Hi!
Thanks for reading the first post. I just want to give a brief statement of my motivation for writing this blog, and I want to let you guys know what to expect.
Some good news. The percentage of women getting Ph.D.'s in physics is slowly increasing (http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/edphysgrad/figure3a.htm). I expect more and more women to be going into the field. But, I heard an alarming statistic the other day: the percentage of bachelors degrees in Physics going to women has been constant or declining for the past few years (http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/edphysund/figure6a.htm). Now, the number of bachelor's degrees going to women is still increasing, but I think the percentage of women receiving degrees is what we should be looking at. After all, more and more people are going to college every day, so it's expected that the counts of people would increase. Here is another plot of interest: http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/other/womenbach.htm. Women are getting more and more of the degrees granted nationwide. But the share of new female students who are going into computer science, mathematics, and physics is dropping. The trends found in bachelor's degrees precede the trends found in graduate degrees by about 6 years. So potentially, the percentage of women getting Ph.D.'s in physics could also drop.
I want to know WHY the percentage of women in physics going down. Right now there is a ton of support for women entering physics. We have conferences and mentorship programs all over the nation. But one crucial voice is missing: the women who dropped out of the physics major, and the women who majored in physics but chose to not go on to graduate school. I write this blog because I want to hear from the women who chose not to continue in physics. They are the ones who can shed the true insight! I also want to hear from women who did continue in physics. What made you pick physics, and what made you stay?
Now, why do I care? I graduated with my B.A. in Physics from Reed College in 2011. I had two summers of research experience with three publications. I got great grades in my physics classes and had all my professors encouraging me to go to graduate school. I'd planned to get my Ph.D. in physics since my freshman year of college. But, at the beginning of my senior year, I decided I didn't want to go into physics. I didn't take any physics classes, and I all but estranged myself from the department. WHY?! I've obviously done a lot of soul seeking since I graduated, and I've returned to physics. I work in operations at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and I'm now in the process of applying to physics graduate schools. But the reasons I chose not to apply right away are subtle and powerful, and I'm wondering if anyone else has stories like mine. The structure of this blog will be posts by me, sharing events in my life that either deterred me from physics or encouraged me to study physics. But most of all...
I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU.
Post responses, email me responses, text responses, post responses on my facebook. I want to hear all experiences that affected your decisions to go into (or not go into) physics. Maybe we can find some sort of consensus! I want to post your stories in addition to mine.
A quick comment: I realize that it is also important to hear from men that decided not to continue in physics. Eventually we can normalize it across the sexes. But for now, I want to hear your voices, women!
I know in my pych courses we learned about how we socialize children to think that certain genders have stronger and weaker inherent qualities. This has been tested in several studies, but the one that I am thinking of now has to do with math class. Girls in other countries (Japan, China ect) are not told the same stereotypes that girls in western society's are : That boys are better at math. Across the board girls do better in math in countries where this stereo type is not heard. In fact girls in the us that are in classrooms where no gender stereotype is placed on math skills do a bit better than boys at math as well. It seems telling someone you wont be good at that, it is not something your gender excels at, is powerful to developing minds. I know math is a key component in physics, perhaps this is one of the many factors. Early socialization of female children.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! Cant wait to see what the responses are going to be.
ReplyDeleteI just graduated with a Physics B.S last year (January 2012); my long long dream was to go into Astronomy, actually, and I was considering applying to a PhD program.
ReplyDeleteBut I didn't. I finished my Physics degree, and took a couple of months to work, then applied (and am currently in) a Computer Science program.
I think the main reasons for me were a bit of a wake-up call about Academia and Physics research. When I wanted to go to astronomy, I heard "oh, it's not really physics" (pff).. I heard a lot of "there's a difference between astrophysic and astronomy" but the difference seemed to mostly be high-brow-like judgmental superiority on the astrophysicist's side, and defensive "wtf are they talking about" from the astronomer's side.
I wanted to study the stars (and still do) but only when I started doing actual physics research and interacting with the other students and professors, getting into the actual physics groups, I realized just how judgmental and competitive it is. My professors were awesome, and I felt very comfortable with them, but in general the feeling in physic was that you're either extremely brilliant, or you're not going to make it to something good. The effort to be "THE BESTEST" is not just draining, it's also confusing, because I felt like what a lot of people consider "being the best" is not necessarily what I consider it, or what I want to do.
Don't get me wrong, I graduated Magna Cum Laude, and I'm very passionate about Physics (I even run a physics education site to drive that point home with the general public!) Everyone who knows me was extremely surprised when I didn't immediately apply to a physics PhD. But I realized I'm not sure I want to spend my life doing "hard core" research and always feeling like I have to claw my way through mathematics proving my intelligence.
