Career advice thread

[npc revolution]

Okay so I live in England and soon I have to pick the subjects I'm taking to A level. The problem is, I don't know what I want to do.:smalleek: I've taken it down to two sets:

Doctor set
Physics
Chemistry
Biology
Spanish

Physicist set
Physics
Maths
Further Maths (Imaginary numbers and stuff)
Spanish

I'm really stuck for what to go with, so I figured you nice playgrounders could tell me from experience what I should do. For instance, are there any accessable jobs that even involve physics?

Thanks in advance you guys.

[Jack Squat]

A lot of the engineering fields are pretty physics heavy. For straight physicist, I know that they keep guys on hand at some hospitals to make sure the gamma ray knife machines are aligned before each procedure, and to monitor the machines throughout the procedure.

I don't know what else is really out there, but I haven't really looked into the field too much myself. It's not necessarily a dead-end degree though.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Physicist set
Physics
Maths
Further Maths (Imaginary numbers and stuff)
Spanish

If your maths course contains a lot of applied maths then you might want to consider a different course - I did both physics and applied maths, and you spend a lot of time repeating material. Check the course details.

If this is the case, then you might want to swap Maths with Chemistry.

(For reference, my A-Levels were Physics, Chemistry and Applied Maths. I ended up in IT...).

The course sets are fairly well rounded, so you should be able to go into most areas with either set. Quite a lot of people end up doing jobs that don't relate to their degrees: My maths teacher studied English, and my english teacher studied Maths...

[Trog]

I was told once, by my cousin, who was a math major, that a math degree by itself doesn't lend itself to the job field. Math plus something else to go with it does though, he said. Take that as you will.

[Crow]

Doctor set, hands down. For the $$$ anyways. (Yes, you can make good cash with the other set too, but you'll have an easier time getting a job in the first set.)

[npc revolution]

Okay, it turns out there is significant overlap between physics and maths. They both cover mechanics. I'm gonna talk to my teachers and ask what I should do. Also, I'm gonna see an advisor on tuesday next week. So I'll probably be okay. :smallsmile:

[factotum]

I did Physics, Maths and Further Maths and I don't remember there being a huge amount of overlap between the syllabuses--admittedly, that was 22 years ago and things may be different now!

[npc revolution]

I did Physics, Maths and Further Maths and I don't remember there being a huge amount of overlap between the syllabuses--admittedly, that was 22 years ago and things may be different now!

I'll make sure on monday.

[Don Julio Anejo]

Doctor set, hands down. For the $$$ anyways. (Yes, you can make good cash with the other set too, but you'll have an easier time getting a job in the first set.)
Not really. 80 hour work weeks for the first few years of residency, always on call, no sleep... Plus opportunity cost, it takes 8-10 years for most people to become doctors, while for pretty much any other job (like a hedge fundie or a financial analyst/quant) you can work after a 4 year bachelor's degree as long as you got it from a good school. By the time someone is an intern, you're making 80-100k at your job (if you're have the same brains/ambition as the doctor), and by the time they start pulling in their 150, you're doing the same except you're not burdened with $300k student loans and $20-100k/year malpractice insurance.

Hands down for being a doctor (I want to be one myself), but it's not a career you should go into if your priority is money and you have no passion for medicine. Also doctors have a pretty low upper ceiling (like around $250k in the US and $50k less in other countries), and getting there often involves being the unethical, "money first" type of doctor.

EDIT: on topic, unless in the UK you apply to med school right after high school, it doesn't really matter what you do there. Also, who says you can't take both physics and biology and chemistry at the same time?

[Manga Shoggoth]

I did Physics, Maths and Further Maths and I don't remember there being a huge amount of overlap between the syllabuses--admittedly, that was 22 years ago and things may be different now!

I'm going back to the early 80s here - and there were something like five different "maths" A-levels floating around. The one I took was specifically "Applied Maths", which was pretty much the Physics end of things.


npc revolution: Don't worry too much about not knowing what you want to do at this stage. I had no idea what I wanted to be when I chose my A-Levels and just went with my strengths. I only had vague ideas when I went to University and I didn't get my career sorted out until after I had graduated.

