Deborah Merriam wrote:
>> Sarah and a couple of other people have talked a little about the
> "head-in-the-sand" attitude of academics regarding nonacademic career
> paths and the need for more discussion of the alternatives. Since I've
> been giving this a lot of thought recently, I thought I'd start the ball
> rolling.
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>I've been seriously
> considering other potential career paths.
>> Here are the options I've thought of. Perhaps they can be a starting point
> for more discussion.
> - medicine
> - law school (science policy or intellectual property)
> - industry (research)
> - industry (management, with an M.B.A. perhaps)
> - industy (sales rep)
> - science writing or journalism
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> I look forward to hearing your thoughts...
>> Deborah Merriam
Hi,
Another alternative career path that is popular at the moment is
Bioinformatics. This requires interest in computers and either direct
experience in using the various sequence search/analysis programs or in
writing software. Some people are retraining and obtaining a M.Sc. in
Computer Science.
A bit about me.... I have a Ph.D. and postdoctoral experience in Plant
Molecular Genetics. I realized at the end of my postdoc that a
mainstream academic career isn't for me so I dropped out of the pipeline
and started a *small* scientific software company out of my home. This
has been an ideal situation for the moment. My overhead is small as I
work from home, and I set my own hours (I work a lot at night and send
my 2 preschool girls to the sitters on a very part-time basis). I
realize that I was very fortunate to have had this choice - my husband
pulls in a reasonable salary and we do not have to depend on any
particular level of income from my software sales - which were 0 while
software was being developed (programmed by my partner/husband who works
on it at night too)... Anyway, I have learned enough to realize that a
computer oriented future is the right path for me and I am currently
looking into doing a second postdoc in bioinformatics and returning to a
full-time re-directed career path. If I don't find a suitable postdoc
then I will join the ranks of Ph.D.'s returning to school.
Kim Pruitt
