(This post is part of the new round of interviews of non-academic scientists, giving the responses of Adam DeConinck, who works at a company providing supercomputing resources. The goal is to provide some additional information for science students thinking about their fiuture careers, describing options beyond the assumed default Ph.D.–post-doc–academic-job track.) 1) What is your… Continue reading PNAS: Adam DeConinck, High-Performance Computing Systems Engineer
Category: Jobs
PNAS: Matthew Schlecht, Freelance Translator
(This post is part of the new round of interviews of non-academic scientists, giving the responses of Matthew Schlecht, a chemist by training who runs his own technical translation service, Word Alchemy Translation. The goal is to provide some additional information for science students thinking about their fiuture careers, describing options beyond the assumed default… Continue reading PNAS: Matthew Schlecht, Freelance Translator
PNAS: Richard Lobinske, Hazardous Waste Manager
(This post is part of the new round of interviews of non-academic scientists, giving the responses of Richard Lobinske, a Hazardous Waste Manager (meaning he handles chemicals, such as these decades-old pesticides, not particularly noxious low-level employees). The goal is to provide some additional information for science students thinking about their fiuture careers, describing options… Continue reading PNAS: Richard Lobinske, Hazardous Waste Manager
PNAS: Darren Anderson, Start-Up Chief Technology Officer
(This post is part of the new round of interviews of non-academic scientists, giving the responses of Darren Anderson, the Chief Technology Officer for Vive Nano. The goal is to provide some additional information for science students thinking about their future careers, describing options beyond the assumed default Ph.D.–post-doc–academic-job track.) 1) What is your non-academic… Continue reading PNAS: Darren Anderson, Start-Up Chief Technology Officer
PNAS: Will Hendrick, (Former) Biomedical Technician
(This post is part of the new round of interviews of non-academic scientists, giving the responses of Will Hendrick, who worked as a lab tech before returning to school. (This may seem like an odd inclusion, but there are people who do this sort of thing forever, so I think it’s valid.) The goal is… Continue reading PNAS: Will Hendrick, (Former) Biomedical Technician
PNAS: Amy Young, Saponifier
(This post is part of the new round of interviews of non-academic scientists, giving the responses of Amy Young, who runs her own soap-making business. The goal is to provide some additional information for science students thinking about their fiuture careers, describing options beyond the assumed default Ph.D.–post-doc–academic-job track.) 1) What is your non-academic job?… Continue reading PNAS: Amy Young, Saponifier
Return of the Project for Non-Academic Science
In keeping with this week’s unofficial theme of wibbling about academia, there’s an article at The Nation about the evils of graduate school that’s prompted some discussion. Sean says more or less what I would, though maybe a little more nicely than I would. I wouldn’t bother to comment further, except this spurred Sean to… Continue reading Return of the Project for Non-Academic Science
Your Problems Are Not Unique
Via Mad Mike, a discussion of why it sucks to be a biomedical scientist: 87% of my blog-related e-mail is from unhappy, bitter, troubled, distraught biomed grad students, postdocs, technicians, and early-career faculty. Others write to me with problems, but these tend to be of the “I’m frustrated with my advisor” sort rather than the… Continue reading Your Problems Are Not Unique
Student Comments and Internet Reviews
I got my student comments from last term’s intro mechanics course yesterday, which is always a stressful moment. As tends to happen, they were all over the map, with some students really liking me and others absolutely hating me. It struck me while I was reading through the written comments that the experience is a… Continue reading Student Comments and Internet Reviews
Physics Job Market: Same As It Ever Was
The American Institute of Physics has a statistics division that produces lots of interesting analyses of issues relevant to the discipline. A couple of them were released just recently, including one on the job status of new Ph.D.’s (PDF). The key graph from the report is this one: The text of the report talks up… Continue reading Physics Job Market: Same As It Ever Was