I am writing this in regard to the recent completion of my wife's PhD, the turn of events surrounding it and the general reflection of how our perceptions of reality played out. This is going to be solely an uncensored brain dump and not guaranteed to be pleasing for some academic folks. You are warned.

I have a 4 year engineering bachelors, 2 year masters and a collective 5 years of IT industry experience. My wife has a 3 year science bachelors, 2 year masters and a 7 year PhD (6 of those years apart). I believe I have learnt enough to put down some informed thoughts about how educational degrees work and how one should take career decisions that would affect the whole life.

So, what exactly is the value of a PhD ? Who should do it ?

As far as I can understand, a PhD is a mandatory "certification" for any academic career, regardless of how much bullshit is involved to get it done. Bullshit is unfortunately everywhere in our lives, especially in industry, and academia is not spared either. Now the question is how to know if it is worth to you. What do you really want to do with your life ? Be a dedicated academic with triple post doctoral degrees and keep producing a gazillion grant-money-inducing papers which no one will read except peers looking to fill the "related work" column ? Be a scientist and work at a research lab ? Or just be a college professor ? If either of the above appeals to you, by all means enjoy 6-10 years of grad school, and not to forget, phdcomics. If you think there are better or different things to do with life which I think is the case most of the time, then get some real degrees needed to get into industry and grow there! I can't even stop emphasizing how important real life experience is, and how money talks and bullshit walks. A well-planned and well-executed project in the smallest of the companies can really mean a lot than just another paper published in IEEE talking about a vague idea laden with unrealistic assumptions, no matter how "crisp and articulate" the writing is. We should not forget that academia depends on grant money coming mostly from government and using it produce 99% bloated publications is by no means fair. If you are not discovery-channel-crazy about pursuing science, please do your country a favor and get a real job which will contribute to the GDP at the least. I know it sounds like a hate-article, but trust me I have facts. I have a few friends from grad school doing excellent work in their fields and I am genuinely proud to know them. But consider my own batch, a bunch of 20-25 students who came to the US with dreams of a PhD. Except for a few, nearly everyone figured out what PhD actually meant for them (and ran in the opposite direction as fast as they could, including me) - a mechanism to read 10 papers and produce the 11th by just a small tweak in the collective idea. Just an epsilon, cause you can't just have an invention or an earth shattering idea every week or month or even a year ! It is more an exercise of articulate writing, which is actually a great thing, but it defeats the purpose. And then the most well written papers get accepted in international conferences, where you get to meet more researchers aka future "citations". I wish I had been to such conference at least once. Free trip, free food, and touristy pictures in front of the vatican or the Eiffel tower to post on facebook or flickr; what is not to like ?

A regular job on the other hand may not be a total dreamland. Most of the time it will probably suck. Corporate bullshit is abundant in large companies since not everyone has their hands full with real work. But it pays the bills and leaves extra. With just the right amount of education you can land a job that you like, with very good prospects of growth, both in terms of position and income, and all that matters in industry is competence. Making functional (positive ROI) products and services under time constraints is in my book more accomplishment than producing an almost-functional cool prototype for sake of doing cool work which can't even be productized due to negative ROI.

Now, If you wanted to have activities on the side, a well paying job makes it all the more feasible. If you have wild dreams, make them come true using the money you can earn from the right job for you, and the earlier you realize it the better.

A friend of mine makes a legendary example of how life can be made exciting minus the bullshit. Repeated failures in college on subjects outside his interest did not deter him a bit. He chose to work on side jobs of odd hours and low pay alongside getting his necessary minimum degree. He dreamt big, but kept his steps simple and realistic. Today he flies airplanes and manages IT infrastructure of a small firm all by himself. His wife, coming from an equally simple background and education, is doing really well in another small firm. Being an efficiency-zealot myself, I am really really happy about the equation of output vs effort that is reflected in their lives.

In the end, I think life revolves around Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. You can't measure something if you can't experience it. And once you experience it, the measurement gets severely altered. But I am also hoping that this should not be the case for everyone, if someone wise enough cares to share some enlightenment.

Having a PhD is awesome, but only for 1% of the those aspiring for it. Ok, I made up that 1% thing, I know I overestimated. So decide whether you belong to that gifted slice, or just get out and thank me later for saving your life.

This is by no means a generalization, but just a copy-paste from my tired brain in one of those rare moments when I "see" a glimpse of the big picture, complete with humor, satire and the works. If you feel like pelting a tomato or a rotten egg, please do so, I will be glad, 'cause this cost me a freaking Friday morning to write !

And no, I don't hate that my own beloved wife got a PhD. Only we know what we went through and I am dead sure we can make up that 6 years of lost time, even if that means making some hard sacrifices in the future. I would be really, really, really happy to be proved wrong that we let all those years of our prime age wither away for nothing.

Picked up a mint Nikon F3HP with a Nikon 50mm/1.8 Series E for a song, thanks to craigslist. This is a legendary 35mm film SLR with everything manual except a battery dependent shutter. Not that I had to have a 35mm film SLR again, but with the throwaway prices of these beautiful instruments in this digital age I figured maybe it won't hurt to keep one.

I am pleasantly surprised with this camera, especially after going through the manual. To discover the removable prism was fun, now I can use it like the mamiya on the streets and can get some pleasing candids. The mirror vibration and shutter noise is much smoother than the FM3a I had, so my days of regret are over. Moreover, the 50mm lens is thin like a pancake which is cool as well.

Looking forward to using up the Ilford hp5+ bw films I have lying around since last year.