Over my four years learning mathematics and physics on my own, I have often been asked whether I am going to go into it professionally, and be a "career-changer." America is full of people like this, who drop their high-powered careers as lawyers or doctors or architects or, yes, scientists, to do something completely different that they love to do. A lawyer goes back to school and becomes an elementary school music teacher. A doctor decides to leave medicine behind and run for political office. An architect becomes a restaurant owner. A physicist drops out of science and becomes a romance novelist. (All of these are real-life examples.) So why not change my career (puny and unprofitable as it was) and go into science or engineering professionally?

Anyone who suggests that has no grasp of the reality of careers in science. I have been spending quite a lot of time reading Weblogs written by professional scientists about their work and lives. After a year or so of this kind of reading, they have convinced me that even if I were young and just starting out, I should not choose this line of work. They have painted a rather miserable and unattractive picture of what professional science, at labs and industry but especially in academia, is like. First, competition is relentless, or whatever word is even more than relentless. Not only are you working those 80-hour weeks as a graduate and post-doc, you are under pressure constantly to publish, publish, and produce. As a professor, you are stuck with endless faculty and teaching duties which crowd out your time for your own research. You spend more tedious hours applying for grants. If you are working in industry or a laboratory, you are a cog or sprocket in a huge corporate entity of hundreds of people, and (unless you are the boss or some sort of higher-up) you will only experience the thrill of discovery and achievement in a collective sort of way. Some good and humble people don't mind that sort of team-based approach, but if you are an ambitious individualist, forget it. No Nobel Prize for you, sorry.

If you think you are going to make any money with a PhD in physics, these writers disillusion you. The jobs aren't there. Unless you are a computer genius, your chances of making bucks with your professional qualifications are low. Not only that, there is always someone from India or China who will do your job for less and work 100-hour weeks to top your 80-hour weeks. If you aspire to be a theoretical physicist, for instance a string theorist, your chances of actually becoming a professional in that field are equivalent to a sandlot player getting into the big leagues. Many physicists have written, basically, that physics is closed. The field is full, no new people need apply (unless they are from China).

It's a big difference from the picture of science that is offered to layfolk. I have dozens of books that romanticize the practice of science and have scientists (usually now deceased) talking about how much they love their work and how they make discoveries, do exciting things like visit observatories in remote places, or stand in wonder before some glorious phenomenon. Television programs such as one I recently saw about the Mars Rovers show roomfuls of clean-cut, youngish science types repeatedly cheering as their machines landed safely, sent back the first pictures, got unstuck, and wandered off into the ruddy desert of Mars. (They're still going, after more than a year!) But again, your chance of being one of those cheering scientists is about as much as a street ball player getting into the NBA.

Even so, I wonder whether if I had my life to live over, and I could start young again, would I choose to be some kind of scientist rather than an artist? In my own life, this was so not an option that I never even thought about it. Now, as I plug at my little increments of classical mechanics and beginning calculus, the notion of going into a scientific career has floated by me. But there is just too much reality to consider. I can dream about the romantic image of science and scientists, but I know it is, like most romantic images, an illusion.

Also, I know my weakness. I am not good in competition, and I'm petrified of difficult, high-pressure tests. I have never been able to hold my own in aggressive intellectual confrontation, and would not be able to win those science contests that show off the talents of teen scientists. I am too lazy, not to mention too old, to work 80-hour weeks. I like my low-key bohemian lifestyle. And, well, I like doing art too much. If I went into a science career, that is, graduate school and postdoc work, etc., I wouldn't have any time to do art any more. Now I am well aware that the wide world would not be diminished if I never painted another picture, but my local circle of friends and collectors probably would be disappointed. I cannot claim to have had a "brilliant career" doing art, and I may have a dim future as an artist, but it is something I keep coming back to and I don't get bored with it, though I may be confused as to what I would like to paint.

Some of my wiser friends have suggested that I will end up doing something on the outskirts of science, such as art on scientific (physics or astronomical) themes, or science writing. This is much more plausible for me, though it isn't as hard-edge macho as being a "real" scientist. Then why do I keep wanting to do mathematics and physics on a mathematical level, rather than just getting inspired by non-mathematical books to make pretty abstract pictures? What is all that studying and problem-solving for? I regularly ask myself that question. If I'm not going into it professionally, why bother? Do I have to keep coming up with reasonable reasons for doing this?

I will let someone much more eloquent than I, say it for me. This is from John F. Kennedy's speech in September of 1962, when he announced that the USA would put a man on the moon before the decade was ended. JFK, who was so romantically portrayed in his day, had this to say:

"….We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

Just substitute "study mathematics and physics" for going to the moon, substitute "my" for "our," and "learn" for "win." Perhaps I should apologize for being pretentious and "above myself" here. Reality is always ready to correct me.

Posted at 3:59 am | link