by Otohiko » Fri Jan 11, 2008 10:05 pm
I'm going down the teaching path, with research on the side.
What can I say, I have the mindset of a Soviet intellectual. Basically a living fossil in many ways, but that's how I was raised. I can't be motivated by money or advancement, by default. I'm just not interested. Part of it is that I'm used to being relatively poor and obscure and I actually like it. There's really nothing that attracts me to being rich, and my upbringing has likewise put myself in situations where I grew to seriously disdain wealth and authority.
On the other hand, I love people, as cheap and cheesy that probably sounds. But seriously, back in high school I just realized I can't not work with people, directly and in a way that'd be helpful. Perhaps my firm near-nihilist conviction (and you can see where the Soviet background would play into it) that I don't mean shit to society at large and can't really do anything that'd remotely affect the material world actually pushed me closer to people because I realized that the more directly I work with someone to help them achieve their goals and "realize potential" and all those other nice and fluffy things, the more likely I'm actually to be more than useless after all and the more likely I am to stay sane because seeing people learn something from me actually gives me a sense of accomplishment and self-worth.
And I don't need anything else in life, save for enough money to survive the next x amount of time. Fortunately, I think by the time I get my PhD, which will happen within the next few years anyway, I'll be assured of that.
And I have an insatiable thirst for information and sharing that information with others. Plus I think I have good qualities to be a teacher - I'm patient, diplomatic, I've got no fear whatsoever of speaking in front of people, and I have a ridiculously efficient brain. Seriously, what else would I do? Most of anything else, to me, would be a waste of self.
Some people would call that view romantic, but by now I've been in the environment long enough to convince me that whatever the minuses and annoyances of the profession, I'm more than willing and capable to put up with them in the long term.