DTD2003 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Point well taken JoeyD 
> > Honestly though, I’m not sure I could pursue a > physics PhD unless I was damn sure I wanted to be > a physicist of some sort. As I understand it, a > physics doctorate usually takes more than DOUBLE > the 4-5 years that is common for a finance one. As > it stands, I’m not so sure I won’t be sick of > financial economics by graduation even though it’s > my passion 
> > Oh, and I’d miss the informal culture of academia > I love so much. Is there even such a thing as a > relaxed finance culture?.. A Ph.D. in physics takes about the same amount of time as a Ph.D. in finance, depending on your dissertation topic. The thing that makes Ph.D.'s take a long time are: a) There is no incentive to leave. At least when I was in graduate school, it was lots easier to renew a student visa than get an H1-B or a teaching job. Graduate school life is pretty good and a bunch of people hang around way longer than they should for the lifestyle, especially from foreign countries. b) Your dissertation requires funding I don’t know why people do this (except maybe a), but people start dissertations that require them to get funding to go to CERN or whatever. Anthropology graduate students do this all the time, waiting around for a year or two to get some grant to pay their living expenses with the McHeadhunter tribe in Papua. At Carolina, the average anthropology Ph.D. took 9 years (for those who finished). There was an 11 year cut-off point. The standard deviation was at least 2 years. c) You start multiple dissertations The key question “Could you answer all the questions required of this dissertation?” If the answer is “No, we are exploring new frontiers in particle physics. By the time we’re done with this project we will have the Higgs boson on a leash and begging. Roll over boy. Arf. arf.” you are in for a 9 yr stay. If the asnwer is “Yes, but I find it dull and I would rather be doing other stuff, but someone has to answer these questions so it might as well be you”, now that’s a good dissertation topic.
Pretty funny. from Wilmott Courtesy of Nilesh Panandikar 21/05/2007 “A molecular biologist with a PhD at University of Birmingham, in the UK, quits his lab position to become a plumber, since a plumber apparently earns twice what he currently makes (~US$42K).” True story. The following is a joke. One professor of mathematics noticed that his kitchen sink at his home broke down. He called a plumber. The plumber came on the next day, sealed a few screws and everything was working as before. The professor was delighted. However, when the plumber gave him the bill a minute later, he was shocked. “This is one third of my monthly salary!” he yelled. Well, he paid and then the plumber said to him: “I understand your position as a professor. Why don’t you come to our company and apply for a plumber position? You will earn three times as much as a professor. But remember, when you apply tell them that you completed only the seventh grade. They don’t like educated people.” So it happened. The professor got a plumber job and his life significantly improved. He just had to seal a screw or two occasionally, and his salary went up significantly. One day, the board of the plumbing company decided that every plumber has to go to evening classes to complete the eighth grade. So, our professor had to go there too. It just happened that the first class was math. The evening teacher, to check students’ knowledge, asked for a formula for the area of the circle. The person who was asked was the professor. He jumped to the board, and then he realized that he forgot the formula. He started to reason it and soon filled the board with integrals, differentials and other advanced formulas to conclude the result that he had forgotten. As a result he got “negative pi times r squared.” He didn’t like the negative, so he started all over again. He got the negative sign again. No matter how many times he tried, he always got a negative. He was frustrated. He looked a bit scared at the class and saw all the plumbers whisper: “Switch the limits of the integral!!”
Wow…that joke was just horrible And that is by nerdy standards too…