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practical_romantic  2yr ago (text post)   2186 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for September 28, 2022

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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I feel pretty unsecure about the future. I immensely regret my Physics degree, probably the biggest regret. All the areas interesting to me (astro and nuclear) are dead end and becoming more and more computational so I will probably end up as a programmer, which I found easy to understand but one of the most boring profession in existence (heresy, I know), or I can pursue some experimental condensed matter specialization and trying to find work in material science, better than programming. In other words, I was fascinated with the idea of Physics and with studying Physics but hate all the profession I am qualified for.

TLDR: I wish I had done Medical School as my mother wished.

Have you considered systems biology? Or engineering?

systems biology

From reading the wikipedia page it seems very interesting. I always scoffed at biostatistics or biophysics, mainly for a question of "prestige" and "sexiness": now I'm started to view this kind of mentality as a something that holds back on physics research.

Yes, there are a lot of ways to use physics skills in biology. Another is simulation work, if you don't mind some programming: I have a friend who went from physics to modelling the evolution of sexual reproduction. However, as he put it, thinking about sex all day isn't as fun as you might think...

one of the most boring profession in existence

Elaborate? Programming is very varied. People are different, but while I can see a physics grad disliking copypaste webdev stuff, most physics people I know find something like neural net interpretability or datastructures or programming language design interesting? (not really specific suggestions just illustrating)

Also, a physics degree is good evidence that you're very smart and capable of doing complex work, and a variety of employers that pay well look for physics grads (although often for coders).

Programming is very varied. People are different, but while I can see a physics grad disliking copypaste webdev stuff

Yes, I think this may be one of my dislike: copypaste numerical data analysis algorithms until you get a semblance of a plot without really understanding the software. Maybe I should self study some real Computer Science and Software Engineering.

a variety of employers that pay well look for physics grads

I hope. Threads on reddit or other specialist forums do not seem to share the same enthusiasm but maybe there's a self selection bias with people online being more prone to be unemployed or in some kind of hardship.

My experience a decade ago was that Physics grads were second only to CS grads in hiring for programmers. (Math would probably have gotten second place if there were more of them.)

Reddit career advise is just horrible. 95% of what you read is written by either total losers or students who are just repeating doomer shit they heard from the aforementioned losers.

I have a physics degree, went to law school afterwards, and now have a lucrative job as a patent attorney. Several of my classmates went to medical school with physics degrees. Physics is probably the most flexible degree you can get.

I'm not sure the degree is doing anything for you? It seems that instead of being flexible, it's outright redundant, or just a placeholder for doing something else.

I’m not sure I understand what you mean. If I didn’t have a physics degree, I would need some other science or engineering degree to do patent law successfully. And as far as such degrees go, physics is one of the best because it is very broad and heavy on math so it provides a great foundation for understanding many areas of science and technology.

And more generally, what I mean by "flexible" is that many different types of jobs in many different fields will accept people with physics degrees, whereas most other degrees have a narrower range of job options. You can go into almost any field, other than certain highly specialized ones, with a physics degree.

I wasn't aware that it made things easier when it came to patent law, thanks for the clarification. I thought you were alluding to what you meant in the second paragraph of this reply, but I didn't quite see how your anecdotes supported it at the time, thanks!

can you not go to med school now?

Are you American? Not sure your age or where you are in your career process, but there are plenty of people who start medical school well after finishing college. It sounds like you are just out of undergrad, so you aren't even that much behind. There are many 1-year postbac programs designed to fulfill any prereqs you are missing and also help you get other experience that helps with admission.

Another more obscure path that might be a good fit for you is getting a PhD in medical physics. There's a lot of demand to hire them for clinical positions at big medical centers.

I'm not American and in Europe Medical School is a 6 year track with an intense workload that would make no sense: I would to get a full time job to finance it given that there's no university in my city and I would need to rent an apartment, so I ruled out as something to stop regretting. As for Medical Physics there's a tough job market but it would be feasible by emigrating. Thank you for your answer.

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