Alternate pathways: thinking beyond tenure-track (or its equivalent)
Question: Events of the past two weeks have culminated in a lot of deep-thinking as to what I intend to do out of grad school. Well, the larger question is why am I in a Phd Program after having spent time out in the world making money. Answer (or an attempt at one): Background and Rationale: The reason is because I wanted to come back to a world of hard-thinking, books, research and trying out new ideas as well as answering big questions that the 'real' world I was inhabiting did not enable me to do. At least not the world where i was in Malaysia. Sure, I got research work and writing jobs, but most were not particularly fulfilling. I've taught as an adjunct before and I know that I am not interested in that kind of life either. I like teaching in a different form (probably experimental form); I have been thinking that alternative forms of teaching may suit me better, rather than high-school or the college classroom). As a newly minted physics graduate, I never got