At what point did you give up your dream?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Probably. A 25 year old that is generally healthy and has regular periods probably does not need to be freaking about fertility for quite a while.

I can’t think of a single college educated woman that I know who has had kids under 30-- indeed the average age of first birth for college educated women is now exactly 30. I made a joke to my OB-GYN about being “advanced maternal age” at 35, and he said I’m on the young side for the area.

Women have enough time to sabotage their own careers without throwing in the towel at 25 because they might maybe in the future perhaps want kids-- especially if they already have a partner, which tends to be the hard part. And lord knows women have enough anxiety about kids without people making it seem like you turn into a barren desert the day after you then 30.

22

To put some numbers on it, 82% of women over 35-39 having regular unprotected sex will conceive within a year, as opposed to 86% of 27-34 year olds. Another recent study shows 78% versus 82%.

A difference, and one worth considering if having a child is absolutely essential to you, especially because if you are one of the unlucky ones with a problem you’ll want as much time as possible to solve it. But the picture is nowhere as bleak as it is so often painted.

23

Pun intended :stuck_out_tongue:

[Quote= Quartz]
I know it sounds crass, but as a woman you do have a biologic clock and it is ticking.
[/Quote]

Just to get all of this out of the way - I cannot have children due to a medical issue that renders me infertile. It was one of the first things I discussed with my partner, and he doesn’t want children, so it all works out.
That being said, I’m curious if your mind would have gone in the same direction if I was a man. :rolleyes:

I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I’m starting to accept that this is probably not the career for me. As Stranger said, I can still mess around with it as a hobby. It’s hard for me, since I’ve put so much effort into getting here, but it’s the right decision.

I appreciate all the responses. It made me think about what is important to me. I can be happy doing something else. I just have no idea what that ‘something else’ is.
For now I will focus on building up my savings so that I can pay for the courses to raise my GPA back up, then reapply for financial aid. That will take some time, and allow me to think about where I want to go from here. Thanks guys. I appreciate that I was taken seriously and given different perspectives.

24

I fell in love with history in high school and set my sights on getting my PhD and becoming a college professor. My last year of undergrad, I applied to (and was accepted to) several fairly prestigious graduate schools. But I couldn’t get enough funding. I would have needed to take out student loans to cover some of the tuition, let alone living expenses.

It was hard and disappointing, but I chose not to go. In some ways, I felt like I had just wasted the last 4 years of my life. I had a bachelor’s degree but I couldn’t do what I thought I wanted to do for the rest of my life - research and teach.

I fell into an entry-level accounting job (bills to pay!) and ended up actually liking it. I’ve done very well there and after seven years (when my alternate self would be graduating with a PhD), I made 3 times what I would have made as an adjunct professor.

So am I doing what I always dreamed I would? Hell no. But do I enjoy my work and find it intellectually stimulating? Most days, which is more than most people can say. And can I pay my bills? Yes, and I’m much better off. I have seven more years of work experience (and 401k contributions). And it’s a heck of a lot easier to find a job in accounting than it is as a history professor.

25

I’m in Intermediate II at the moment. The first few accounting classes I found interesting, but this class has me bored to tears the majority of the time.

It’s good to know the job market is good and and someone with a liberal arts background can find the work interesting - it’ll help me slog through the next few weeks.

26

**At what point did you give up your dream?
**

Never. And I have been fortunate enough to have two careers that I am passionate about.

I was going to make a career in law enforcement way back when, but I got into computers instead and rode that wave for the last 40 years. And in 1987, I got back into Taekwondo and I’m riding that wave as well.

27

There are things we do in life for the money and things we do because we enjoy them. Sometimes they are the same, sometimes they are not. Heck who hasnt had a passion for a hobby or pursuit (ex. art, music, or history) that they wish they could earn a living off of.

Here in Kansas City there is an astronomical club which runs Powell Observatory and members get other benefits. You can enjoy astronomy without the pressure of trying to make a living off of it. Maybe your area has a similar group?

And its similar to other groups like those that do historical reenactments. Most times you dont even know what their day job is, only their identity or role in the group.

My suggestion is to pursue a career choice that has good job prospects in your area that you feel you can do. Then do that as your income source and pursue astronomy on the side.

28

The short answer is, never give up on your dreams.

The long answer is, you still shouldn’t give up on your dreams, but you do have to have some pragmatism mixed in there. Take something lofty, like wanting to be an astronaut or a movie star or the president. If you reach a point in your life, as most people who aspire to those types of careers do, that it’s not realistically possible to achieve those anymore, the question isn’t to ask whether or not you should give up on your dreams. Instead, the real question to ask is what about those careers draws you to them?

