#38437: Alon Levy — 09/02  at  11:12 AM
Just how long does it take to get a Ph.D.? CNN originally wrote "four to six years" but then corrected it upward. The only university for which I have any data is Yale, where the median number of years it takes to get a Ph.D. in a natural science subject is 5.7.

#38442: — 09/02  at  11:27 AM
I thought you did this for the access to debate brilliant thinkers such as Salvador Cordova and Charlie Wagner.

#38443: SweettP2063 — 09/02  at  11:31 AM
Thanks! Now I know what I am--a groupie!

PZ...to me you are so much better than a rock star...well, actually you are number three, sorry Bono and John bon Jovi are number 1 and 2 respectively.

PS: It's guys like you that helped me find direction after starting college as an old geezer and it's guys like you that inspired me to become a teacher.

#38445: — 09/02  at  11:34 AM
PZ, you should write a book.. then I'd buy it, and it can go to your fund. You have alot of supporters..

#38446: — 09/02  at  11:35 AM
What many fail to realize is that the PhD-ification process trains us to do research and how to live like a pauper and enjoy it. I have to say, at this point (4th year, just finishing up coursework, doing quals, etc...), $43K sounds like a pretty big annual pile of money.

Why, given small enough denominations and a suitably vault-like room, I could do some serious Scrooge-McDuck-ish rolling around in that kind of money.

#38451: charlie wagner — 09/02  at  11:44 AM

HERO OF THE DAY


An unidentified shopper who walked up to Condoleeza Rice in the shoe department at Ferragamo on 5th Ave. in NYC and said:

“How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!”

LOSER OF THE DAY

Condoleeza Rice, who not only bought the shoes, but had the brave woman physically removed from her presence by her security people.

Afterword:

Condi is now back in Washington. So are the shoes.

#38453: — 09/02  at  11:48 AM
That's kind of a spammy non-sequitur, Chuck.

Not that it's my job to patrol for thread-jackers...

#38454: — 09/02  at  11:49 AM

Just how long does it take to get a Ph.D.? CNN originally wrote "four to six years" but then corrected it upward. The only university for which I have any data is Yale, where the median number of years it takes to get a Ph.D. in a natural science subject is 5.7.

Y'all spend too much time hanging with people in the 'hard sciences'. In the humanities, 8-9 years is very common. 11-12 years is considered a bit long but nothing too unusual.

'Course, the payoff is that we have even more and even cooler groupies.


(I've heard 3 years is not uncommon in math. Dunno if that's really true.)

#38455: charlie wagner — 09/02  at  11:53 AM
noahpoah wrote:

"Not that it's my job to patrol for thread-jackers..."

Yet, you felt compelled to do it anyway.

#38456: — 09/02  at  11:53 AM

Condoleeza Rice in the shoe department at Ferragamo on 5th Ave. in NYC

The big question is: Why doesn't she have people to do these things for her? Where is the budget for shoe-shoppers for the Secretary of State? No doubt frittered away on inadequate flood preparation in Louisiana. If they hadn't spent all those millions, Condo Riche wouldn't have to endure such ignominy.

#38458: — 09/02  at  11:56 AM

"Not that it's my job to patrol for thread-jackers..."

Yet, you felt compelled to do it anyway.

And a second sub-thread is born.

Isn't conversational evolution fascinating?

(Come to think of it, that question may inaugurate another sub-thread...)

#38459: — 09/02  at  12:06 PM
Condi needed sharper heels to protect us from the enormous killer centipedes of doom.

#38463: GrrlScientist — 09/02  at  12:26 PM
43K is a very optimistic postdoc wage! I had a very good postdoc and I earned 30K per year -- while living in NYC. 30K, which is the largest pile of money I've ever earned in my entire life -- looks like a grand salary to me, and I aspire to earn so much once again (yes, while living in NYC, still!)

#38470: — 09/02  at  12:47 PM
"Fortunately, I'm not doing it for the money—it's all about the groupies and the esteem of the general public, who respect science so much."
Quit yer whinin', egghead, and tell me happy stories about Baby Jesus making fuzzy bunnies and kittens for the Garden of Eden an' stuff.

#38473: — 09/02  at  12:52 PM
Charlie missed the point:

noahpoah wrote:

"Not that it's my job to patrol for thread-jackers..."

Yet, you felt compelled to do it anyway.

Yes, I did. Why did you feel compelled to post about the Secretary of State's shoes and the hurricane aftermath in a thread about PhD salaries?

GrrlScientist wrote:

43K is a very optimistic postdoc wage! I had a very good postdoc and I earned 30K per year -- while living in NYC.

Yikes. I hope I can get a postdoc worth 30-43K, although I'm fairly sure my wife won't want to live in NYC, so that should save us some money. Of course, having a 3.75 year old daughter costs a fair bit. Which brings up something I didn't comment on before - who says you can't start a family while pursuing a PhD/research career? You can, it just adds a lot to your daily schedule.

