Day Two—Where you’d like to be in 10 years.
I’ll be 28 then. I’m not really sure. I’m still debating whether to continue with astrophysics and get a Ph. D. I’ll still be in school if I go that route, since it can take up to ten years. I’m thinking about just going to law school. My mom would be happier with that, too. She went to law school, my her father went to law school; it just seems like the most obvious choice. Besides, logic and rhetoric come a lot easier to me than math, though it’s not like I can’t do it. It just sometimes feels like I’ll have to work a lot harder in physics than if I went to law school, and law school is insanely difficult already. Not to mention the California bar exam is the hardest in the country. I also don’t feel like going for a Ph. D. in astrophysics would really pay off. I know it’s not supposed to be about the money, but I could only be making around $60,000 to $80,000. It sounds like a pretty good salary, but after maybe 13 more years of school, which is terribly expensive? I don’t know if I could deal with the debt of all the student loans I’ll have acquired. Then there’s the problem of getting a job, too. It’s pretty hard to find a good job in astrophysics unless you don’t already have one. It’s not like there are a ton of people going into it, but there just aren’t that many positions. I know it’d be intellectually rewarding, and I’d probably be happiest, but I like being able to afford things like food and a place to live, and I’ll be devastated if I’ll have to work in retail or something after putting all this time and effort into this just to have basic things like that. People always need lawyers—astrophysicists, not so much.
