Our favorite niece—don't tell her siblings and cousins—is amazing as she works from both sides of her brain. She finds biology and philosophy equally interesting and challenging, and she can hear a song for the first time in the morning, and after some practice, play it on one of the three instruments she's comfortable with. If you see her on her phone or tablet, she's most likely reading a novel—I can't forgive her for calling Pride and Prejudice “kinda cute,” however. And she's the warm, witty one, the one everyone loves to be with.
About college, she announced her decision to attend the local university with “in STEM, where you go to college for undergrad isn't as important for most people.” She was 17 at the time, and she was convinced about being right as 17-year-olds often are. Her cousins tried to convince her to attend Flagship U, but she argued, “I can watch sports here at home.” A friend tried to convince her to accept an offer from several well-known colleges, but she argued, “No debt for this girl.” The local university had come through with a full ride.
A junior at 19 she has decided she loves chemistry because it is interesting and challenging. In other words, she has to work at getting it and the good grades that come with getting chemistry. Recognizing that drive, the faculty have asked her to tutor her classmates. And poor fool, she loves helping them. And she is apparently excellent at it.On a recent trip home, my partner and I had a quiet moment with her—hard to do with large families at times. She wanted to talk with the two college professors in the family: “I'm thinking that being a chemistry teacher at a university would be right for me.” She then quickly added, “I mean, I might be right for that.” Then finally, the question: “are there jobs for people who want to teach chemistry at a university? Just be a teacher?”
And here's my question for my friends here at Zooze the horse: are there? I can't go by my field, heavens! And my STEM colleagues here reluctantly teach to be able to do their research; I know from general consent that they are pressured to produce results for tenure and promotion and win huge grants.
Is getting a PhD in chemistry “just to be a teacher” something she wants to do? Can do? Stipends? Assistantships? Any way she can avoid debt? Can one even say that s/he just wants to be a teacher and get a job?
Will the necessary research to earn a degree fire a passion for research?
Warnings? Insights? Anything you can share to help a caring uncle and aunt give a favorite niece good advice?
—TubaPlayingProf
If she gets into a PhD program, it will be paid for. If she wants to teach, getting a PhD will kill her soul, but she might be able to grow a new one once she's in the classroom (30% of the time, if a new soul is desired, it grows back, but 80% of the time the soul of a PhD seeking chemist wasn't there in the first place).
ReplyDeleteGetting a PhD is the best route to the best jobs. And by "best", I don't mean super picky "If she wants to work at Harvard...", I mean "If she wants to avoid being a starving adjunct working at 4 places at the same time just to make half the money of someone who got a PhD..."
If she REALLY wants to teach, she can probably get a good load of CC work with an MS. But most master's programs are not paid for. The way to do it is get accepted to a PhD program and then "change your mind" after you beat the level where you get to save your character's powers and quit the game (usually after about 3 different types of written and oral exams).
If a money tree grows out of your butt and you want to help her out, there's another route. PhD in Chemical Education or Science Education. Teacher's College has a really good one but it's 90 credits of coursework at a bazillion dollars per credit followed by research and dissertation.
I'm in a much less competitive (i.e. cheaper) Science Ed PhD program and I'm not even ABD and I landed my dream job this way.
There are others. A lot of the focus is on p-12 education and the age old quest for achieving "scientific literacy", but there are niches for people interested in the study and practice of tertiary chemistry education. Pre-med is a hot bed of issues.
She might even do the PhD and get wooed away by hard core science, and that's ok too. Even at 19, her prefrontal cortex is developing and her identity is far from crystalized.
Belatedly: What Wombat said.
ReplyDeleteA PhD will be necessary. But for a field like Chemistry, that's a good thing: there are lots of non-academic jobs possible in the field if you change your mind about academia.
Pure teaching jobs are probably easier to get than teaching/research jobs by a fair margin; they are less competitive in part because the pay less, in part because they are more grueling.
But! Sciences suffer still from the PhD basically being a pyramid scheme. We graduate far more PhDs who want faculty jobs than there are jobs available. Students are used as inexpensive but highly-skilled labor to advance the field (and the careers of those who won the lottery). The game is both competitive in terms of talent, but also perseverance, and you're running against some seriously dedicated people.
One more point: Undergraduate pedigree discussion aside, graduate pedigree IS important. Small graduate schools often produce poor candidates, so having a PhD from Nowhere U will wind up costing you. Aim high.