Industry vs. Academia

Academia really has its ups and downs. It can be lower-stress, but pay is significantly less than industry. Still, as long as you're doing what you enjoy, you're following the true point in an ideal work-life.

Personally, I don't like academia in my field. Research in Engineering, materials, architecture, etc strikes me as things with definite possible innovations and purposes. Meanwhile, looking at research in Geophysics, it strikes me as a horrendous waste of time. The jargon is very "upper-level", but the thought process can be broken down to laymen's terms quite well.

I attended research seminars, AGU meetings, etc, and not a single topic impressed me. I entered this one lecture at the '05 AGU meet, seeing its topic as "Mineral Discussion and Theory". Its description beneath that made me think it dealt with exploration breakthroughs, which are what I'm curious about. Cheaper, easier, more effective ways to find what you want.

I go in and its two guys arguing within a percentile of the core's composition. A ONE PERCENT DIFFERENCE. I raised my hand mid-debate and asked how long the two had been doing research on this topic (even though both were adamantly against eachother). Both had been doing this topic for ten years.

Ten years. On a topic like that? That isn't living. I prefer industry, where I'm directly helping the economy or work-flow. Not sitting in an office thinking about meaningless theory. Don't get me wrong, there are many, many practical research topics and fields. But in mine? I've had enough. It's all bullshit, pure and simple. I've heard my buddies who stayed for masters referring to my work as "wasted potential". I would be doing "trained chimp work". I'd prefer helping chug the lifeblood in to the economy as opposed to maybe altering a sentence in a college textbook as my highlight of my career.

How ya doing, buddy?