PhD support group?

studentphil

misskool wrote:

A lot of science graduates don't continue with a career in science. Most of them move on to greener fields such as consultancy and accounting. In my year, from 100 students about 20 of us through various paths have stayed in science. A few have science related jobs involving publishing and scientific communications.
Purely science careers are not particularly well paid and have a very undefined as well as difficult career structure. Many science courses are oversubscribed (well, at the uni where i did my undergrad and the uni where I am at now).

The problem is perception of the general public of science and how it's being potrayed to young people. A lot of science PhDs are funded, not everyone who wants to do one will be funded but they have significantly more funding than humanities and social sciences which is unfair but if there's a will, there's a way.


Also, you didn't define what a good career is?

So there is no crisis in the lack of people taking science degrees then, unlike you read in the papers. Good career is one that pays you enough to have a decent quality of life and has some promotion openings.

So what is the difference in a science career comparing a PHD to MSC?

sorry, it is nawt to do with the thread, just interested.

pboae

I taught for the OU while I was doing my PhD, and did departmental demonstrator/tutoring for undergrads too. I really loved working for the OU and found it much more interesting. The biggest problem was that there was a lot of coursework to mark, and the hand in/return dates were fixed, so if they clashed with a really busy PhD period it was tough luck. That didn't happen with departmental work. I took a fairly low level course though, so it didn't take me that long to skim through the course materials, and I had a lot of tutorial type stuff from departmental work that I could tweak for the OU.



The single best tip I had for my PhD is write up as you go along. I did it in my first year, and then it sort of tailed off in my second year, and when I came to do my final write up it was so hard to do for the ones with no notes. I didn't use very much of the actual text for the Intro/Discussion (which were only a page or so long each), but the methods and results just needed smartening up for the earlier work. For the other ones I was scrabbling through notebooks and printouts trying to get the details for the methods. At the time I thought I would never forget all those details, but without something to jog my memory I couldn't even remember why I had done some of the experiments. They all just started to blend together in my head after a while.

I reckon it would have knocked a good 4 months off my write up if I'd had drafts of all the experiments before I sat down to write it. It wasn't just the amount of work and paper shuffling involved, but it's was so frustrating looking for little niggly bits of information that the lack of productivity really got me down, and set of downward spirals of 'there's too much I'll never get through it', and I always found it hard to shake that off and get motivated again.

DrFluffy

I guess it depends on your subject matter. If I wrote up as I went along, then I would have wasted a lot of my time. A lot of my early work didn't make it into my thesis, due to space restrictions...

pboae

DrFluffy wrote:

I guess it depends on your subject matter. If I wrote up as I went along, then I would have wasted a lot of my time. A lot of my early work didn't make it into my thesis, due to space restrictions...

Same here :-) but even the ones I didn't use fed the ideas for the later ones. Once I had dropped some of them from the thesis I had a gap in the thought process (not sure I've explained that very well), which I could have easily filled with an explanation... only I couldn't always remember what the explanation was anymore!

Plus, even the ones I ditched, I published in one form or another, so I would have used the notes anyway.

But as you say YMMV

DrFluffy

I actually managed to keep quite a good set of lab books (which came as a great surprise to me, as I was never organised before then - in any way, shape or form!!!)

pboae

I should have got you to do mine too

ffeindadifyr

There is certainly a shortage in Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Engineering... this is what's been flagged up in the news recently as the graduates of thjese disciplines are very important for the future of the economy of the lucrative technology sector. You will find that there are a number of PhD scholarships of around £12,000 (and fees payed) in these subjects each year - some of which never get taken up either!!!

I'm not too sure about Biology and the Biological sciences as I have had little to do with this scientific community.

studentphil

ffeindadifyr wrote:

There is certainly a shortage in Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Engineering... this is what's been flagged up in the news recently as the graduates of thjese disciplines are very important for the future of the economy of the lucrative technology sector. You will find that there are a number of PhD scholarships of around £12,000 (and fees payed) in these subjects each year - some of which never get taken up either!!!

I'm not too sure about Biology and the Biological sciences as I have had little to do with this scientific community.

Cheers, I can not say much as I was a good school scientist lost to the Arts at HE level as I did Philosophy.

CrazyChemist_2

misskool, I'm more skewed towards the chemistry side of things (currently looking at convergent and divergent synthesis in association with a University department) but the info you've got about Western blots seems confident. It's been a couple of years at least since I did that sort of stuff. What is the subject of your PhD if you don't mind me asking?? Please tell me it isn't one of those genetics projects dressed as Biochemistry :mad:

studentphil, you may actually see a slight reversal of trends as tuition fees kick in more of the whining students will realise that a £33k debt for a media degree isn't really worth it. More may actually go for proper subjects. Of course, paths such as Medicine, Dentistry, etc are always going to be popular (lots of dosh there ) but hopefully more will opt for real subjects such as Chemistry and hopefully the sad trend of chemistry departments downgrading/closing will end soon.

Maybe the government will wake up to the crisis... no probably not :rotfl:

studentphil

CrazyChemist wrote:

misskool, I'm more skewed towards the chemistry side of things (currently looking at convergent and divergent synthesis in association with a University department) but the info you've got about Western blots seems confident. It's been a couple of years at least since I did that sort of stuff. What is the subject of your PhD if you don't mind me asking?? Please tell me it isn't one of those genetics projects dressed as Biochemistry :mad:

studentphil, you may actually see a slight reversal of trends as tuition fees kick in more of the whining students will realise that a £33k debt for a media degree isn't really worth it. More may actually go for proper subjects. Of course, paths such as Medicine, Dentistry, etc are always going to be popular (lots of dosh there ) but hopefully more will opt for real subjects such as Chemistry and hopefully the sad trend of chemistry departments downgrading/closing will end soon.
Philosophy is the most wonderful subject for developing thinking skills but all in all its employability is 0, so it might not be micky mouse subjevts that die a bit but the tradtional arts too.
Maybe the government will wake up to the crisis... no probably not :rotfl:

Philosophy is the most wonderful subject for developing thinking skills and all the other key skills but all in all its employability is 0 according to most employers, so it might not be micky mouse subjevts that die a bit but the tradtional arts too.