What should I do now? (physics / astronomy)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

In december 2009 I graduted from college with a chemistry degree. I’ve applied for a lot of jobs since then, but I’m still working the same part time job that I had before I graduated.

My dad called me yesterday and basically said he thinks I’m too smart to not go back to school, and that I should do it soon (probably spring or fall 2012) since the job market for new graduates isn’t great. So I have the option of going to grad/law/med/whatever school with the support of my parents.

The way I see it: everybody gets to live their life one time. Many people don’t have much of a choice in what they do most of the time. There were tens of thousands of years where most peoples’ time was spent hunting or gathering. That lifestyle was probably very fulfilling, because it was easy to understand why you needed to do those things. Everybody knew how the world worked – you do the things you need to do to survive, or you die.

That’s not true anymore. The world is a much more complicated place than any cave man ever imagined (even though their brains were exactly the same as ours!) And most of us do get to choose what we do most of the time.

I am very interested in science. This quote from physicist Evalyn Gates explains how I feel:

We are tiny sentient parts of the universe, and we have a choice in how we interact with the rest of the universe. I want to interact with what we now consider the “edges” (subatomic particles, faraway galaxies, etc) because I can’t see myself ever becoming uninterested in those things. I am assuming I’ll need a PhD in astronomy or physics to get paid for that.

What should I do now? My degree is in chemistry. I have no undergraduate research experience, nor any close connections with former professors. I still live close to the school I went to, so I can still get over there to talk to professors and advisors, attend lectures, etc. And I’ve got plenty of time to read books.

btw I’ve been lurking this forum for about 10 years!

2

I think it unlikely that your undergraduate degree would be a barrier to graduate studies in the field of your choice. You may need to take more classes than your classmates, but it shouldn’t be a problem. I’m neither a chemist nor a physicist though.

Also, you don’t necessarily need to have a PhD to participate in research groups “on the edge.” You need a PhD to be the head of such a research group and form research directions. In other words, if you are the type that thinks, “Hey, I think problem X needs solving, so I’m going to go out there and solve it!” then you need a PhD. If you are the type that thinks, “Hey, Professor W does really interesting research, I’d love to help that research group accomplish their goals,” then you may not need a PhD.

3

If you want to work in physics or astronomy, then you need a PhD. So start applying to a bunch of grad schools. Having an undergraduate degree in chemistry instead of physics isn’t necessarily a barrier, although you’ll probably have to take the Physics GRE and you may have a hard time getting a good score if you mostly took chem courses in undergrad, so you may want to get some practice tests and see how you do.

You will need letters of recommendation as well – did you do any research with any of the faculty as an undergrad? If so, definitely get them to write you a letter. If not, just go to the professors of your favorite classes and ask them to write you letters – they get these requests all the time and while they probably won’t write anything glowing, it should be good enough.

4

I have a Ph.D. in physics from a top 5 school, so I may have a slightly skewed view of what you need, but here’s the minimum I think grad schools are looking for.

But before I get into that, the reality of doing physics/astronomy research is somewhat different than reading about it in books. If you can do some research in a physics lab for a bit (get your professors to hook you up with a lab that is interested in taking on a student), that might be very helpful for you to see what research is like. You may not be so interested in actually doing research once you see that, although overall you are exploring the mysteries of subatomic particles, your day-to-day job is more along the lines of “Agh, that piece of equipment blew out again!” and “I had the mirrors all aligned and now they’re misaligned again!” I know that working in a lab really opened my eyes to what science was really like. And let me tell you that I don’t know any scientist/grad student who got tired of probing the edges of what we know, but I knew plenty, including myself, who got pretty darn uninterested in fixing vacuum pumps or beating our heads against a stubborn proof.

How is your math background? You need at least a very firm grasp of calculus and linear algebra to do anything in physics these days. Differential equations, while not necessary, are recommended (I graduated without, but wish I’d taken it). Statistics, while entrance committees don’t really look for that, I VERY highly recommend.

