2nd year physics, my first lecture was one of the professors rambling away about quarks and other tiny particles. During that lecture I saw my future life:
1. Highly unlikely best case scenario : Academic treadmill and all that implies, PhD, Postdoc, applying for grants, tenuous employment forevermore etc. The rest of society view me as a crackpot even if my fellow physicists like my ideas. I mean even if you have a Nobel it's not like society in general would value you as much as say Linus.
2. Highly Likely scenario I fail or find something else interesting to do, at some point - all that effort and agony and knowledge of quarks and tiny particles is of very little use in my day to day life.
So, like you, "What's the point?"
I chose option 2. - go do something else. I walked away and never came back. Studying computers was relevant to my daily decisions every day of my life - even if I were to have a career not directly in IT.
3. I help people solve practical problems that require relatively mundane physics and math, plus the ability to bridge multiple disciplines, use things like theory and modeling as tools, and conduct experiments to test hypotheses. At a company that makes measurement equipment.
Some of this stuff is work that most people hate, and are happy to have off their plates.
This is sort of the problem with academia in general, isn't it? And the worst part is that it's a self-reinforcing problem.
Students see the academic path and at some point along the way realize it's not for them. It doesn't pay well, it's really difficult, and you have to constantly engage with an environment that is at best pedantic and at worst bureaucratic and toxic. Yet we still need more professors to actually teach, although the research grants, administrative costs, budget structures may not allow for it.
1. Highly unlikely best case scenario : Academic treadmill and all that implies, PhD, Postdoc, applying for grants, tenuous employment forevermore etc. The rest of society view me as a crackpot even if my fellow physicists like my ideas. I mean even if you have a Nobel it's not like society in general would value you as much as say Linus.
2. Highly Likely scenario I fail or find something else interesting to do, at some point - all that effort and agony and knowledge of quarks and tiny particles is of very little use in my day to day life.
So, like you, "What's the point?"
I chose option 2. - go do something else. I walked away and never came back. Studying computers was relevant to my daily decisions every day of my life - even if I were to have a career not directly in IT.