Quote:
Originally Posted by Hans Tucker
Hopefully with this experience you have seeded her with a desire to study science when she gets older. Sadly I believe Science & Mathematics are a dying subject in todays school cirriculum, giving way to social science and environment subjects. These new subjects aren't bad it is just they have pushed the classic science subjects aside as being irrelevant.
Sorry Trevor for the rant, anyway it must feel good to have left an everlasting experience on someone  Kids are such sponges for learning and experiencing new things. |
I spent some time behind a refractor as a kid, and when I finished school (having studied physics and chemistry) I went and completed my bachelor degree in analytical chemistry. I can comment for at least Adelaide that there are no jobs in science. I would have to do a PHD and be very lucky to get a job out of it. If someone told me that I could give them 6-8 years (including the phd time) and around 30 grand for a CHANCE at a mediocre paying job I would probably have not done my degree in the first place.
It makes me angry when people suggest that science is dying out as a subject. The reason it is is because no one is paying the scientists in the first place. If I became an electrician after school (which was my second preference) I would have earned money for 4 years in an apprenticeship, had no HELP debt, and currently be earning 3-4 times what I do in my science related job.
I have friends who have spent the last 10 years of their lives in university and I have one friend who is a trade electrician now. The last time we all met up the electrician was earning our 3 wages combined, I looked around the table and said "who is the smart person here?".
I have to say that my experience as a child having my own telescope and microscope moved me into the field that I am in today. For the most part I love what I do. I love reading about the latest discovery in cosmology or physics and expanding my mind to the realms of possibility. But as long as chemistry can be dumbed down to a baking recipe the corporate world will pay people with no qualifications to do it.