With respect to "standard" careers ---- a few years back, before faculty
meetings, faculty members were asked to summarize "how they got where
they are". We went through the faculty alphabetically, and since this is
a large department, it took a couple years to get through all of us, but
it turned out that very few of the faculty had actually followed the
"standard" career path. Well over 3/4 had some "burp" along the way,
such as teaching high school, doing work in industry, taking time off
between masters and Ph.D., doing several post-docs, doing peace corp,
etc. It made me suspect that in fact the "standard" MS to Ph.D to
post-doc to faculty position is in fact fairly much a myth.
Elaine R. Ingham
inghame at bcc.orst.edu