And even then my chosen career had very little to do with my degree...

[mucat]

Not really. 80 hour work weeks for the first few years of residency...
Sounds like an easy residency. 110 hours per week was typical when my ex-wife was a resident. (Legally, it should have been 80, but that law was a polite fiction.) (And yes, that meant that, had she slept a normal human number of hours, there would have been negative hours remaining in the week. I was quite angry about the way residents were treated...)


For instance, are there any accessable jobs that even involve physics?
In my experience, physicists always land on their feet. For most of us, the holy grail would be an academic research job -- not because professors make much money, but because you get to do physics for the rest of your life and it's your firkkin' job. But if that doesn't work out, the skills you learn studying physics will serve you well in a huge variety of fields, from engineering to financial analysis.

And it's so much fun to study (for a sufficiently twisted definition of "fun"...) :smallsmile:

[factotum]

I'm going back to the early 80s here - and there were something like five different "maths" A-levels floating around. The one I took was specifically "Applied Maths", which was pretty much the Physics end of things.


My Maths course had both Pure and Applied sections, but even the Applied sections weren't that similar to the Physics course. For instance, the Applied Maths course had a whole section about how you calculated the moment of inertia of an object, which was way deeper into that particular area than the physics course went!

[leakingpen]

A good friend is going for a physics degree. hopes to be a researcher at CERN before it gets replaced with something better.

[Hazkali]

Don't necessarily view the overlap of mechanics in Physics and Mathematics a bad thing. It may free up time to concentrate on other areas, and I found that my maths teacher taught mechanics much better than my physics teachers, without which I would have had a much harder time.

As for which set you do- if you want to become a physics teacher, you will have schools clamouring for you, or so I'm led to believe. I did a Maths and Physics MSci, however, and have had no success in finding a job in four months. :smallmad:

[Devmaar]

I'm doing my AS levels now and although there is a lot of overlap between physics and the mechanics section of further maths I've found this to be helpful rather than anything else. Doing that topic (which I've found to be the easiest so far) in two lessons means I have more time to study for the subjects and topics I find more difficult. It works the other way round too, my friend found that section difficult, but since he's covered it twice he's mostly figured it out.

I think it's worth pointing out that if you're not sure what you want to do, don't aim for medicine. I have friends looking to be doctors and they've already been to one day-long course, with a five-day course coming up, and more in later terms. The point is, to have a real chance of getting onto a medical course at uni, you need to put in a lot more work, and if you're not totally sure that's the path you want to take, it's probably not worth it.

[pendell]

If all you're concerned about is finding work, doctor wins hands down. Both require an amazing amount of schoolwork, but there's always demand for medical staff , while physics jobs are more limited.

Another thing to consider is that it's much easier to move, change jobs, or even countries with a medical degree. They've got hospitals all over the world -- not always great, but they've got 'em. By contrast, I imagine it's much harder to place people with a physics degree.

Still ... a better solution might be to take some of each, if you can, and see what you have aptitude for. If you're really, really good or really enjoy physics, while you're only so-so at medicine or it leaves you cold, you're probably better off doing physics. If you're good at something and have the skills to pass a job interview, you'll be much happier and more productive doing it than something else.

Final consideration: My own degree is in computer science. It took me a year to get my big break into the field. If I hadn't had that break -- thank God -- it's possible I'd have been shunted into a career path such as real estate appraisal which has nothing whatsoever to do with my degree. It happens to a lot of people.


Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Thes Hunter]

I'd give you advice on the doctor set, but I ain't in England, so I don't know how you folks do things there.

Though I can give some 10,000 ft. view, big picture advice.

I think the real question is, what do you want to do (day to day).

Do you like dealing with people? Have you ever worked help desk support, customer service or anything of the like? I.E. do you like/deal well enough with cranky people asking the same stupid questions day in and day out, (and can make yourself at least try to care and see the other persons point of view long enough to not make them feel like they are asking stupid questions because they have no way of knowing, and they don't know that you have been asked 5 times today if a headache could be a brain tumor).

