From: dennis@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu (Thomas A. Dennis)
Subject: Re: Choosing a Major Angst...
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 03:51:24 GMT

In <81034@ut-emx.uucp> llama@tramp.cc.utexas.edu (sine nomine) writes:

>T.S. Eliot (toj8j@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU) wrote:
>: Like so many others out there, I'm a physics major (how many of us ARE
>: there on the net, and on alt.angst in particular?  There should be a
>: census...)

>my degree is in psych. which actually sucks, first because everyone
>assumes it's a b.a., but it's actually a b.s. (which also sucks,
>because that leads to really tired jokes) and totally in experimental
>and research psych; i didn't take a single clinical course.

>which of course is the other problem with my field (besides the utter
>lack of relevant jobs for someone with just a b.s.): everyone's an
>expert. just ask them; they'll tell you. and if you tell them they
>don't have a clue, they get hostile. at least when you tell people
>they're wrong about quarks they don't gt argumentative. and since i
>have a good deal of experience in hotlinne counseling, i end up doing
>a lot of that sort of thing anyway. not that i mind, i spose.

My degree is a B.S. in psych, as well.I decided in the fall of my senior
year not to pursue a graduate degree, which was just too fucking bad, because
I had no idea whatsoever at the time what to do instead.  I just knew that I
didn't have what it took (whatever it takes) to listen to other people's
problems approx. 40 hours a week, let alone attempt to help them solve those
problems.
        The only real problems that I've had with people filling my ear with
bum-raps about psych comes from those who have had bad experiences with 
counseling... and there are plenty of those... hell, I've had some pretty
clueless counselors (who were nonetheless fully "qualified", for what that's
worth), although at least one of them was actually helpful in getting my shit
together.

>: Also like so many others out there, I'm beginning to wonder about my future
>: in my field.  I mean, xx years of grad school to get a PhD, then maybe a 
>: professorship but more likely xx more years of postdoc work trying to find
>: a real niche, make a real contribution, with no guarantee that I'll ever
>: discover anything more significant than my own incompetence, doesn't thrill
>: me at all.

>i felt this way about psych... i wanted so badly to do something
>*real* and was afraid that i couldn't. i'm still dithering about grad
>school. i need to decide soon, cause i don't wanna take the gre again.

I'm going to grad school in library science because, during my own experience
on a crisis hotline, I found the information and referral work so much more
satisfying than the crisis calls themselves.  I got tired of picking up the 
phone and hearing someone take big gulps of water, then tell me that they had 
just taken an overdose of sleeping pills, and then finding out that they had 
faked the whole thing, just so that they could prove to themselves that someone
gave a shit whether they lived or died.  I didn't get this kind of call very 
often, but I got it often enough.  After five years' worth of crisis hotline 
work, helping someone slog their way through Reader's Guide is about as helpful
as I want to be.

>i had minors in stats and in american studies, a very liberal artsy
>honors program thing at my university (i graduated from ut-arlington).
>the liberal arts stuff kept me alive and interested and helped me slog
>through the one or two classes i seriously disliked. but i always felt
>bad for not choosing a more scientific major. i mean, the undergrad
>psych program was pretty rigorous, but i always had this nagging sense
>that i would be a mor worthy person if i were doing *real* science
>over with the chemists or the physicists. that's even though
>chemistry aand physics bored me silly. 

I used to feel bad about not being a "hard" scientist ;) ;) , until I started 
working in a science library, upon which I found out two things:  that from the
perspective of hard science, there is no such thing as "library science"; and 
that most hard science just isn't that satisfying.  I mean, maybe the real 
scientists find comfort in the idea that they're working on the Big Picture...
but each scientist works on such a miniscule pixel of that picture.  For every
Stephen Hawking, who works on the grand theory of everything, there are 
thousands of drones who write papers like "Kinetic studies of mechanism of 
ubiquinol : cytochrome C2 oxidoreductase of R. sphaeriodes : a steady state 
approach."  Someone got a doctorate for writing that dissertation, which was 
probably a minor spinoff of their advisor's work, and maybe it will help cure 
cancer or lead to a better variety of microwave popcorn... but probably not.Not
that I would know for sure; it's a verifiable fact that my momma didn't raise 
no morons, but I have no idea what that dissertation's actually about.

>i dunno what to tell you, though. i mean, i'm three years out of
>undergrad and i work at a part-time job and just kinda slack off and
>work on the zine and hang out on the net the rest of the time.

>sigh.

Want a catalog for library school?  Get 'em while they still exist...

>--
>sine nomine
>debbie martinson
>"ultra fervor head to toe; sensitizes, burns and glows. helter-swelter
>sweet and slow, sweet and slow... avalanche" -- that petrol emotion

--

Tom Dennis                    |  I looked into the abyss,
dennis@alexia.uiuc.edu        |    and the abyss looked into me--
tadg0614@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu     |      and we both winked.