PhD in Mechanical Engineering. I first entered the job market with a BS and MS, but saw that all the really fun jobs went to the PhDs. So I went back and got one. It was a great move. I’ve had lots of fun jobs since then. And get paid a lot more just because of those three silly letters.
Ph.D. in linguistics. At the end of my undergrad work I was offered a fellowship and was not offered a job, so I took the fellowship. It was interesting while it lasted. Don’t use it now.
Physics PhD. I love science and had to pick a discipline. I kept going for the pure joy of learning. I gave very little thought to whether or not it was a good choice for getting a job.
I’ve never regretted it.
I’ll have to speak for the wife. She’s the educated one. (All I have is a master’s degree.) She’s a researcher with the Thai government. When she took up her post after finishing her first master’s in the 1980s, a master’s was all that was required. But the government tightened up standards over the years until finally a doctorate was required. She could have accepted being grandfathered in and not gone for one, but it eventually transpired that she was the only one in her office without a doctorate. This made her feel a bit uneasy even though she did have two master’s. (The government paid for sending her to the US to pick up her second master’s, in biostatistics, because her office needed someone with that expertise. That’s where we met, at the U of Hawaii.)
Forgot. Her PhD is in demography. She works in the field of population studies.
Another chemist chipping in. As was already stated:
We don’t really learn much about chemistry in undergrad in the US and are hence not qualified to do much with a BA or BS. Everyone gets paid to get their Ph.D in chemistry. It was less than a Real Job, and at 70 h/week it came out to sub-minimum wage, but I was still able to max out my IRA each year. All in all I found the experience much less stressful than getting my BA.
For anyone considering this path, I feel it necessary to comment that I have NEVER heard of this happening. In fact, every discussion I’ve had about the matter has been that chemistry profs tend to err on being a bit too over-inclusive when it comes to authorship.
It’s also rare for chemistry professors to have completed two postdocs unless one was overseas. Granted, most new faculty in the last few years seem to have postdoc’d and Ph.D’d at only 5 or so institutions. The hurdles for those not coming from the MIT/Harvard/Berkeley/etc. circle are extremely high. It’s always a little sad when I have undergrads telling me about their aspirations to become research faculty, only to then head to sub-par institutions for grad school. Of course these schools only encourage the delusion.
I’d been doing philosophy since I could remember, and was brought up to regard academic work as one of the highest ideals one can aspire to. And I had no idea how worthless the thing would be for career-building purposes. My grad programs didn’t exactly decieve me on this point, but they did strongly encourage the taking of the risk while usually drawing my attention away from the possibility of failure. (Partly because middle-aged and older people in humanities right now did not have to go through what us youngsters these days have to go through, with the ludicrously tight job market etc.)
Lucked into a job, but “luck” is exactly the right word.
When everything falls apart and the school I work at folds or some crazy school president with too much power on his/her hands takes a disliking to me, I’m PMing you for post-academia advice. Just a warning.
Some are mathematicians, some are carpenters’ wives;
don’t know how it all got started, don’t know what they do with their lives.
-Dylan
PhD in math checking in.
Why did I go for my doctorate? The way I put it is that I felt called to pursue that path; I’m not sure I know an equivalent secular term. But both when I went for my master’s and for my doctorate, it was as if the decision had already been made in some deep place inside of me, after which I suddenly became aware that yeah, that’s what I was supposed to do, and all that was left to do was (a) make sure it was what I really wanted to do and that it made sense for me to do it, and (b) start applying to grad programs.
How’d it work out? Very well, thanks. Getting the doctorate wasn’t easy, but even if I’d wound up in some totally unrelated field, it would have been more than worth it: nothing has sharpened my thinking so much as the time I spent working on my doctorate.
I’m currently a government statistician, so my current field has a decent connection to my doctoral field, and even though it’s a different field, my doctoral work makes me better at what I do.
Not to mention a nontrivial side bonus: I met my wife while doing the course work for my doctorate.
Ecology, specifically avian ecology. I’m an ornithologist by training.
I was interested in natural history at least from when I was five or so, and in birds since I was 12.
I’ve never had an academic job, or really been much interested in one. I was never much interested in teaching. Given the job market in the early 80s, when I got my degree, if I had gone into academics even if I got a job I wouldn’t have had a lot of choice as to where I would have ended up. And the possibility of having to be a junior faculty member at, say, the University of Southern North Dakota wasn’t appealing to me.
