Chemistry Blog » Blog Archive » Something Deeply Wrong With Chemistry
See above link. B-school PhD is a walk in the park compared to other rackets.
from the postAs the OB literature shows, the best way to encourage organizational citizenship behaviors is the following mantra:Also, if you haven’t noticed the number of people working on weekends and nights in the lab is the worst I’ve seen in my 17 years. The frequency of vacation, time taken off and other non-lab activities is bordering on the ridiculous. In case you forgot, the standard amount of time you are supposed to take is 2 weeks a year total, including Christmas. If there isn’t a substantial improvement in the next few months, I’ll have to think of some draconian measures to “motivate” you. I also want to say that the average lab citizenship and community spirit of keeping the lab in functioning order is at an all-time low. Few people seem to care about fixing broken equipment and making sure things in the lab run smoothly. If the lab were extremely productive and everyone was totally focused on their work, I might understand the slovenliness but productivity is abysmal and if we continue along this path we will surely reach mediocrity in no time.
"The beatings will continue until the moral improves!"
Just to provide the optimistic view of a soon-to-be Finance PhD student
I am excited about the Finance PhD ahead of me. As I see it, for those who made it into a top10 finance program, there is a nontrivial chance to get a job in a top10 school, and a significant chance of getting a job at a top20 school. In lot of other disciplines, it has to be a miracle for you to find a top10 academic job even if you graduate from Harvard or MIT. Further, the financial crisis will be over by the time I graduate, so if I realize I am not a research guy, it will be easy to find a high paying job on the wall street. I will start at the same rank as my undergrad friends who by then is doing their MBA at top programs like Stanford and Wharton, and I don't lose much. Maybe I will be TAing their class, but the TA requirement is very low. A Wharton/Kellogg/NYU PhD will give me the prestige that a top MBA cannot.
I get paid 30k a year for doing nothing in the first year and several hours a week of RAing the following years, which I will do anyways to get to know faculty and work with them. I get to choose who I work with, or at least its a mutual choice. So by "working", I am really doing something I enjoy. It even give the possibility of coauthoring if I have alot ideas to contribute. With this stipend, I can go to restaurants and buy good food frequently. My friends are working their ***-off with excel spreadsheet on Wall Street for the first three year (something I am sure they don't enjoy), and they have to give a lot of that earning back in their fourth and fifth year to get an expensive MBA. So even in monetary terms, I am not at a strong disadvantage over the next five years.
Engineering guys usually have to work on industry projects they don't like but have to do anyway because those are where their funding come from. I don't have to go to labs and is free to research on stuff that interests ME. It is hard to finish in 4 years, but I will likely finish in five years, which is shorter than the time humanities PhDs spend in their program. Also, I don't have to struggle with a low-quality life as a post-doc once I graduate.
Once I become a faculty at, say a top15 school, which is my goal, I will make 1.5 times as much as engineering and econ faculties, and 2 times as much as social sci and humanities faculties. Some hedge fund may contact me and try to hire me, but if I feel like I can do research, I will probably decline the offer and climb the academic ladder. As junior faculty in Finance, I don't have to spend significant hours to chase around and hunting the government or department heads of big companies for funding like the engineering guys have to do. I just do my research.
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