already signs of the dry-out).

Don't do anything unless you are reminded about it 3 times

Don't take your professors too seriously. They talk a lot, they do little. Don't try to put up with all their requests and suggestions. You will end up in a mental hospital. Ignore some of their requests. They don't have the mindset to follow up. They just don't care. They talk for the sake of talking. Then they forget what they told you. They may even ask you to do completely the opposite if you were stupid enough to do what they told you. So here's a useful tip for you:

Don't do anything unless you are reminded about it 3 times

You have to master this skill if you are to survive in academia. Your professors are experts in this, haven't you noticed? They won't do anything unless you remind them several times. This is how they survived in academia.

Staying Focused

You have to stay very focused in the graduate school. And here's what your focus should be:

"Graduate! Get a job!"

Your goal is not to change the world. Your goal is not to come up with innovative ideas. Your goal is to:

"Graduate! Get a job!"

Your professors want you to develop a new course?

"Graduate! Get a job!"

Your professor forces you to attend guest speaker presentations (usually by a his or her buddy on a topic you don't care about)?

"Graduate! Get a job!"

No matter what kind of stimulus you get from your PhD program, repeat this mantra three times before you think of anything else:

"Graduate! Get a job!"
"Graduate! Get a job!"
"Graduate! Get a job!"

When to Quit your PhD Program

The best time to quit your PhD program is no later than 1-2 years into the program. This is a perfect time to quit:

• You haven't wasted too much of your time and energy
• You are still healthy and motivated
• Your are still young and you don't feel guilty about starting all over (e.g. getting an unpaid internship)
• Usually, there a "golden parachute": you can quit after 2 years with a masters degree in hands. Some schools don't like students to get a masters instead of a PhD. This usually means that you got your masters for free. But there's very little that prevents you from doing so. What you can do is simply quit the PhD program and take a couple more classes to get your masters.
  

Many of my friends quit our program after 1-2-3 years and I think they made the right choice. All of them have high paying jobs in the industry and exciting personal life.

The longer you stay in the PhD program, the harder it becomes to quit. Here are some of the factors that make quitting hard:

• You feel guilty about writing off those 3-4-5 years... Actually, this may be a typical example of irrational economic thinking. Read about sunk cost in economics. The thing is that those years is a sunk cost. You will never be able to get those years back. If those years is a waste, there's no reason for putting more years into the degree. Here's a good analogy for your. Let's say you lost one million dollars in a casino. That money is a sunk cost: it's gone, you cannot get it back. So if you lost 1 million dollars, placing additional bets is not a good idea. Leaving the casino immediately is the best choice. Most PhD students are smart, but they can't understand this old and true principle. Emotions usually get into their way.
• The thought of staring everything over (e.g. getting an internship in your field) is very disturbing. Most people your age already have established careers, houses, families. You know you were smarter and more hard-working than those people. Yet you are forced to start working as their apprentice.
  
• You got brainwashed. You became persuaded that working long hours for minimum wage s the best deal in the world.
  
• You just don't want to change. You are afraid of the uncertainty. You realize that your life and career suck, but you are afraid of the unknown. You think it can be even worse if you quit.
  
• You have a low level of self-esteem. You had so much problems with your dissertation, you are not sure whether you can do well even working at a convenience store.
  

I think that many of these factors are simply irrational. Try sober yourself up a bit. Look at people around you. Many of them have cars, houses, boyfriends/girlfriends. And they don't have a PhD. You are probably not any worse than they are. You can live like that too. In fact, after so many hardships and sacrifices, you have become much smarter and experienced in life. You wanna work hard/play hard. If someone offers you a decent job with a decent pay, you will work much harder and smarter than people around you. You are hungry for life, which is a good engine for success.