Two Years to live...
I'm currenlty working with a physics experiment called CMS (Compact Muon System). This is a large collaborative experiment with 1000s of experimenters all over the planet. I'm working this summer on helping to build a tier 2 computing center here in Nebraska. All the things I didn't like about being on DO are magnified a thousand times on CMS. Thousands of people all working on a single experiement and hardly anyone wants to help anyone else. So what do you get? People re-doing tons of work with hardly any oversight. I hate it.
Nothing I've done this summer has felt like I've added a bit of wisdom to the project. My entire existance could be replaced by a fairly adept email bot. Its horrible. So where does that leave me? I can't stand being in a position where I feel useless, so what I thought would be my professional future here at UNL is looking very unappealing. My physics career is back to two-years to live.
I'm on a teaching contract here at UNL to teach pre-meds. Its a fine job and I enjoy teaching, but I don't think I'd care for teaching at anywhere but a fairly large 4-year college. I can't get a job at at a large 4-year school without an impressive research resume. It's appearing more and more that I'm just not a good researcher (at least in HEP), hell I don't think I'm a very good physicist period. So my entire career as physicist might just stop in two years.
So now I have to figure out where to go from here and the clock is once again ticking.
When will this shit start getting easier?
Nothing I've done this summer has felt like I've added a bit of wisdom to the project. My entire existance could be replaced by a fairly adept email bot. Its horrible. So where does that leave me? I can't stand being in a position where I feel useless, so what I thought would be my professional future here at UNL is looking very unappealing. My physics career is back to two-years to live.
I'm on a teaching contract here at UNL to teach pre-meds. Its a fine job and I enjoy teaching, but I don't think I'd care for teaching at anywhere but a fairly large 4-year college. I can't get a job at at a large 4-year school without an impressive research resume. It's appearing more and more that I'm just not a good researcher (at least in HEP), hell I don't think I'm a very good physicist period. So my entire career as physicist might just stop in two years.
So now I have to figure out where to go from here and the clock is once again ticking.
When will this shit start getting easier?
posted by Carl at 9:07 PM
2 Comments:
I have an old friend in the Houston area who ran into a similar difficulty in chemistry when he was at UA-Fayetteville. He had done a stint with the Central Intelligence Agency as an IT guy; now he manages the Linux cluster for Conoco-Phillips. He generally enjoys it, especially since he had always dreamt of a science-fiction job, and it pays well. Even so, I get the impression that he has some regrets.
Jonathon
So why would you only want to teach at a large 4-year college? What would be a wrong with a smaller college?
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