PhD support group?

melancholly

jamtart6 wrote:

I've always wanted a job like lecturing but not sure now, if the career or family will be more important (ill probably swing to the family side to be honest). DO you think you can have a good balance of work and family in academia?

a lot of people in my department manage - tbh it's one of the best things about the job to me. you don't really have set hours so you can sit at home and do marking and writing. obviously there are meetings and lectures and a lot of work, but being able to choose when and where to do it is a big plus. i think to get really far in academia quickly then you would have to sacrifice time with family, but if you're happy to not aim for the stars then the people i work with show that it can be done (and most of them are women who cope really well!).

magyar

jamtart6 wrote:

Of course not, I'm in geography/climate change

Well I can assure you there are jobs in Industry! I work for a renewable energy company now and we empliy several people, some in GIS and others in strategic planning etc.

jamtart6

oh lol! when i said some "key skills" i did mean GIS...i hope to fall back on that if possible... thanks for that, dont know why i didnt think about big companies like that, suppose its because academia is adverstised mainly to us!

misskool

jamtart6 wrote:

hello! this thread caught my eye a while a go, but was a bit overwhelmed at the no. of posts to read thru, i have caught a few and decided it was high time i said hello and please keep me sane!

Im exactly half way thru, things are starting to go well, the huge 1st year learning curve is over and the results are coming thick and fast...but the further on I go...the more I am unsure that academia is for me.

I've always wanted a job like lecturing but not sure now, if the career or family will be more important (ill probably swing to the family side to be honest). DO you think you can have a good balance of work and family in academia?

Hope to chat to you all soon
Jammy x

Hello and welcome! :wave:

Everyone has to choose what is more important to them and you will be able to make that choice soon. All universities try to have a good balance of work and family life but in my point of view, that isn't really feasible. Academics spend their life teaching, writing grant proposals or trying to catch up with multitude of paperwork!!

If you really want to lecture, you could try colleges where the focus and concern is on teaching?

pboae

jamtart6 wrote:

I've always wanted a job like lecturing but not sure now, if the career or family will be more important (ill probably swing to the family side to be honest). DO you think you can have a good balance of work and family in academia?

I think the difference between academia and industry, etc is that the further up the ladder you get in research the more bartering power you have to get the balance you want. If you are bringing in grant money and have more junior researchers slogging away at papers, then it'll be easier to negotiate time off. But if you are 'just' a lecturer and have huge amount of contact time, there just isn't the flexibility in your timetable to do that.

But in industry etc, the further up the ladder you get the more indespensible you become, and the more the pressure increases.

Also, I'm not in academia at the moment and I really really miss the leave. OH gets 30 days and an extra week when they close down over Christmas, and that's just for starters, he'll get more when he's been there so many years. I get 20 days, plus bank holidays, and they take 3 days off me for the Christmas closure, so I end up with just 17 days to take when I want. :-(

magyar

pboae wrote:

But in industry etc, the further up the ladder you get the more indespensible you become, and the more the pressure increases.

In fact this can bring a reverse effect. In industry, your promotions etc. tend to be more to do with 'soft' skills, rather than research skills, so the really clever ones might get to run a lab or something but that tends to be it. It's the ones that are clever at management who get promoted all the way.

happypuppy

Hi All,
It's great to find this forum
I am in the 3rd year of my part time PhD (IT/Network security), probably 3 more years to go !
Initially found a research area but now I've changed the direction. Only a few experiments done.
No idea what's going on or what's going to happen
Just published a paper on the first research topic I selected.
Annual review is day after. Funding has been cutoff after 2 years.
Hi misskool, it great to see you here, thanks again for your help with MB.
Happypuppy

talksalot81

As an intelligent bunch, you guys are the best to hear this rant!

What is your experience of Joe Public responding to scientific peer reviewed material? My own is that the public will automatically discredit it if they dont agree. The material may well be written based on accepted data, analysis done using statistically 'good' techniques, will have corroborating studies and will have been accepted as an 'accurate and sensible' study by experts prior to it being published. However Joe Public has seen several events which from which he uses questionable statistical extrapolations based upon his woefully inadequate sample to come up with a conclusion that directly disagrees with the experts at which point he concludes that scientists are idiots who dont know what they are talking about!!

Like come on!!!! It sickens me that I work my !!! off trying to further understandings and technologies which these type of people may well one day rely on to save their lives. What is the point?!

melancholly

talksalot81 wrote:

As an intelligent bunch, you guys are the best to hear this rant!

What is your experience of Joe Public responding to scientific peer reviewed material? My own is that the public will automatically discredit it if they dont agree. The material may well be written based on accepted data, analysis done using statistically 'good' techniques, will have corroborating studies and will have been accepted as an 'accurate and sensible' study by experts prior to it being published. However Joe Public has seen several events which from which he uses questionable statistical extrapolations based upon his woefully inadequate sample to come up with a conclusion that directly disagrees with the experts at which point he concludes that scientists are idiots who dont know what they are talking about!!

Like come on!!!! It sickens me that I work my !!! off trying to further understandings and technologies which these type of people may well one day rely on to save their lives. What is the point?!

just think back to the MMR situation - one researcher (being paid by concerned parents) finds a tenuous link between MMR and autism and the general public goes nuts. dozens of research groups in the UK, Europe and the US fail to reproduce their results but it makes no difference...........

never ever look to people outside of your area to try to get credut for your work (unless you're on for a Nobel Prize, obviously!)

i suggest chocolate and/or beer!

DrFluffy

melancholly wrote:

just think back to the MMR situation - one researcher (being paid by concerned parents) finds a tenuous link between MMR and autism and the general public goes nuts. dozens of research groups in the UK, Europe and the US fail to reproduce their results but it makes no difference...........

never ever look to people outside of your area to try to get credut for your work (unless you're on for a Nobel Prize, obviously!)

i suggest chocolate and/or beer!

Not to mention the specific case of Finland, where they have irradicated measles, mumps and rubella using the same 2 dose MMR protocol used in the UK and without any rise in autism...

Andrew Wakefield has a lot to answer for!