In this first post, I briefly describe myself and the reason I made this blog. I am in the final year of my PhD program, with a couple of projects left to finish up before I write my dissertation. Like many of my ilk, I pursued this path for the love of physics and with the expectation of carving out a career in academia.
Over the course of my academic career, I've picked up a good number of skills for my work, in programming and in analysis techniques. These skills, as I was told by an alum who returned to talk about his work in the finance industry, are sought after outside the ivory tower. And so I've been wondering for awhile, if I would be better off outside the protective walls of academia, applying my training to real-world problems, studying how the vast machinery of society, of the economy, operates.
Better pay aside, I am drawn also by a certain excitement about experiencing a completely different environment, working within new social and organizational frameworks. Or maybe it is foolhardiness, like the average American tourist going to live with a New Guinean headshrinker tribe. Within the academic community, there exists a special disdain for those who "sell out". By "special", I don't mean "strong"; it is, in fact, rather subtle, and fades by the day, as conditions for working in academia deteriorate (Google "academic job market" for specifics). But I digress.
Ultimately, what brought me to my decision to leave academia after graduation was a lifelong desire to explore as much of human phase space (the human experience, the world, what have you) as I can. I execute this plan not without trepidation - there is much to learn and many mistakes to make - and so I will blog about my experiences here both as a means of self-reflection and as a reference for myself in the future.
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