Careers in STEM

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Hi there,

I'm really interested in a career within STEM (Sci Tech Eng Math), predominantly in Math or second choice Tech.
Way to reinforce stereotypes I know.

I'm curious as to the lifestyle, challenges and adventures within STEM..

If you have a career in STEM and have the time to answer any of the following (obviously not all of them because there are a few) questions, I would be really grateful and consider you awesome!

Whats your environment like?

What are the challenges in the work place?

What is most rewarding?

What would you change?

How is it socially?

Is it family friendly?

Where is it located?

What are the job prospects?

Where do you see yourself in x years?

What training did you do?

If you could do it again, what would you do differently?


Thanks,
Will

My suggestion about career in stem is to pick a subject that you are passionate about/obsessed with, pursue it intensely, be productive in research/invention, be social/prosocial with other stem people, and build your life around it.

In terms of jobs, it is good to have some practical computational experience in addition to math, as math can be limiting in career prospects. Applied math + computation should have broader prospects.

I am a PhD level chemist teaching at a university. It is rewarding to teach undergraduate students scientific concepts. But, you simply cannot teach everyone successfully, no matter how hard you try to. The profession of teaching STEM at the college level is declining over time. Some colleges and universities want to replace expensive chemical labs with computer software, leading to a falling down effect on the student body when it comes to certain skills that can only be learned with hands-on experiences. Gone are the days where many students would think about going into this area for their field of work. Between dealing with students and administration issues, it can be a thankless job sometimes. The pay is not very good overall, which leads to many newer college teachers to leave the profession and go into industry jobs. The lure of higher paychecks does pull away many of the best teachers.

I'm in STEM, though I'm in the biological sciences, in biomedical research. I study autism, with a focus on genetics, bioinformatics, but also some lab-based work like working with postmortem tissues (human and animal). So, that being said, my experiences in the biomed sciences may not be especially applicable to your future situation if you're aiming for tech/math.

My graduate school environment was a challenge. I had a totally unsupportive mentor and not much support in terms of mentorship from others in the lab. My department was also unhelpfully supportive (their idea of "support" was primarily of the threatening-to-kick-me-out sort). It was kind of a fend-for-yourself sort of situation. So, best thing I can recommend is to find a mentor you mesh well with. This will make things 100 times easier. My schooling was the equivalent of pushing a bolder up a hill while having a massive anxiety attack. And yes, I believe I have lost memory capacity thanks to prolonged (years of) stress.

My current environment as a postdoc is MUCH better. My husband and I work collaboratively and our new employers (we recently moved) are thrilled to have the pair of us. So far I'm achieving high productivity and am very satisfied with my progress. It makes such an immense difference to have an employer that helps set you up for success rather than putting road blocks in your way. You have NO IDEA how happy or miserable these kinds of simple things can make you.



For grad school, aside from the lack of support from mentor and department alike, my own well-hidden learning disabilities made it far more challenging. This in part made the lack of support so detrimental. It meant I had to work 10 times harder than most and got criticized far more often.

As for challenges now, things are going pretty well. Right now, I'm just trying to build a network of collaborators, so I'm going to a bunch of meetings with people and talking about my work.

Probably the biggest challenge will be getting my first grants funded.



I'm a scientist, regardless of whether it's my job. It's my passion, my hobby, and one of the most satisfying things in my life. I have to figure out how life works. Luckily, I get paid to do that.



On the grander side of things, I wish science in America and Europe was better funded. Funds are comparatively small compared to output and potential benefit, and what funds are available tend to be awarded lopsidedly, going consistently to the same large groups of people.



My current situation is a bit unusual. Most scientists tend to be surrounded by other scientists, whereas my husband and I are some of the first hires for a brand new research program as part of a hospital system. So instead, we're surrounded by psychologists, developmental-behavioral pediatricians, and RNs. While they are all extremely friendly and welcoming, I still feel quite different-- as probably any extremely nerdy person would feel around a community of totally different personality types. They're warm, considerate, caring, and a little quirky. Me, I'm funny, eccentric, and extremely nerdy. It's hard not to feel somewhat out of place.



Can't answer for the other sciences, but the biomed sciences don't pay well until you've really made it-- which may be never. There's way too many PhD's being produced for the number of jobs available. So, in those terms, it's not really family-friendly because it's hard as hell to raise a family on that kind of salary.



Hospital system. My grad school was a more traditional medical school.



Probably better for tech I'd imagine. Prospects are not great for biomed research. Very few academic positions available.



Not sure as to location, but my goal is to attain the various grades of professorship until I'm a full prof, have a well-funded laboratory, and some personnel under my charge. My husband will also be working to open an autism center, so I would hope that's successful and we can be working there. If he's successful, we hope that I can take over from him as director once he retires (he's considerably older than myself).



The title of my department was Anatomy and Neurobiology. My dissertation was the study of a mouse model of skin cancer, as well as the study of axial patterning of the skin in that same model.



In grad school, I would hope I'd be less stubborn. I held out for quite some time trying to get a mentor to acquiesce to my project idea, which ended up falling through and I did my mentor's project anyways. I wish I hadn't wasted my time and all our energies battling that. I was insistent on studying autism from the get-go, even though that wasn't his area. Ultimately, the model I did study was even LESS his area than the autism model would've been, but that was just sheer happenstance (long story). In short, while my perseveration can be a boon to my work, in that instance my lack of control over it really hurt me as well as my reputation.

Hope some of this helps!