Anyone who has ever toiled away at writing a doctoral thesis knows a certain level of self-deception is neccesary to continue believing that earning your Ph.D is worthwhile, respectable, and will ultimately be a fruitful inellectual endeavor. In other words, you must convince yourself that your efforts will result in a J-O-B. At a university. Well-funded. With an office. And tenure. Just like everyone promised. As they must, since this is the only job that I have been trained for.
A recent set of commentaries published in Nature this week have just tipped my self-deception threshold over the edge.
There are simply too many science Ph.Ds being produced and not enough academic jobs to go around. The system persists, however, because the only way that tenured scientists are able to continue producing, is by taking advantage of the extremely cheap labor of doctoral students and the (only slightly less cheap labor) of post-doctoral students. Most Ph.Ds will not make it, or will be in a perpetual post-doctoral holding pattern for the rest of eternity. Not to mention the fact that the rapidly increasing pool of Ph.Ds only devalues the worth of any individual Ph.D. And the current system encourages the practice of pushing through less-than-stellar students that may not even be adequately trained for the only job they have ever been prepared for.
I'm screwed, and my Ph.D. is almost entirely worthless.
(aaaaannnnnnddddddd. back to work.)
Is Nature really a definitive source? I look around at my 'baby boomer' friends who are taking nutritional health shots, shakes and pills, drinking wheat grass and exercising 2 hours a day to shore up immune systems from the toxins of youth and the cancers of age. Where are the PhD's that can make a routine experiment a breakthrough? Hang in there and remember statistics lie. There is always room for the extraordinary idea.
ReplyDeleteYes, Mom. Nature is indeed a definitive source.
ReplyDelete