After I got my degree, I was fortunate in getting a post-doc with the New Zealand Wildlife Service to work on endangered birds. Since then I’ve had very diverse jobs, including environmental consulting, team leader for biodiversity surveys in Panama, Peru, and Gabon, acting director of a program of tropical forest research, science writer, and working on various museum and science center exhibitions, not to mention a short stint as a botanical artist in Madagascar.
My parents’ families went from dirt poor to college degrees in one generation. So I was raised with expectation that I was going to college.
On the first day of class in college (Fortran Programming!), this guy walks in, says he’s a TA, explains what that is, etc.
That was it. I just knew right then I wanted to do that. 3 years later I was walking into a classroom and explaining that I was a TA, etc.
I got a PhD in Computer Science at the right time. Big demand, rapid growth of departments, etc. I rode that wave for a long time.
Then I got tired of it. The students, the administrators, etc.
But I’m “over qualified” (which makes no sense), plus an older person in computing is considered an idiot. Never mind they want the people that I taught who only know a fraction of what I do. So nowadays it’s a negative.
I went straight for a Ph.D. (biochemistry) after undergraduate in part because I didn’t know how to go about getting a decent job with just a B.A. So, instead I spent 6 years as a grad student making the equivalent of less than minimum wage.
In the long term, it’s worked out for me, but I knew from pretty early on that I didn’t want to go the traditional route towards trying to be a professor. I didn’t really enjoy teaching, or applying for grants or writing/rewriting peer reviewed manuscripts. The extreme levels of competition even for a position at a mediocre institute was something I didn’t want to get involved in either. I also didn’t have a burning desire to guide my own research in my field, but was happy to try to solve the problems others posed for me.
That’s not to say I don’t love the academic environment, surrounded by tons of brilliant, passionate people, because I do. I just didn’t want to spend my career doing what they do. Fortunately, I was able to get myself into a niche where I review other people’s research, so I get to see all the coolest advances, without having to get my hands dirty.
Ed.D. in Education (surprise!)
(Let me preface this by assuring those reading that I did all of the prereqs necessary for a Ph.D.: coursework, methods courses, dissertation involving original research, etc. Harvard invented the Ed.D. degree in 1920 because they wanted to grant degrees in the School and not surrender this power to the Faculty of Arts & Sciences).
I suppose I kind of stumbled into it. I think I might have dreamed of being a professor, but I didn’t know what they did besides teaching. I certainly didn’t think I was smart enough, or had the grades as an undergraduate. When I was teaching I met a number of graduate students in education, some from Harvard, and as brilliant as they were I didn’t think they were that different from me. I had a frat brother of mine get into the Harvard Divinity School and that sort of told me I might have a shot at getting into the Ed School. Got my masters (1 year) and really enjoyed it. Spent four years in the field of higher ed working with students as an administrator at two different universities.
I was asked to come back for the doctorate to work with my mentor professor on a book project - so the grad school thing was almost secondary. But as I often joke, my grad school is notorious for eradicating every marketable skill one has and making you a researcher. I discovered ethnographic research and focused on faculty issues, and I love what I do. It seemed quite natural to go on to a professorship once I finished. It took me 6.5 years from admission to dissertation defense.
I think at one time I thought it would be cool to be called “Dr.” Frankly, I’ve gotten over it, and I probably spend more time telling people to call me Hippy instead of Dr. Hollow (seriously, if you’re not a student in my class, why would you call me anything but my first name?).
I really enjoy being in a graduate school, with brilliant people from the world of educational practice and those who do research. I think my work makes a difference, and the students appreciate what I do. I love teaching and I think I’m getting better at it, and I have pretty flexible hours, which is also great.
Downside is that research and tenure-track work never ends. You get one project done, win a grant, etc. and it’s on to the next one. I am learning to not take it so seriously - just work hard, network, and the rest seems to take care of itself.
(Talk to me in 18 months when I go up for tenure, and I’ll let you know if that storyline changes…)
After getting the MS I was not ready to enter the workforce and had planned to see the world, but Mom & Dad were seeking additional returns on their current investment and persuaded me to get my PhD.
My Doctorate is in Geophysics.