Life as a Research Student, or, how I stopped thinking about the Real World
So, you've graduated from your undergraduate degree. Well done! To get to this point, you've surpassed a great many others in your degree - those who started with you but soon decided that the degree wasn't for them, those who transferred to other fields or other universities or joined the work force with cadetships or apprenticeships or, heaven forbid, failed and gave up. Chances are, many of them are earning a lot more money now than you are, and possibly ever will be, but that's neither here nor there.
So you've spent the last three years (or more) of your life in this institution, learning how to write essays with a modicum of thought behind them, learning occasionally pointless facts, memorising formulae and quotes. Perhaps you tried your best, and learnt a great deal from your courses... or perhaps you didn't, and have forgotten most of what you learnt except the best sources of caffeine for overnight assignment-writing sessions, who to go to for advice on tough problems, and how to pass exams with a minimum of effort. You've suffered through subjects that you found incredibly boring, and lecturers who couldn't teach if their lives depended on it, and exams and assignments seemingly specifically designed to strike at your weaknesses. And, after all that, you've come out of it with a shiny piece of paper saying that you have performed well enough to have this degree awarded to you. Perhaps you have a photo of you in a funny outfit shaking hands with Important People - personally, I couldn't be bothered attending my ceremony.
And now, after three years when your years have been set for you, the question remains... what now?
The way I see it, you have five options:
*You can continue with your Bachelors Degree to obtain your Honours. (Note, the honours system is different in Australia to most other places, so this may not apply to you). In many ways, if you are a bright student, this is a smart option - apart from adding the nice-looking (Hons) signifier to your degree, making you far more appealing to employers, it also gives you a jump-start straight into a PhD if so inclined. On the other hand, it tends to be very intense, with both a large amount of hard coursework, and also a thesis component, for which you have insufficient time to acheive a great deal of original research. Still, not a bad option.
*You can join the workforce with your newly acquired skills, and potentially get out there to earn Real Money and make an independent life for yourself. This is quite a popular option, and has a lot going for it. After several years as an impoverished student, either living with your parents or flatting it and trying to make ends meet in an increasingly expensive renting world, it would be a relief to live the 9-5 life and be able to afford luxuries. And have weekends, without the stress of assignments.
*You can do a graduate training course with some company, which will give you money as you earn more qualifications, as well as give you a guaranteed employer (in many cases, since they're spending so much money on you to learn in the first year or two, they require a minimum length of time to work for them). This kinda combines the advantages of honours and the workforce, so is kinda cool.
*If you're in a suitable field, you can enrol in a coursework masters. These often look quite good on your resume, superior to honours, and in some fields are crucial before being certified. They are, however, quite expensive... and I don't know a great deal about them.
*You can do an MPhil or, as I call it, masters-by-research, as many people haven't heard of it. This is basically a shortened (2-year) PhD. This requires a longer time period than honours, and if you're looking to get a PhD, may be unnecessary; furthermore, it precludes acheiving prestigious awards such as the university medal. However, the advantages are:
-It is pass-fail, so no more marks. However, perhaps does not have the same prestige of getting a very high honours and subsequent university medal.
-As it is two years long, and predominantly research, you acheive a much larger research output, including at least one or two published papers in peer-referreed journals.
-It is a postgraduate qualification, rather than undergraduate, a great advantage if you're looking for jobs in research.
-In Australia, at least, there are no fees for research degrees, but a fairly good chance of attracting at least some funding (if you're lucky and bright, possibly a scholarship), which eases the pocket a little.
When I was finishing up my undergraduate degree, I had my eyes set on a very particular future - a graduate traineeship with the Bureau of Meteorology, to become a forecaster. However, when this failed to eventuate, due to the fact they decided not to run it this year (to my utmost dismay), I went through all of those options when trying to decide what to do next. Would I do honours, either in Physics or Meteorology? No... I was tired of the expectations I held myself to, the constant struggle to acheive top marks. Would I get a job, or travel? I actually applied for a similar traineeship in New Zealand, and was offerred the job, but eventually decided it wasn't quite for me, especially combined with the necessity of living in Wellington for the next few years of my life. And, along the way, an opportunity to do my MPhil with the Bureau of Meteorology fell into my lap, giving me both research experience and helpful contacts, and i took it.
And so I find myself today. Two days a week, I work part-time for the Bureau of Meteorology (totally unconnected to my masters research, but a nice source of income). Three days a week, four when I'm feeling proactive and have nothing else to do on a saturday, I go into the university, to my office on the top floor which I share with three very nice postgrad students from the year before, who are working in soils. Technically, I'm supposed to be there full-time, but as long as I get my work done, nobody cares. Periodically, I take paid trips to Brisbane or to Melbourne to mingle with my supervisors and see the rest of the project in action, beyond my own little section of research. The rest of the time, I sit in my office at my computer, working on programming and data analysis, writing up reports when I have to, but mostly left to do my own thing at my own rate. It's a fairly good life, so far as such things are concerned, and deadlines are few and far between, which makes it hard to focus at times. Today I ended up spending most of the day on the internet with little actual outpout; other days I have major breakthroughs or will be working well into the evening or weekends. It all depends. And it's strange to think that my next eighteen months or so will be much of the same thing, hopefully culminating in a thesis and being able to decide my next steps from a slightly more qualified position.
I don't know if I would ever keep researching the same thing after I've finished my masters; probably not, for as good as the opportunity was, this isn't the field of meteorology I'm most passionate about. But this is where I am now, and this is what I'm doing. And hopefully I'll get a scholarship next year sufficient to allow me to move out with a friend, beginning to establish ourselves as independent adults.
Chances are, this was incredibly boring to whoever decided to read it. But still, there it is - a summary of the choices post-bachelors degree, and why I chose what i did. Maybe, if you're finishing your degree soon, it'll even help. Mostly, however, I'm feeling guilty about how little work I've acheived today. But that's how these things work, and it'll all balance out in the end.