Careers In Astronomy: What am I Doing with my Life??

by Maria Drout | Sep 8, 2011 | Career Navigation, Daily Paper Summaries

Title: Astronomy Career Profiles from the AAS Newsletter Archives Authors: Travis Metcalfe, Leila Belkora, Liam McDaid, Blake Bullock, Christine Pulliam, Peter Williams, Joshua Roth, Barb Whitney, Knut Olsen, Andy Howell, Luke Keller For those of you who feel like you have your life and your future completely figured out, I apologize in advance for this post.  But ‘tis the season: the beginning of a new academic year, the time when many of you may be thinking about the next stage in your careers.  Dan already wrote two fantastic posts this week about the process of applying to graduate school (here and here) but now I want to take a step back. Going to graduate school is a large commitment, and making the decision to do so can be a stressful process.  In astronomy, in particular, I have encountered numerous students plagued by a series of ‘what ifs’, all of which seem to stem from a basic misconception about what going to astronomy graduate school actually means for your future. To help frame this misconception, I pose the following question to all of you thinking of pursuing astronomy, “What’s the point?”  This may seem like a very philosophical question, and it is, but I guarantee that at some point in your career you will be asked to justify what you do to a “layman”.  So start working on your answer now.  And let me warn you: it is quite frankly harder in astronomy than some other sciences.   Although space cowboys on asteroids are pretty cool, it is my opinion that we can’t really just default to, “some day this research…