I personally always considered physics a very creative field that requires a lot of creative thinking, but that doesn't seem to be the common thought out there in the "field", and I found myself facing some criticism on the way I want to continue working with physics. I am not saying my way is the right way -- I'm saying my way is a possible way.
And it's such a competitive field, that I felt like the people who are better in sitting down and solving the mathematics are going to be better and more valuable to PhD programs than people like me, who are not as good in the math despite being passionate about it.
I'm not sure if this is true or not, but that's part of the reason I decided to switch to Computer Science. I still do physics and it's very important for me to continue doing things related to physics. But I do get "oh, you're leaving physics??" quite a lot, and it's very annoying.
The bottom line in my personal view, is that physics seems to be a VERY judgmental field. You can do things differently, but that would involve some struggle, and so I personally didn't see the value in struggling for 6 years only to get into computers or commercial work and have people look at me as if I abandoned physics as it is.
I'm not even sure if that rant made sense, but that's my feelings about it, and I hope it at least gives another perspective.
Mo
I majored in physics at the University of Chicago beginning in 2004. I stayed in physics until 2008 when I graduated with a respectable (for UChicago) 3.0 GPA and honors thesis based on four years of solid undergraduate research with a cosmic microwave background experiment.
ReplyDeleteSo, I had sufficient grades and research experience to get into graduate school in physics, but I didn't go.
I really wanted to go, but didn't go.
I even applied to a number of physics graduate schools, but didn't go.
I had strong recommendations from professors and national laboratory staff who were strong names in their fields, but I didn't go to physics grad school.
Why not?
It's hard to admit it on the internet, but distracted with research and adventure in the summer before my senior year, I didn't take my subject GRE seriously enough. I didn't realize how different it would be from the way I learned physics (memorization of constants, empty dimensional analysis) and I didn't realize how poorly I would perform until a few weeks before the test. Despite my other qualifications, the ~30th percentile score that I received on the Physics GRE was my downfall. Not a single physics graduate school accepted me.
Thankfully, I applied to nuclear engineering programs, who didn't ask for my Physics GRE scores. I got into some of the best PhD programs in the US for nuclear engineering, and am very happy now.
But, I didn't go to Physics grad school, even though I'd have been pretty great at it.
I'm a male minority in physics. I graduated in May of 2012 with three publications (two in prestigious peer-reviewed journals and one in a conference proceeding) with my undergraduate thesis currently being prepared for submission to a journal. My research projects were all fully funded and spanned three institutions, ranging from theoretical to computational physics. I also graduated in the top one-quarter of my graduating class (3.5 cumulative gpa with 175 credit hours) at a private institution despite two surgeries during my tenure.
ReplyDeleteResearch was never a problem for me. I loved solving complicated, unsolved problems. The learning curve of each project was steep, but surely and slowly I climbed each one with little doubt in my mind. It felt like research in physics was one of the few fields that thrived on creativity and allowed me to express myself. This field also never seemed to discriminate me or my background, the only thing that mattered were my abilities.
It seemed research and academia were a definite destination for me, but growing up in poverty left me wondering what a decent paying job entailed. Wanting experience in industry seemed to be a good choice to help affirm the decision of whether or not graduate school would be right for me. Yet, I am about to enter my sixth month unemployed. I can't even get a job at a McDonald's. So, I'm unable to pay for exam/application fees for the upcoming application process, sold all my books, and am struggling to feed myself. Just living the American dream.
Right now I really don't care for graduate school... or physics. I am one step away from deterring every member of my underrepresented group away from physics. The only thing that matters is getting a paycheck right now.
This is why I "left" physics.
@jawba_ron, almost all graduate students in physics receive ~$20,000 living stipend, especially at more competitive institutions as you seem to have surely been destined for. Yes, it is not enough income to build a strong savings account on, but it is certainly better than unemployment. I am confused as to why your experiences would lead you to deter others from pursuing graduate school in physics? Perhaps I understand disillusionment with the system due to your inability to even go through the application process in your current situation (have you tried contacting the chairs of graduate departments and explaining your financial situation, seeing if they have any advice?), but I would think the immediate lesson would be "even if you aren't sure about going to grad school versus finding a job, go through the application process while you have the ability to because you can't count on employment."
ReplyDeleteMy story is from a few decades ago, but I'll tell it anyways. :)
ReplyDeleteI started out as a physics major because I liked math, physics and astronomy. I did well in my classes, but when I went to the career days, I was repeatedly told that unless I went for a PhD all I would be able to do was teach high school. Teaching had zero appeal for me (bless you who do it -- I admire the heck out of you!), and in the second year of college I realized I desperately needed a break from school. I looked at my options, realized I could easily do a math major and get out quickly, so my course was set.
