Unsolicited Advice from Pete Wyckoff
Revised: 10 April 2001
1)
Never, ever, ever let your health insurance lapse. When it comes to providing access to affordable health care, the
United States lags behind every industrial nation in the world. Way behind.
You are most likely currently covered by your parents insurance, but
that will stop after you graduate (or not too long after- inquire about COBRA
options).
Many students are tempted to forego health insurance after they graduate. It is expensive, and most 22 year olds feel pretty invincible. Do not fall into this trap. If you develop a chronic illness, and are uninsured, you may be out of luck and uninsurable. I felt young and invincible until I developed MS at age 26. Luckily I was insured—otherwise I would be broke. My sister seemed healthy until developing cancer at age 21. My sister-in- law seemed healthy until developing Grave’s disease at age 25.
2)
Listen
to NPR. Read the New York Times,
Harpers, the Atlantic and the New Yorker.
They will help you know what is going on in the world, and that is
important.
3)
Travel
abroad. Try to go places more
interesting than Europe.
4)
Enjoy
yourself. Make sure you get enough
fiber and calcium. Spend a lot of time
outdoors.
1)
Make
sure you learn how to write. I am
generally appalled by the writing skills displayed by my students, and I often
spend more time commenting on grammar than content. I think that both high school English teachers and first-year
college writing teachers share some of the blame. Whomever is it fault, if you manage to get out of English 102 and
do not have polished writing skills, you must take it upon yourself to rectify
the situation.
2)
Major
in Physics. If you can’t do that, major
in chemistry. If you can’t do that,
major in Biology or Geology. If you are
not the science type, major in Economics.
If you can’t stomach that, major in Political Science. Interdisciplinary
majors may be more fun than the stodgy old disciplines, but they will often be
seen by outsiders as lacking rigor. Do
not obtain a degree that says “integrated studies” in the place where it should
give the name of an accepted, established discipline.
Note: The above paragraph is not intended as an
editorial on the relative importance of the disciplines, and certainly is not a
comment on the relative strengths of the various programs offered at
Guilford. It is advice based on the
assumption that college students often want to keep future options open. I know a German Literature professor who
majored in Physics. I will be surprised
if I ever meet a Physics professor who majored in German Literature. Many of the best Biologists in the world
have their backgrounds in Chemistry and Physics.
3)
Maintain
at least a B average. An A average is
better.
4)
Do
not fill your schedule with courses on “the struggles of oppressed group
X.” Such courses are important, but do
not make for a coherent, focused liberal arts education. Additionally, courses on “the struggles of
oppressed group X” don’t really provide you with any practical tools for
relieving the suffering of oppressed group X.
Returning to my own area (before I get driven out of the academy for
right-wing heresy), avoid taking too many classes on “environmental problem X
and why it makes me feel all bummed out.”
Instead, take boring stuff like econometrics, or biochemistry, or
advanced policy analysis classes. Maybe
you will gain the skills necessary to help solve environmental problem X.
5)
Make
sure you become comfortable speaking in public.
6)
If
you think you might want to pursue a career in research, it is very important
to gain research experience while you are still an undergraduate. The easiest way to do this is to pursue
summer research at a big, cold, impersonal research institution. The best way to find such summer positions
is to check out the National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for
Undergraduate’s website.
7)
If
you are thinking of a career in research, consider applying for Barry Goldwater
Fellowship during your sophomore or junior year. It is not a fund for young Republicans. It is an unfortunately named fellowship program funded by the US
Congress. It will pay you $7000/ year
and will help you get into graduate school.
8)
Study
abroad.
9)
Have
fun. Make sure you read hard
books. If you don’t read them now, you
probably aren’t going to read them later.
1)
The
most important rule for graduate school: if
in doubt, don’t. If you decide you
are sure about graduate school, by all means go for it (and God Bless You).
Grad school is usually boring. It can open doors, but it can also close
them too (especially PhDs). It can be
expensive (even if you get your way paid in full- with a stipend- you still have
to factor in the lost wages you would have made had you not been in grad
school).