Without going through my life story, music is my passion, and had things gone a little differently, maybe I’d be a professional musician, but it didn’t work out that way. That I’m not making a living doing that doesn’t make me feel like a failure. In fact, to a certain extent, having learned what I have about that industry, I may very well be better off pursuing my passion for music as an amateur, so I’m not beholden to my success to be able to provide for myself. As a result, I have less time for my passion, but I also know that when I DO get to engage in my passion, that it is always purely for the love of it.

So, what is it about astrophysics that interests you? Sure, if you want to be the next Einstein or Hawking or whatever, that probably won’t happen. But there’s nothing about astrophysics that says you have to pursue it in that way. Maybe you can become a teacher or professor. Maybe you can become a writer or editor. Maybe a consultant or contractor related to various projects.

As a similar example, I’m a computer scientist, and as you might expect, a ton of the people I ran into in undergrad and going into it are interested mostly because of their passion for games. So many get in there, realize how utterly inglorious and tedious some of it can be, particularly when it comes to game programming, and they quickly give up. As it turned out, they were never passionate about computer science, they were interested in creative design aspects. They wanted to be the next Shigeru Miyamoto, which is like going into Hollywood wanting to be the next Steven Spielberg.

Frankly, a big part of my original interest in computer science was video games too, but as I studied it, I found out that I was even more drawn to the logic and problem solving. In fact, that’s the same thing that drew me to the types of games I liked, complex puzzles and creative solutions to them. It wasn’t long before I realized that I’d never want to work in the video game industry, and I had found an interest I could pursue for my career, at least for the time being.

So, I guess my point is, there’s more of an underlying aspect to your dream, and if you can get to the substance of that, then you absolutely can still achieve that dream. Hell, you might even find that you were pursuing a dream with a misunderstanding of what that actually involved, and if you knew that, you never would have gotten started. A lot of life in that regard is a little bit of trial and error.

So, pursue your education as much as you can and as much as you still desire to. If you find your interest is waning, make adjustments to your path to compensate. And in the meantime, find a job that meets what you want to do as closely as is reasonably possible. Maybe you can’t get one directly related to astrophysics, but maybe something else in the sciences or something that sparks your curiosity and problem solving. But never ever just settle. Even if you HAVE to for a period of time to pay bills, keep your eyes out for the next step and move on when that time comes.

29

STEM is good to study, but the jobs you get from STEM degrees may not be what people think of as “your field”. I’m a Chemical Engineer and currently work implementing SAP, a frequent question I get is “oh, wouldn’t you rather work in your field?” “I do, I’m a process engineer!” Back when I had jobs people thought of as my field, they were in Chemistry - I’ve worked as each half of my degree, but never in something where I’d be able to say “yep, this is something for which you specifically need to be a Chemical Engineer”.

Currently, one of the biggest fields for people with degrees in Physics and in Math is Computer Sciences; a lot of the consultants and programmers I’ve worked with had degrees in those two fields. Their degrees give them a mindset which translates well to the job, but writing statistical-analysis software is not what people think of when we hear “degree in Stats”.

30

I’m going to echo the people who are pointing out that it is not necessary - or even always beneficial - to actually perform paid labor in the field that you are most passionate about.

If you’re passionate about astrophysics, it’s probably worth doing some thinking about what precisely attracts you to it - is it the thrill of potential discovery? Is it the prestige of the title? Is it the giant puzzle factor? As has been pointed out, it’s entirely possible to be pretty involved in the field without actually needing to work in it.

As it turns out, most of the things I’m passionate about are. . . deeply difficult fields to actually have a reasonably functional career in, including video gaming. As it happens, when I was considerably younger and dumber, I worked briefly in video gaming and found out pretty damn quickly that actually attempting to develop it as a career was making me hate the whole damn field.

ETA: My point (which I realize I forgot to make) is that there’s no reason to give up a dream at all, but that you might want to examine precisely what it is that you want to do and evaluate whether or not it might be possible (or even preferable) to get what you actually want without going through the formal schooling process and incurring that debt.

31

Just as a point of note, the o.p. is interested in astrophysics, which largely concerns itself with the mechanics of stellar fusion processes and associated physics and chemistry. Astronomy is more about observations of celestrial phenomena on various scales and the underlying gravitational phenomenon. There is certainly some overlap, but they are fairly distinct fields of research.

Stranger

32

Don’t believe all the crap they are feeding you about shortages of people trained in STEM fields. I was talking to a woman I know just yesterday whose daughter studied math and is now working at Goldman-Sachs as a programmer. She hates it, but it is the only thing she could find. Microsoft is always complaining about the shortage of trained people, but somehow they find it easier (= cheaper) to hire another Indian on a visa than an American.