Yeah but that’s not most scientists. And if you think that a study means shit, or even a handful of them then you’re being kinda naive. I can make a study that says the best thing to do is snort cocaine.
Captain don’t go to graduate school if it’s not free. I have a friend who wanted to study eating disorders and work with people who had em, so she got a B.S. in psych, then went to work at a rehab at an entry level position, kissed some ass and wore a lot of makeup and squeezed her tits together and they offered to pay for her to get a masters in social psychology. It didn’t hurt that she was a cheerleader in college and had a handful of eating disorders herself. She was a fine one dude. Next thing you know…the pressure gets to her and she starts misusing her clonapin and when she passed out at her desk there in the rehab they sorta rescinded the offer and I think now she lives in a trailer with some dude who has one of those mustaches and she drags babies around and isn’t skinny anymore. Fucked up shit dude.
I spent yesterday talking to a lady who has 2 PhDs and a masters and she’s literally already done all the things you wanna do. She’s been publishing since the late 70s, she’s held high ranking positions in university departments, taught all over the world everything from physics to philosophy to medical ethics you name it. She’s flown out to India to do yoga with monks and shit. She speaks 5 or 6 fucking languages. She’s probably got 6 figures in liquid assets, all her needs met, and has no idea what to do with her life. The only thing she wants is to talk about philosophy with people who share her interests, and that’s just not something she can readily get her hands on I suppose.
Another friend of mine is a pharmacist. He came out of school with 185k, (the full limit) of stafford loans. Worked 60-70 hour weeks for 2 or 3 years straight, lived with his parents the whole time and payed off all those loans, now he doesn’t wanna be a pharmacist anymore. He fucking hates it. He thinks he’s gonna fuck up and kill someone. His conscience really can’t bear it.
Another guy I know is over 100k in debt to the dept of education and has literally gone off the grid. He only communicates with the outside world via satellite internet on this weird secure mail thingy that I don’t even really want to talk about. He wants to pay off his loans, but he’s afraid he’ll go to prison if he starts sending that kind of money without being able to show where it came from.
No matter what you say captain, at the bottom of all this, “i could help others” shit there’s a desire of your own. To find a path that’s already set for you to live with the kind of freedom that you desire. The problem is that when a path is already set, there just isn’t that much freedom in it. Look at what it costs a physician to insure themselves such that they can practice and subtract that from what they make then subtract that they make from what kind of life they expect to live as a doctor and you get a negative number in many cases dude. I know a surgeon who lost his license in one state on a bogus malpractice case where jury sympathy overrode plain reason. He had to completely relocate his family at a point when some of his kids were in college and some in high school. He had real estate that had to be liquidated in the process and he lost a shit ton of what it took him a long time to earn. He’s slowly getting back up there, (I mean he’s still fucking loaded but by his own standard he’s grossly unsatisfied).
I could go on and on man.
If grad school isn’t free don’t do it.