Or do you like building things/planning and working on projects in your alone time? The one thing that drove me nuts about computer programming is that I hated fighting with the computer to get the permissions, syntax little fiddly things right. I personally would look forward to someone calling and asking me a newbie question on their email, because it was something other than staring at the computer screen all day.

What you like, dislike, and what balance between the two you can live with isn't as easy to know without some experience and some navel gazing. So I suggest volunteer at a hospital (and maybe do some grunt customer service/help desk to see how annoying complaining people are to you), and then also see if you can shadow, interview, intern, etc. at the type of engineering firm you would like to do. These things will give you an idea of the day to day activities of these careers and which will ultimately determine how much you love or hate a job.


And if anyone in the US wants advice on medical careers (pre-med, where to go, what are my chances, MD/DO/PA, how do you survive) or whatever feel free to PM me.

Though if you already in residency (or above) I get to ask you for advice. :smallwink:


----

And hahaha, speed reading fail... I totally read physics as 'engineering'.

But that only more starkly illustrates my main point....

So how often do you want reinforcement/encouragement what have you...
and what will make you more fulfilled:
Having someone hug you because you found a fairly obvious cancer and applied the fairly standard protocols that gave them maybe 5 more years to live?

Or do you want to spend years doing careful nitpicky experiments that pick apart at the fabric of the universe so that you maybe have something interesting to say in 20 years that only matters to other physicists?

[LCR]

Do the physicist set, those skills will be useful in medical school as well. All the biology and chemistry you need can be picked up in med school anyway.

[Ashtar]

Physics and Math form the foundation necessary for many careers. Add in a couple of courses on Finance if you can and you will be a very hot prospect.

I work with Quantitative Analysts, quants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst), they all come from a strong Math / Physics background. They work in Finance, Energy, Insurance and Credit Risk, all strong fields that are recruiting and pay well. I see them going from Hedge funds to Banks to Energy Companies to Insurances without skipping a beat.

A good understanding of Statistics, Black-Scholes, Monte-Carlo simulation methods, being able to derive a Conditional probability distribution, calculate convolutions and being able to talk about financial instruments (futures, options) guarantee employment.

If you add in a good package of (advanced) Physics, then you become even more valuable.

[littlebottom]

i am from england too, if that makes any difference. i myself took:

Physics,
chemistry,
biology,
maths.

now i dont regret my choices, but hell i wish i had different teachers, basically we had a set of about 4 teachers across the subjects who were all rubbish, although to give them credit, the maths teacher wasnt too bad.

ultimately, i droped biology because the teacher i had exclusively to biology was a complete and utter idiot. i hated him with a passion. which left me with physics, chemistry and maths.

i thought "meh i can still do fine with that"

the chemistry teacher ended up failing the entire class (who really worked hard) the physics teacher had to go have surgury during the first of the 2 years, and from then on was off 50% of the time, and when he wasnt off, he piled on work to make up for his absense, but still didnt teach us how to do it, so it was almost entirely off our own backs. and the maths teacher was... well, not bad really. but by that point i only had 2 A-levels, and was denied a place in uni.:smallfrown:

but, despite all that, i do not regret my subject choices, and did highly enjoy learning them (when i was actually being taught). so i say go with your strengths, go with your heart, go with your head. i know sometimes they give you conflicting information, but atleast you wont regret it no matter what happens.

(i dont know if thats a good lesson or not, but i really hope you do well and get the chance in life i was denied)

[Bonecrusher Doc]

Wife has a PhD in math but her career options are very limited unless she follows some very strict paths.

Health care on the other hand - you will always have a job anywhere you go. If you don't want to be a physician there are other similar options.

[Capt Spanner]

You'll still be fine to go onto a physics degree with your physics set. At Sheffield, at least, they do a fairly good job of getting everyone up to scratch with the Maths.