The “closing doors” idea is something nobody ever
warned me about. A PhD can make you
“overqualified” (at least on paper) for many jobs, which can be as limiting as
being underqualified. PhDs often find
it difficult to obtain high school teaching jobs. PhDs are no longer eligible for most jobs as field workers or
technicians. Any graduate degree can
make you look suspicious if you apply for a job that doesn’t require your
particular degree.
2)
What
should you do before going to graduate school?
a)
Consider
working as a research tech
Lots of ads for research tech jobs are posted on a
listserver run by the Ecological Society of America (see subscription
instructions at the end of this handout). This list also
receives lots of summer job ads for undergraduates.
b)
Work
for an environmental group
See the environmental studies web site for leads.
3)
Other
careers to consider—all noble, all more employable than ecology (listed in declining
order of importance, as seen by Pete).
a.
Public
Health Worker
b.
High
School Science Teacher
c.
Nurse
d.
Doctor
e.
Pretty
much anything else
4)
In
Ecology and related environmental fields, understand the differences between a
professional degree and a research degree.
Professional degrees are a relatively new thing. They first came into being when Yale University and Duke University started offering “Masters of Environmental Management” through their newly developed “Schools of the Environment (SOEs).” These schools are meant to be analogous to other professional schools, like law schools, dental schools, and divinity schools. The problem, as I see it, is that everybody knows what you are trained to be when you graduate from dental school: a dentist. When you graduate from Environment school, however, I’m not sure it is so clear what you are trained to do. SOEs are, in some ways, professional schools without professions.
That all being said, SOEs are turning out graduates
who do get jobs—often at the expense of those poor job hunters who only hold a
BA. SOEs place graduates in government
jobs, environmental consulting jobs, and in the non-profit environmental
sector. The problem with that last
category is that environmental non-profits often pay meager salaries. That is a tough break if you have taken on a
lot of debt to get your Masters degree from an SOE.
Alternatives to an SOE that may be better choices:
Law School, MBA programs, Public Policy School.
Very Good SOEs:
Yale University
Duke University
The University of Michigan
Research degrees prepare you for one of two things: research
or college teaching. A research Masters
degree will often help you obtain applied jobs at the state Department of
Natural Resources-level. PhDs will get
you research jobs in academics or government.
They also qualify you to teach at the college level. Jobs demanding research PhDs are very
scarce. If you do not go to a top rated
graduate school, you may well emerge from graduate school very educated but
unemployed. An exception is state-level
research jobs, where a degree from a good regional university is often good
enough (or, in some cases, better than a degree from a snootier school).
A non-exhaustive list of Snooty Schools that are
good in Ecology (in descending order):
Princeton University
Duke University
Stanford University
Cornell University
Yale University
Harvard Unversity
The University of Chicago
A non-exhaustive list of Non-snooty schools that are
darn good in Ecology
University of Minnesota
UC Santa Barbara
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin
University of Maryland
University of Georgia
University of Connecticut
Non-snooty schools are plenty good if you want to go
into research- research institutions will know that they have great ecology
programs even if the overall reputation of the university may be less than
stellar. Ironically, if your goal is a
position at a primarily teaching oriented college, it becomes more important to
go to a snooty school. Small liberal
arts colleges, for instance, won’t have the expertise to assess the strength of
individual programs, so they will tend to rely on the overall reputation of the
university granting your PhD.
5)
If
you need to take the subject GREs, take them early. If you take some time off after graduating, your biological
knowledge will get rusty. Also be aware
that the GREs in biology primarily cover cell and molecular biology (although,
you will get an ecology sub-score).
6)
Apply
for a National Science Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. These fellowships will help you get into
graduate school, and will also pay your tuition and a stipend once you are
there.
How
to subscribe to ECOLOG:
Instructions for subscribing and
unsubscribing to ECOLOG-L
To subscribe, send the message
sub ecolog-l Your Name
to
listserv@umdd.umd.edu
To unsubscribe, send the message
signoff ecolog-l
to
listserv@umdd.umd.edu
If you are not using the same e-mail address
that you used to subscribe,
you will not be able to unsubscribe, and I
will have to do it for you.
To get the FAQ, send the message
get ecolog-l FAQ
to
listserv@umdd.umd.edu
To set your subscription to the digest form,
send the message
set ecolog-l digest
to
listserv@umdd.umd.edu
David Inouye, list owner and moderator
di5@umail.umd.edu