Advice to a young scientist

On Sun, 15 May 2005, Taenia Solium

The one comparison I like to make is documented on my website scientist is about 12 years. Today, half of all bioscientists are OUT of science after about 10 years. And that is after 4-6 years of grad school, plus 4-6 years (sometimes ten) years of postdoc work. About ten years of work past the BS so you can work another ten years? Up against politics, grants, tenure denial?

I talked to two instructors of truck driving school at two different local community colleges. They told me that virtually every student gets at least one job offer before the course ends. Courses run 1-2 months. After the first year of not necessarily good work, but excellent to have experience on the resume these guys, if they want to, can find without too much difficulty driver jobs that pay $60,000-70,000 per year. And, I've talked with the drivers that say its true and they've been doing the work all their lives and they are not young. Better than having your job shipped to India, China, Russia (Intel says it doesn't have to ever hire an American again, and its got 1000 Russians working for them). So, while driving a truck, a guy can think about careers that you study until the job gets shipped to India.