Tutorial 45: how to decide whether to do a higher degree in palaeontology

Nearly a year ago, I got an email from Liam Shen, who was interested in getting seriously involved in palaeontology. He asked for advice on doing a Ph.D part time, and I realised what what I had to say in reply might be of broader interest. Here’s Liam’s question, lightly edited:

I’m currently a 3rd year Computer Science student, and as much as I love programming and Software Engineering as a whole, I’ve also always loved studying dinosaurs, and other specimens. I also have interest in potentially going for a PHD in paleontology one day to pursue this passion, which is why I wanted to ask for your opinion if it was possible to juggle both a full-time day job and a PHD program at the same time?

And my reply (which I did send to Liam the next day, but am only now getting around to posting here):

I never set out to do a Ph.D really. I just wanted an institutional affiliation so I could access online resources via the library, and it turns out that universities won’t (or at least 20 years ago they wouldn’t) just let you be an associate. So I signed up for a Masters, and that mutated into the Ph.D.

It actually wasn’t that hard, surprisingly — because you earn a Ph.D by doing research and I already wanted to do research and the Ph.D program was just a way to help me do that,

So my question for you is: do you really want to do research? If you do, then you probably can. You don’t get to year 3 of a CS degree without being a smart, analytical thinker, and your email tells me you’re a good communicator. The rest is all just stuff you learn: stuff about your taxon of choice, stuff about evolution, stuff about the various tools you can use for analysis and modelling.

But if you look deep inside yourself and decide that what you really want is to be the holder of a Ph.D, then forget it. If you don’t love the work for itself, you will soon grow to hate it. Then you become one of those dead-eyed zombie never-going-to-finish people. If down that path you start, destroy you it will.

So: it certainly is possible to juggle both a full-time day job and a Ph.D program at the same time. But I think you can only do it if either (A) you genuinely love both of them, or (B) you are truly exceptional.

So I have four pieces of advice.

1. Make sure you get a day-job that you love, not just tolerate. Don’t sign up for a Java factory to write enterprise beans for the enterprise just because the money is good. Find a job that lets you express all that creativity in building something of inherent value. You may have to sacrifice financially, but you’re at the perfect point in your life to make that choice, before you get hooked on the high-income lifestyle.

2. If you get onto a Ph.D program, make sure it’s one you love. For me that meant sauropods. For you, it might mean plesiosaurs or Permian synapsids or, for all I know, Miocene rodents. But don’t take an offer from a more prestigious institution just for the prestige: take on a research project that you actively want to do, and would do for the sheer fun of it even if you weren’t on the Ph.D program.

3. Consider doing a research Masters. It’s much less of an investment in time, money and effort, and will help you figure out whether you actually love doing this. It’s probably also easier to get onto a Masters, as you won’t be asking your supervisor to take such a big gamble on someone who’s doing it part time. If you can survive for an unpaid year after you graduate in CS, you could do a full-time Masters in a year; otherwise you can do it over a longer period as you work. (The University of Bristol is really good for this: you can do a one-year course that’s mostly research and which gives you a wide range of possible projects.)

4. Consider whether you need a higher degree at all. John McIntosh, the greatest of all sauropod palaeontologists, had no formal qualification in palaeontology (though he did have a doctorate in physics). That was in a time when it was hard to get access to the literature outside of formal programs, but that’s not true any more. If what you really want is to do research, then maybe just do the research? There is tons on this in the SV-POW! tutorial section. (And, again: if what you really want is not to do research then you will probably hate, and flunk out of, a Ph.D anyway.)

At that point Matt chipped in with more advice, which I’m including here:

My additions will be few.

Read Tutorial 12: How to find problems to work on, if you haven’t already. Pick a topic, or find an advisor (official or otherwise) who will inflict one on you, then do this: Tutorial 38: little projects as footsteps toward understanding.

Then just keep doing that. If it leads to anything presented or published, yay, you’re doing science (it’s not science until it’s communicated, until then it’s just self-improvement). If it leads to a degree — and if that’s what you want, can afford, and are willing to make space for in your life — great! But the degree should arise out of the research, and not the other way around.

At least, that’s how it was for me. I got the opportunity to do research as an undergrad, and just kept going after I graduated. I was in a Master’s program, but my planned thesis topic didn’t pan out — which was the best possible outcome — so my actual MS thesis ended up being something organically spun out of my undergrad research. Then I got into a PhD program, but none of the things I planned to do panned out — which was, again, the best possible outcome — so my actual dissertation ended up being something organically spun out of my Master’s research.

Looking back, my personal research program was the continuously existing, actually important thing, and the theses for the various degree requirements were just chunks of that continuous whole that I extracted and submitted (to degree-granting institutions, and also to journals, but chunked differently) at the dramatically appropriate moments. And that has continued to work right up until now. I don’t need to turn in the segments for degree requirements anymore, now they can just be blog posts, abstracts, and papers.

If you have a day job you’ll end up doing paleo on weekends and evenings, but hell, I spend most of my day time teaching or in meetings, and a huge chunk of my research gets done on weekends and evenings, so I don’t know that you’re much worse off than most folks trying to make progress in this field.

Whatever happens, good luck, and as Mike said, follow the things you love, because that’s the only way you’ll stick with them.

Source: https://svpow.com/2024/11/11/tutorial-45-how-to-decide-whether-to-do-a-higher-degree-in-palaeontology/