#38474: coturnix — 09/02  at  12:58 PM
Current starting salary for a postdoc with an NIH grant is about 32K. I can't wait to get to it!

The subheading on my blog ("... Thesis-writing block...") is now gone (if you were wondering why the posting is light). I intend to defend in two months tops.

My Masters + PhD willl add up to 11 years. I overdid it: my MS thesis was more than 60 pages long and resulted in two papers and a review + another paper that covered the work I did but was not included in the thesis. My Dissertation is going to be about 150 pages long and will result in at least 4 more papers. It is much more than most of my peers do. Plus, I helped my lab-friend do endless melatonin assays - it's another co-authored paper for me, but he is defending next week! The fact that he is defending before me (although he came in after me AND spent a year fighting in Afghanistan) is one of the motivators of my current frenetic writing.

The other motivator is research. While writing, I am on embargo on lab work. I am not allowed to do anything in the lab, or even think about future experiments right now. I want to finish so I can punish myself more: write grant proposals, spend days and nights working in the lab, on 32K for the next couple of years, then go through the horror of interviewing for a real job, then frenetic struggle to publish (thus not perish) in order to get tenure. When can I afford to buy a horse again?

#38475: — 09/02  at  01:01 PM
Second the motion to have PZ write a book - Raising the Atheist Child

I don't know that it would be a best seller, but I would buy a copy. It would help me when I'm arguing with my wife that belief in mythology doesn't equate to raising a child with high moral standards.

#38478: Craig McClain — 09/02  at  01:16 PM
Wait a minute...I am not going to be rich and famous being a scientist? Why didn't someone tell me sooner!
p.s. How do I attract groupies?

#38479: PZ Myers — 09/02  at  01:21 PM
1. Become a scientist.

2. ???

3. Groupies!!!!

It helps if you sing the song.

"Time to go to work, work all night
search for science hey!
We won't stop until we have results
Yum tum yummy tum day!"

#38482: — 09/02  at  01:30 PM
Y'all spend too much time hanging with people in the 'hard sciences'. In the humanities, 8-9 years is very common. 11-12 years is considered a bit long but nothing too unusual.

One of my friends is working on his PhD in History; his girlfriend is getting hers in Geology. He's been plugging away for about, oh, six or seven years now, so I guess he's only got about 5 more to go!

The hardest part for them is that they can barely manage to live in the same time zone, because the schools with good Geology PhD programs are not the same schools with good European History PhD programs.

#38483: GrrlScientist — 09/02  at  01:36 PM
I managed to add to my family, although my family is not comprised of humans (they all are parrots, and my "added family member" is actually a gift parrot). Certainly, a family is expensive, but one can be started/maintained/added to on a postdoc's wage, especially if you are incredibly frugal. Considering this, I sometimes think that the people who go into academics are actually the best penny-pinchers (everyone else would starve).

#38487: — 09/02  at  01:41 PM
Reading your comments one could imagine that those people looting groceries in New Orleans are all starving PhDs. You cannot tell us tall stories, here we all know that America´s streets are paved with gold. 2.85 billion people are daydreaming of becoming PhDs in America, 2.85 billion are in their beds enjoying the sweet illusion that they already are. To put it differently, 1.5 billion Chinese cannot be all wrong.

#38490: — 09/02  at  02:04 PM
What do we have to do to be PZ's groupies? Is merely posting on this blog enough? That would mean several creationists are also groupies though. Or ought we to be grouping in some more physical way, eg holding PZ conventions where everyone wears pirate regalia or a squid for a hat? Do I get to be a groupie because I have a betentacled PZMulhu badge logo?

Meanwhile, I'm even cheaper to hire as a retired scientist type. Someone joked the other night that, while they have to pay money to normal babysitters, they pay me in frogs. I got three adorable little ones last time. :-D And no, they do not get dissected, just put into the pond and admired a lot.

#38491: — 09/02  at  02:04 PM
Seems to me there's a theme from that article. Those people whose jobs include "creating new stuff" work hard and don't get paid very well (unless you're lucky enough to "create really really cool new stuff"). Those whose jobs include "applying what we already know" make a lot more money (and may also work hard, though).

#38493: Johnny Vector — 09/02  at  02:24 PM
You forgot one other key advantage of graduate school: the learning of patience. As my current insulate-the-attic project (BTW, did you know most home contractors are idiots? Believe it or not!) expands to require yet another layer of work, my wife complains "We'll never finish this project!" While I, with my experimental physics Ph.D., understand that it only looks that way from this side. In the future, when this project is in our past, we'll look back on these times and just laugh shudder with the memory.

Just like I now do with grad school.