What about your computer background? Some programming experience helps a lot. A lot of things are being done numerically these days.

A Ph.D. entrance committee is also going to want to know if you understand basic classical physics (you need to be able to solve simple harmonic oscillator problems in your sleep; understand kinematics including rotational motion, moments of inertia, and so on; deal with Maxwell’s equations) and basic quantum mechanics (if you’ve taken physical chemistry you may know some of this – be able to solve Schroedinger’s equation for simple cases and manipulate Pauli spin matrices at the very least). This knowledge is usually demonstrated through having taken classes in these things or working for a professor who can vouch for you knowing them, and/or (as Giraffe mentions) scoring highly on the physics GRE. (I had a terrible GRE score, but I had the classes and the recs.)

My advice would be to take more math and physics classes before you apply to grad school. You could even audit them but you MUST do the problem sets, otherwise you won’t learn a thing. If you start thinking the problem sets are tedious, physics grad school is not going to be for you. Unless you really like working in lab.

You may also think about careers that intersect physics/astronomy without actually requiring the math/physics background. Science journalism, for instance, or patent law, or doing publicity/other such job at a techie school. People I was in grad school with have done all those things, and have found in those careers a way to satisfy their love of science without actually having to do the annoying parts of science.

5

Heh, it’s so, so true. Actual science research is about as far from what people see on Nova or read in Scientific American as can be. The trick is to find out which form of drudgery you enjoy/can tolerate to get the good stuff out.

One thing a lot of undergrads assume is that you’ve got to do experimental research, e.g. in a lab trying to find leaks in your vacuum chamber or align laser mirrors or pulling coax cables in a high energy beamline. If you prefer math and/or programming, you may be better suited to theory than experiment. Astrophysics simulation and modeling in particular is a pretty fascinating field, IMO.

6

You mean PDQ? Surely you had to take a basic course in differential equations as part of the standard calculus sequence?

raspberry hunter’s advice is all pretty solid, especially the recommendation to get a good grounding in applied statistics and and stochastic methods. Whether you go into experimental or theoretical areas, the understanding of proper statistical sampling, ANOVA, and Monte Carlo-type simulation methods will find broad use across nearly every area of physics, and allow you to take fuzzy data or a problem with a lot of widely variable parameters and winnow some insight out of them.

Also something to consider is that if you actually want to do research in an academic environment, there are a lot of other duties and headaches that come along with it, including having to write proposals and secure funding, networking with other researchers (which can be interesting or tedious depending on how well you like people), supervising graduate students and researchers, dealing with department politics and infighting (which can be vicious in some places), and worst of all, the unyielding pressure to publish, publish, publish whether your work is at a state of completeness or not. If you enjoy the good points about research you can cope with the negatives, but you will spend a lot of time doing things other than research, even aside from the pain of dealing with problems with equipment or simulation tools.

Stranger

7

Gaahh! Flashbacks! Bad trip! BAD TRIP!!!

8

Thanks for the responses!

That is a concern of mine. My plan is to go to lectures and talk with the professors at the end – hopefully one of them will like me enough to let me volunteer in their lab.

I considered majoring in physics as an undergrad, but I thought my math skills weren’t good enough. I was good at math until I got to calculus and started making C’s. I took linear algebra thinking it would be easier than differential equations, but I ended up really hating it and wishing I had stuck with calculus. Part of that may have been due to my professor (who had recently moved from China and was difficult to understand.) I have no programming experience.

I’ll take your advice and see about taking more math and physics courses.

I’ve thought about science journalism before (and in fact started college as a journalism major) but I have even less of an idea of how to get into that field. I don’t know anything about patent law but I’ll look into it (I assume it would require law school?)

I’m not sure how I would deal with all of that. One of the reasons I want think about the edges of the universe is so I don’t have to think about people as much. Astronomy is appealing to me because for every big telescope there are surely some people who live way out there with it (in the middle of nowhere) and do maintenance/troubleshooting? How do you get that job?