Now, after mumble-mumble years, I'm going to grad school, but in computer science. My current job lets me use math, computer science, and physics, and I hope to find that same combo in future jobs as well.
I originally majored in physics because I found it interesting -- I had had a very good high school physics teacher, and I read "A Brief History of Time" and wanted to learn more about quantum mechanics. My chosen career was scientific illustration, in which the certificate program asked merely for a "background in science". So I could choose any field I wanted, and I took physics.
ReplyDeleteI was quite happy in it for a couple of years. I didn't love the math, but I was competent in it, and taking basic relatavistic physics was quite entertaining. Then I took sick, and had to drop out of school. Over the next three or four years I struggled with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and did some soul-searching, and ultimately came out a different person. I discovered that what I really loved was the quiet time I spent tending our vegetable garden, and I became a member of the local Master Gardeners association. When I went back to school ten years later, it was as a plant biology major, and I got a BS in plant bio and an MS in plant pathology.
I think the reason I left physics was really that my illness brought me (literally) down to earth, and my priorities focused much more on immediate tangible things like plants and food, rather than the much more abstract concepts of quantum physics. I never had a real "falling out" with the subject or the department.
One point that comes up every time I discuss this with my female colleagues is lack of positive feedback. I don't know why it should be but it seems that woman maybe have a larger need for somebody who on occasion says "well done" and that happens basically never. You really need to be very self-motivated to get anywhere, and if you can't come up with that motivation yourself, you're likely to question whether it's worth it. I certainly do.
ReplyDeleteWhy I'm still a physicist, well, I guess I did bring enough motivation myself so stay that long. I still believe it's the best way to understand the world around me, essentially that's it. Not a very complex reason I guess. It stands in opposition to this all the difficulties of combining work and family life on short-term contracts that require you to move around the globe, and us meanwhile being a four-body body. The present situation is simply not sustainable. And there, I'm about to turn into a clichee.
I did a 4-year B.Sc. in Physics because I was passionately interested in discovering how the universe works on a fundamental level. My undergraduate degree delivered on that promise. I loved doing it, and I will never regret having done a degree in physics. Unlike my friends in the arts and humanities, I know just how strange and fabulous nature truly is.
ReplyDeleteDuring my undergraduate years, I was mentored by a wonderful professor in the Space Physics department. I spent three summers working in his office on numerical simulation problems. I was not really enjoying the work. It was basically computer programming, and the problems I was tackling were minutiae. I realize that great scientific advances are built up from these minutiae, but it wasn't grabbing my imagination. Nevertheless, I went on to graduate school, in part because I had received a full scholarship to do so. I had the highest grades in most of my classes and received great recommendations to go on. I was considered very promising.
My grad school experience was similar to my summer research jobs. I was doing an awful lot of computer programming, and not much that struck me as fundamental. Although I had performed extremely well in my classes to date, I understood that I was not a supergenius of the Richard Feynman variety. I was an ordinary genius, the top 0.1%-1% of the curve, which amounts to hundreds of thousands of people in Canada alone. I did not foresee being able to work on amazing problems. I foresaw many years of underpaid drudgery on large international collaborations, chipping away at my tiny piece. I was no longer inspired.
I also need a good eight hours of sleep each night, and I have a wide range of interests outside my field, neither of which seemed compatible with continuing in physics. The expectations for total devotion of time were very high.
I would likely have continued on regardless, had my path not been disrupted by a sudden illness. When I finally recovered I felt I'd been given a second chance at life, and I could not go back to doing something I was not enjoying. I dropped out of graduate school.
In some ways I wish I had finished the credential, but the field wasn't what I thought it would be when I was a kid reading science fiction. It didn't help that I had no role models whatsoever for the career of "physicist" or even "working scientist." Most of my grad school peers had parents in academia or engineering, so I think they had more of a clue as to what they were getting into. I came from a more blue-collar background and lacked a realistic frame of reference.
After leaving physics, it took me a while to get used to working with women again. I get along well with men and I didn't know how to relate to other women at first. I never felt discriminated against in physics, but I hate when people claim that women's minds are somehow fundamentally different from men's. I have a very analytical mind, and I was regularly at the top of my class of males. Society doesn't deal well with feminine-looking, heterosexual women who have "masculine" minds. In physics, people are often happy to ignore appearances and deal "mind to mind." In the outside world, there's a lot more stereotyping to deal with -- or that has been my experience, at least.
