research subject for career? balance with private life

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Hi There,

currently i am in computer science, i graduated. I am not sure if i should continue working as a researcher in computer science. It interests me, but, it sometimes also seems not to be the most interesting topic in life any more.

On the other hand, i am also interested in maths, psychology, neurology, and philosophy. Maybe i should graduate there and if possible do there some research.

I am not sure what to study and where to do research. I just know that i like to do research. Thats all, but no idea in which topic. Many things interest me much. And on the other side, i am 29 now, i must find also some job where i earn money, i won't earn money if i start studying. So its compilcated: first there are other topics which interest me, but i don't know much about them, and on the other hand my research carreer as computer scientist is also not so perfect. And secondly, i have to earn money and find a woman which i like to marry and get kids.

Yeah and the last thing is a huge point too. I have still some social skills missing, and i want to marry a woman i love, one who i didn't just marry because she was fine, and i had to marrry because time is running out, its for me the most important thing to marry someone i really love. Unfortunately i failed about that so far.

So i am not sure if i better invest much more energy in improving my social skills to at least reach my most important goal. And put the research intersts back.

Anyone else who has similar problems?

anton

Your post reminds me of some recent psychology research in which they concluded that although most people consciously think the workplace is primarily an economic transaction, as far as the intuitive brain is concerned it's first and foremost a social environment. So I'm wondering whether a job is likely to enhance your social/love life rather than compete against it?

I guess the limitation is that in the workplace you tend to get thrown together with people (and pulled apart) quite randomly, so you won't have the same power of discrimination as you'd have with "pure" social environments, where you can vote with your feet without having to worry about your livelihood. Most of the people who surround me at work don't interest me....some of them I find downright horrible, and I'm grateful for the select few I've taken a real liking to. It's nice to have the excuse of working together as a benign cloak for social outreach, and I actually find working together can be a powerful bonding experience, though there's a limit on which bits of my work I can share with them. I have a lot of trouble sharing the more complex executive stuff, I feel too guilty about calling all the shots myself (hate bossing people about), so I tend to let them mastermind things, and then I feel unfulfilled.....I can't easily contradict what somebody else thinks is a good plan, even when I think it's badly flawed. But simple stuff like working a 2-man saw or pushing a trolley through a barrage of fire doors, that can feel great.

It's a shame that social matters aren't usually looked into more seriously when people apply for jobs. Ideally I'd like to see a system where it was normal to extensively field-test the candidate's social success with their potential colleagues, to see whether they're likely to fit in.