Wow, it’s @Steel, my friendly GEN.I leader, I remember coding a custom tool for you to help with the task of making technology trees for @INovaeFlavien.
Can’t believe we were at the stage of creating technology trees…
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I do graphic design. Mostly website mockups, but lately I’ve done all sorts of things from company logos to car taping and brochures.
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Yarp! I still, years later, have no faith in games to put together sensible, coherent, world-building supporting tech trees.
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And I, years later, still work on modeling agent-based economy simulations 
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So many physics and engineering majors. Lol.
Myself included. It’ll be a while for me to finish undergrad, I started after a lot of you guys and I kinda screwed around a couple of years. Things are looking up now though. 2015 has been and is continuing to be my resurgence.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with it exactly. Before I’m 30 I want to be at a baseline professional level for physics, art and composing. So, that’s 8 more years to finish that goal off since I’m 22 now.
I’ve quit video games cold turkey, I get way too into them. That and, as you can see, I want to be a Renaissance man (like a lot of you seem to already be!), so my ability to focus and use my spare time wisely is absolutely vital. Though, I will play Infinity. Unfortunately, I’ll never be able to be hardcore about spending time playing it since I’ve got so many things that I want to get done.
One thing I got into in a very major way since I went kind of AWOL is road cycling. Fastest speed so far is 23 mph for 20 miles, finishing at the same elevation that I started and finishing at a point perpendicular to my starting point. Longest ride: 100 miles. Just went out and did it one day on my old road bike. Lol. Hardest ride: Mt. Lemmon round trip – 6000+ ft. climb, 85 mile round trip from my apartment.
Latest interest: pure productivity. Creating my routine to maximize my efficiency. My next sub-goal right now is to create a “junto,” an invention of Ben Franklin, which is a “club of mutual self-improvement.” It’s not in the sense of “self-improve” to become adequate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junto_(club)
I plan on starting it with people I know in person then expanding it if that happens.
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Time to join in this thread I guess. Procrastination is key for a Friday afternoon.
Screw around all you want, you’re only 22 and don’t say that’s old because I’m 22 and I don’t feel that old yet! We still have the luxury of mistakes and figuring stuff out. I feel like I screwed around my fresh/soph year too but I’m still on track to graduate next year(2016) with a double major in Physics and Math. It will only be 5 years total! It’s not too bad… Like you say it’s all about being productive and efficient and you can get a lot more done in the same amount of time once you get motivated and have an idea of your goals.
Quitting gaming is hard…how did you do it?
I’m not surprised the majority of us are in the sciences or engineering…space games(good/realisticish ones) tend to attract that sort of crowd. Personally, I’m in physics because I found all things about space fascinating and originally I thought I might want to become an astronomer or astrophysicist. After I found out that academia kind of sucks(no offense @Kichae ) and I realized that I don’t just want to look at space but travel there I’ve shifted my goals towards the engineering side of it. So SpaceX or some other corporation that is attempting to break into space is my goal after graduating. I’m still debating whether I want to go into industry right after graduating or going to grad school.
If I take the grad school route I was thinking of getting a PhD. in aerospace engineering, specifically in plasma propulsion or some form of electrical propulsion. It depends on where I get in and what that schools specialty is in. I’m liking how University of Washington looks right now, but I know I need more options than just one school.
Do any of you older types have any thoughts, ideas or advice?
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Yes, I can confirm that 22 is not old and you still have quite a bit of time. That being said it’s important to have goals and an idea of where you’re going. 25 is going to sneak up on you and that’s roughly the point where opportunity cost starts to increase career wise (imho).
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Academia doesn’t kind of suck, it sucks supremely. It’s just the only viable field for an astronomer, as private sector astronomy jobs basically pay minimum wage. The academic career path has been made almost impossible by the constant reduction in research funding and university budgets, and the increase in PhDs caused, in part, by the bad economy. What do you do when you can’t get a job with your degree? You go back to school, and further deflate the market value of an education!
So yeah, academia sucks beyond any and all measures. Nothing to apologize for! It’s just the least worst option for some of us.
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I went to a conference last semester and that’s basically exactly what I heard from Astronomers around the US. It really solidified that it’s probably a smarter move financially and for my own interests to head into the aerospace industry instead of academia.
Most astronomers seem to go into finance (I’ve been trying, but I don’t live in a gateway city for the industry; all of the finance jobs here are either really basic entry level stuff, which goes to the glut of finance and commerce students in the region, or mid-tier positions that require previous experience in the industry) or, more recently, data science (which I’ve also been working toward, but it’s really, really hard to get a data science position without a PhD, and I want to build up a bit of a savings before going back to school). Programming is also an option if we haven’t been strong-armed into learning outdated languages over commercially viable ones (I, myself, had to do all of my research in Fortran and IDL. It took me a year to convince my supervisor to let me dump IDL for Python, because he didn’t know Python).
But it’s the same story in pretty much every field, outside of health research (which I’m currently involved in). There aren’t academic jobs available anywhere, and most graduate schools do not educate the markets about the skills of an advanced science graduate, as they’re honestly set up to be nothing more than feeder farms for academic research labs.
Which aren’t hiring.
Graduate school is a colossal pyramid scheme.
How in the world does astronomy translate to finance. Processing massive amounts of data?
Honest curiosity here, is it worth it for me to attend grad school upon graduating then? Personally, I feel it is because I’ve been trained as a physicist and a mathematician and because I want to go into a mainly engineering based industry I need extra training. I honestly don’t know how many physicists are employed by launch providers or satellite operating companies. Additionally while flying the things are cool, I also want to help build the satellites, engines, launchers, whatever. I don’t feel like I’m ready for that, but again I don’t know what will exactly be required of me. That’s the main reason I’m considering grad school for aerospace engineering. Plus, plasmas are damn cool and it would enjoy doing research in plasmas(while I’m still in school) and then applying that to space travel to the best of my ability.
Now talking this through it makes me wonder if you meant grad school for academia as opposed to going into industry.
Bingo. It’s the math skills the pay the bills, and physicists tend to be exceptionally good at modelling data and numerical programming.
Yes, absolutely. If you go in already planning on getting out, it’s absolutely worth it. It’s a lot of fun (if you enjoy what you’re studying), you’ll make valuable connections (unless you doing astrophysical research, wherein academic researchers don’t seem to know anyone or anything about the outside world), and it’s, generally, a good financial investment in the long run. Just make sure you either go all the way for a PhD (having PhD at the end of your name will catch attention; having MSc at the end of your name will have people wondering if you forgot how to spell MBA).
I’ve begun to realize recently that math skills really do pay bills. I never would have guessed when I was younger that it would be this way, but more and more often I’ve found that I’m able to snag decently paying tutoring jobs around the university because I know math and can teach it. Just landed another one that I’ll probably have until I graduate working with a local community college tutoring math and physics. It’s just not what I expected because when you’re growing up through high school you’re peppered with the idea that during college and after most college degrees only land you a minimum wage job working as a secretary, fast food, or something of that sort when you graduate. I think that’s something everyone should be telling the youngsters coming up through high school, because I certainly wasn’t. I never knew I wanted to make a career in STEM until my soph year of college.
Roger. The benefits you stated are more or less the reasoning I had why it was worth going to grad school. I think you’ve also solidified my pursuit of a PhD as well. I’ll curse you later for that. I’ve been on the fence arguing with myself whether the extra years of school was worth it, even though(from what I hear) you can get paid by the uni to get a PhD through TA’ing or research, but you have to pay them for a masters. Something of that sort.