I went to college determined and excited to be a physics major. In my sophomore year, the physics major requirements had me taking math classes that were junior and even senior level math classes for math majors. (The math majors took a bunch of other classes sophomore year that physics majors weren't required to take, and then they came back to these particular math classes later, whereas the physics department want those classes under our belt before we took junior level physics classes.) Those math classes were demoralizing and my worst grades almost ever, and it felt like it was because the professor geared the class level and the curve to the older math majors, who were much more advanced mathematically than us poor physics majors. That was when I started to feel like maybe I didn't have what it took to be a "real" physics major. Junior and senior year, there were many little opportunities in the physics department that were billed as important for grad school but they seemed really stupid and boring to me and nobody ever explained to me why they were worth anything, or exactly how they would help me prepare for grad school, so I didn't do them and then realized I had really put myself at a disadvantage for grad school. I was also told that summer internships were crucial for grad school admission, and my family did not allow me to do any of those; I was required to come home every summer and work in the family business as a condition of my family continuing to help with tuition and other expenses. Finally, by the middle of senior year, I was really burned out and felt that all the other physics majors (who WERE going on to grad school) had somehow outpaced and outclassed me and I didn't belong with them and was exhausted to the bone from trying to keep up. I just didn't think I was good enough and it didn't seem possible work hard enough to compensate for my (perceived) lack of talent. In hindsight, that may or may not have been true. It's almost 20 years later now, though, and I DO believe that NOW I could make it in physics in grad school. I have had several chances to put myself in a position to notice that my brain seems to function MUCH better now that it is more mature and I have 20 more years experience using this brain. I would LOVE to go to grad school in physics NOW (but that is not in the cards...it is too late in life for me and finances would not permit it, plus there's childcare to consider, etc) but I think it is quite possible that I would indeed not have survived grad school had I gone immediately following college.
ReplyDeleteThank you for telling your story. It gets really hard to succeed once you start doubting your own abilities (I, too, know this feeling.) I hope you found something to do that you love and that made you feel good about yourself.
DeleteDid your other classmates experience similar self doubt? How motivating did you find your department as a whole?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI am currently a female graduate student in physics, planning to graduate in November. Right now I am at a crossroads, deciding whether or not I want to go on to try to become a physics professor, with all that entails. I find myself nodding along with a lot of the previous comments about general problems that lead people to give up physics. I am going to list my current pros and cons here:
ReplyDeletePros:
-The ability to research subjects or technologies that have no current obvious commercial value
-Being a part of a culture of learning and discovery
-Feeling that your work is important for something besides someone's bottom line
-Being able to teach physics and earn a living wage(high school physics teachers are so terrifyingly underpaid!)
-The excitement of being on the edge of human knowledge
-Always being mentally challenged(some people do not find this an advantage, and I've found that there are ways of getting around being mentally challenged as a professor if that is your preference...)
Cons:
-Much lower pay than any other job with the same qualifications(experimental HEP PhD)
-Continuously decreasing availability of jobs(post doc positions and temporary teaching positions are becoming more common, tenure positions increasingly nonexistent)
-Complete lack of emotional support (physics is predominantly made up of men, and the culture is very much an alpha male hierarchy, despite protestations to the contrary)
-Postponing having children, or balancing children with grad school and subsequent post doc positions (neither are great options. If you are lucky maybe your boyfriend/husband is willing to be stay at home. Certainly on a grad student/post doc salary you cannot afford a nanny)
-Working crazy hours and having very little time for socialization (this is a killer for women. More men than women seem comfortable with a social schedule that is never more than work meetings. This also means having zero time for family, and being able to accept that your children may not remember your name)
-Still having to answer to deans, funding agencies and other scientists regarding your work (i.e you can never really do what you want, only what others permit you to do)
-Generally constantly feeling like you are an imposter, or that you are not smart enough, competitive enough, driven enough etc. to be a scientist (with no possibility of positive feedback to combat these fears)
Hopefully this list helps someone. It is not currently helping me that much, since I am very much torn in my decision. Maybe I can post an update later...
Thanks for this thought-out list! You are about 5 years ahead of me in the physics process, so it's really interesting to hear your thoughts.
DeleteI must say, it seems like your cons are much more developed than your pros. But the fact that you're making a list of pros and cons suggests you're still searching for a good reason to stay in physics
I wish you the best of luck, and I look forward to hearing more of what you have to say.
Melanie hit the nail on the head. I'm a first year astrophysics graduate student and I've just decided to leave the dept and pursue a program in statistics instead. Since I got here (grad school) nothing has been how I imagined. I constantly feel as though I have to prove myself. I don't feel smart enough to develop that intuition that physicists get about the nature of their chosen field. I feel like an imposter. But there is one thing I do have intuition for: mathematics. Math seems more black and white, right or wrong. So I'm not going to carry on in a dept I find stifling and overly competitive in a subject I don't feel I can compete in. I'll switch to one that I think I can manage and end up with a lot more career options than just professor or research scientist. And more money too. :)
ReplyDelete