Breathing in
Thesis submitted, a day before the deadline.
Now alternating periods of intense relief with moments of anxiety that I should've done something more somewhere. Just a couple of Phd applications to do, and then I don't have to think until 2009...
--
I'm still dithering over what I'm going to be doing for my Phd. I did my Honours year in Psych, but my Science Bachelorate had a second major in the History and Philosophy of Science (HPS). I've kept in touch with the HPS folks through the year; they're still keen to have me back. I've also got a Neuroscience/Psychopharmacology professor who looks like he'd be happy to have me in his lab...
I'll be putting in applications to both and leaving the decision until as late as possible, but I'm going to have to make a decision eventually. So far, the arguments for and against each look something like this:
Psych: Get to do research that might actually have an impact on the real world. May get to finally get some understanding of how the brain works; may find some things that provide genuine benefits to neurological medicine.
HPS: The most academic of academic disciplines, ignored even within the academy. The problems it addresses are fascinating, but they're fairly spectacularly obscure. Unless I turn out to be the next Thomas Kuhn, almost nobody is going to listen to what I have to say (and even Tom ain't that well known out in the real world...).
Psych: Good employment prospects for someone with my record; neuroscience-based cognitive science departments tend to be fairly well resourced and large. Plenty of jobs at almost any university in the world.
HPS: A lot of universities don't even recognise it as a discipline; of those that do, quite a lot place it as a subsection of "normal" philosophy. The Psych faculty at my university occupy several buildings; the HPS faculty just got moved into an old storeroom in the basement of the Mathematics building. I'd still probably be able to get an academic job, but my options would be a lot more limited career-wise.
Psych: Much of the reading is dull, but the best of it is brilliant.
HPS: Most of the reading is cool, but the worst of it is vile.
Psych: Likely to be relatively difficult and possibly un-fun to teach; psych tutorials tended to be either frantically rushed or painfully quiet during my degree. A lot of science students are too afraid of getting things wrong to be willing to speak up.
HPS: I can't think of anything that would be as much fun to teach as the philosophy of science. It's full of classic philosophical headfuckers, but it's close enough to the real world that relatively untrained folks can get a handle on it. HPS tutes tend to be full-bore debating sessions, mixed in with periods of people going cross-eyed as their get their head around a really twisty idea. Fun fun fun.
Academically wise, I'm fairly even between the two. I found HPS a lot easier than Psych, but I still managed a top-ranked average in both of them. Most of what was hard about Psych was just the stats, anyway (not a fan of the math; I had a ten year gap between high school and university, and remembering what I'd forgotten was rather painful).
You guys are gonna have an obvious bias, of course, but...anybody wanna chuck in their ten cents worth here? All points of view welcome...
Now alternating periods of intense relief with moments of anxiety that I should've done something more somewhere. Just a couple of Phd applications to do, and then I don't have to think until 2009...
--
I'm still dithering over what I'm going to be doing for my Phd. I did my Honours year in Psych, but my Science Bachelorate had a second major in the History and Philosophy of Science (HPS). I've kept in touch with the HPS folks through the year; they're still keen to have me back. I've also got a Neuroscience/Psychopharmacology professor who looks like he'd be happy to have me in his lab...
I'll be putting in applications to both and leaving the decision until as late as possible, but I'm going to have to make a decision eventually. So far, the arguments for and against each look something like this:
Psych: Get to do research that might actually have an impact on the real world. May get to finally get some understanding of how the brain works; may find some things that provide genuine benefits to neurological medicine.
HPS: The most academic of academic disciplines, ignored even within the academy. The problems it addresses are fascinating, but they're fairly spectacularly obscure. Unless I turn out to be the next Thomas Kuhn, almost nobody is going to listen to what I have to say (and even Tom ain't that well known out in the real world...).
Psych: Good employment prospects for someone with my record; neuroscience-based cognitive science departments tend to be fairly well resourced and large. Plenty of jobs at almost any university in the world.
HPS: A lot of universities don't even recognise it as a discipline; of those that do, quite a lot place it as a subsection of "normal" philosophy. The Psych faculty at my university occupy several buildings; the HPS faculty just got moved into an old storeroom in the basement of the Mathematics building. I'd still probably be able to get an academic job, but my options would be a lot more limited career-wise.
Psych: Much of the reading is dull, but the best of it is brilliant.
HPS: Most of the reading is cool, but the worst of it is vile.
Psych: Likely to be relatively difficult and possibly un-fun to teach; psych tutorials tended to be either frantically rushed or painfully quiet during my degree. A lot of science students are too afraid of getting things wrong to be willing to speak up.
HPS: I can't think of anything that would be as much fun to teach as the philosophy of science. It's full of classic philosophical headfuckers, but it's close enough to the real world that relatively untrained folks can get a handle on it. HPS tutes tend to be full-bore debating sessions, mixed in with periods of people going cross-eyed as their get their head around a really twisty idea. Fun fun fun.
Academically wise, I'm fairly even between the two. I found HPS a lot easier than Psych, but I still managed a top-ranked average in both of them. Most of what was hard about Psych was just the stats, anyway (not a fan of the math; I had a ten year gap between high school and university, and remembering what I'd forgotten was rather painful).
You guys are gonna have an obvious bias, of course, but...anybody wanna chuck in their ten cents worth here? All points of view welcome...