View Poll Results: What should I do?

Voters
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  • Take the job offer! Show me the money!

    7 30.43%
  • Take the job offer and work it for 1 to 2 years. Then go to grad school.

    10 43.48%
  • No money? Ha, I can take it. Bring it on, world. Plow through and go to grad school now!

    2 8.70%
  • Become a combination African Safari master / archaeologist who programs C in his spare time.

    4 17.39%

Thread: I have 10 days to make the biggest decision of my life

  1. #31
    Devil's Advocate SlyMaelstrom's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DavidP View Post
    *bump*

    Sorry for bumping the thread, I just thought I'd tell everyone the result of my decision.

    I took the job offer.

    I am still hoping to go to grad school. I am not sure when, where, or how that will happen, but I will definitely do it. It just felt right to take the job offer at this point in my life.
    You took the job?

    Dude... we were being sarcastic.


    Hehe, I hope it works out for you. I would have taken the same route.
    Sent from my iPadŽ

  2. #32
    chococoder
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    you took the job of African safari guide? Great decision!

  3. #33
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DavidP View Post
    I am still hoping to go to grad school. I am not sure when, where, or how that will happen, but I will definitely do it. It just felt right to take the job offer at this point in my life.
    Dammit!
    Sorry for only seeing this now. Been a tad busy the weeks.

    Too late I guess, but my advise would have been school now, work later. A good job opportunity today doesn't mean good job opportunities for the rest of your career. A degree, and hopefully a masters would ensure not necessarily good job opportunities, but would push your salary opportunities, your general knowledge and open up more career options.

    "We will see later" or "I'll resume the studies later" is fine on paper or when seen a priori. Problem is you have no way of knowing if it will indeed happen. Life may throw you in the pond faster than you can hold your breath. I know it has me, and all of a sudden you find all your plans ruined and having to stick to what guns you might have at that point. Not necessarily the end of the world -- other opportunities might arise (again, they did to me too). However, not as you planned for yourself, and not probably as good as they would have been otherwise.

    My fear is you end up not pursuing your studies. Especially in these days where such a prospect is indeed much harder. In my time, when I quit my studies in favor of an also excllent job opportunity in Alcatel, I could afford the decision. knowing such things as BASIC, Clipper, Dbase and Pascal already made a space scientist of you. Today is not like that at all; Programmers are not rockstars anymore, there's heaps of them and the market can affor to select only the best for those jobs that would really make a difference.

    ...

    Alcatel is long gone. Just as I didn't realize then, no job lasts forever. And when it was gone I was able to slowly build up my career basing myself on my working experience and study of new programming languages. As other programming languages start to appear or become mainstream I struggled to keep up. Because I didn't have the basis, the marrow that would allow me to speed up my learning process, I eventually started falling behind. Meanwhile, as new job opportunities arised and I was able to take hold of them, I also started to realize (starting in the mid 90s) my lack of a degree was affecting my wages. Same work, less pay.

    Maybe your experience will be different in years to come. Maybe you can indeed pursue your studies later. I'd hope so. But I'm afraid -- sorry for the bluntness -- I highly doubt you will.

    Your studies will dictate your career, these days more than ever before. The easy path is oftentimes the wrong path.

    EDIT: How rude of me. Was forgetting this: In any case, all the best!
    Last edited by Mario F.; 12-04-2008 at 12:42 PM.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  4. #34
    The superhaterodyne twomers's Avatar
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    I skipped most of the replies. You could accept the job and apply for grad school anyway. You could always quit the job and go to grad school. I just started 'grad school'[1] a few months back and am lovin' it so far.

    [1] We don't really do it the way Americans do it[2], but it's the same idea.
    [2] I assume you're American... or were attending an American university.

    PS A big danger is that you'll like earning money and won't come back.

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