9

Heh. An ODE/PDQ course was indeed part of the standard sequence, but due to a loophole it was not actually required for graduation (it’s probably changed since I went through college because of people like me who thought we were so cool skipping it), so I took abstract algebra instead. I don’t regret taking algebra, which was awesome, but I do wish I had taken the proper course and actually learned it properly.

zater, yes, patent law requires law school; don’t know if that’s interesting to you. I think all the science majors I know who went to law school do patent law and love it. Of course, most of us didn’t go (or want to go) to law school, so it’s fairly self-selecting that way.

Oh, I forgot! One of my good friends went to business school and now does sales for biotech companies, which she absolutely loves. She describes her job as “translating between the scientists and the sales people.”

A quick google search on science journalism internships turns up this list. I’m sure with a little digging you could find more. Probably applying to these, possibly in conjunction with taking more classes or applying to grad school, is a good first step.

You might also ask around the science departments at your school to see if they know of any openings for school jobs involving communication about science (e.g., publicity, writing blurbs for alumni events, I-don’t-even-know-what).

It does sound like you might prefer to have a job where you get to learn about physics rather than one where you actually do physics.

10

Have you looked at federal jobs on the USAJOBS site? There are a bunch of “chemist” positions that seem to require no more than an undergrad degree. The pay is crappy ($40K to start), but the benefits are solid.

There are also a lot of jobs in the middle of nowhere that don’t call for dealing with people. Look into the Forest Service, for example.

11

That is generally not what astronomers do. In fact, in modern astronomy, it is not unusual for the principal astronomer to not actually work at or even visit the facility from which the observations are made (obviously in the case of the Hubble or Webb telescopes). The era of Robert Wilson climbing his eponymous mountain to make observations is long past, and in fact Wilson himself spent much of his career networking, politicking, and otherwise convincing people to support forward looking research programs. The people who live in the middle of nowhere maintaining the telescope are technicians, which is frankly not the most intellectually stimulating work.

Stranger

12

What might be an easier course is to find a smaller university that offers a physics masters program. These schools are much more lenient about admitting students into the physics program who don’t have a physics background. This would be a good opportunity to try out physics research and classes and see if you like it enough. Once you finish the masters program, you can then move on to a Phd program somewhere else.

13

Oy. That’s…not good. While physics does have (far) more than its fair share of socially-maladjusted misanthropes, it’s also an inherently collaborative field. It’s not the 18th century any more – you can’t just set up a lab/telescope in a remote corner of the world somewhere and get anything done.

14

Keep in mind that if you want a job in academia (which seems to be what you are describing), you will probably have to do something like:

  • 5+ years in grad school
  • 4+ years as a post-doc
  • Get hired (in a very competitive environment) by a university in a place you would enjoy living
  • Do research that may be much more mundane on a day-to-day basis than the heady topics you dream about when you look into the heavens
  • Publish Publish Publish and struggle for tenure
  • Go to lots of faculty meetings and deal with an annoying bureaucracy
  • Teach <topic>-101 to students, many of whom have no interest in learning

Keep in mind that if you are a male there may not be many females around. You may also feel as though you are putting your life “on hold” for over a decade. Finally, the pay may not be so great – you’ll probably make more money over your lifetime if you do not go to grad school.

15

I’ve only been applying for jobs in the city I live in, which of course limits my options quite a bit. I don’t want to move right now.

That may be true. It’s just too early to rule anything out yet.

Another job I’ve considered is community college professor. I work in public high schools now (tutoring) and see the kinds of crap that teachers deal with – I figure at a college you don’t have to deal with as much of that because the students are paying to be there, and there’s no state exam that every lesson is geared toward. Plus I’d probably just need a masters degree (and I’d still have the option of earning my PhD and going into research at a university.)

16

Just to throw something out there, how about using your Chemistry degree as a bridge and studying exo-chemistry? How did Titan get those ethane seas? Why are we detecting primitive organic molecules in assorted parts of the Milky Way?

Or, for something completely different, how about doing a MBA?