To tell the truth, I never really decided that I did want to start a PhD in engineering. I think I have a complexity issue about backing down from things, and if the prospect of starting a PhD was never flaunted in my face (thanks go to the “A-Team”!) I may have never even considered it.

Originally, I had to weigh up reasons for wanting to do a PhD and reasons for wanting to get a job.

Reasons for wanting to do a PhD:

• Some sort of ultimate sense of achievement, and the associated ‘street-cred’.
• Self satisfaction that I know I can do anything and the personal confidence that comes with it.
• A job prospect ‘wild-card’, where I could go anywhere in the world and become instantly employed in a ‘cool’ job. A cool job would be one that has relatively increased amounts of intellectual freedom, and allows me to have heavy influence on superiors.
• I want to keep living in Adelaide (at least for now).
• The two letters Dr floats my boat.
• I like to sleep in and have the power to do whatever I want whenever I want.

Reasons for wanting to get a job:

• Life is better when you have money.

The majority of the doubts I’ve experienced with postgraduate research come down to my preference for working in team environments, which I thoroughly enjoyed in undergraduate days and with working at Sage Automation.

There is nothing the University, Faculty, Supervisors, or fellow students could have done to prevent my decision to go to industry. In fact, if it were not for the support of Ben, Carl, (my two supervisors) and two fellow postgraduates in particular, I would probably have made the decision sooner. The scholarship was also a contributing factor in delaying my decision, in that by consuming the scholarship over time, the amount of guilt for not performing increases, which actually encouraged me to stay longer than I may have potentially otherwise. I felt this ‘spiral’ effect since returning from an IEE annual conference in Birmingham last November (see previous post), where I was able to chat with many others with similar interests, passions and goals.

I perhaps should have taken more effort to explore potential PhD research topics regarding artificial intelligence (AI) routines and image processing, and regret this considerably, as I have often thought about how my self-motivation would have faired at doing research in this field. Around the School of Mechanical Engineering there has been a lot of drive to increase the completion rates of postgraduate students. If there is any feedback I have to offer about increasing postgraduate completion rates, it would be to ensure the student has had long term interest in that particular field of research.

I have a philisophical theory that everyone is born with a finite level of natural self-motivation acquired from genetics, as well as an amount of deterministic self-motivation that is achieved from social and environmental factors and/or a deterministic multiplying factor of the natural self-motivation. So another reason for wishing to discontinue study is that over the last six months I have been devoting myself to training and preparing for a more nationally elite level of marathon running, and when my mate David To is signing me autographs for being ranked in the top 100 of tennis players in the world (currently he’s about 760 or so) I want to be signing him an autograph for being in the top 1,000 or so marathon runners in the world, for my age category. (In fact it’s well possible I’m about there already considering how little people race marathons competitively in my age category but I’m sure I’d get quite a shock if (when) I seek competition overseas!)

A couple weeks ago I was informally offered employment with a company that I’m currently waiting to hear back from. I am currently on leave of absence from uni for 2 months until I receive confirmation of employment and confirmation that I have made the right decision. I’m expecting some sort of divince majestical spirit to emanate a notice of support for this decision to me. More than likely this will be in the form of a thing that industry people call salary. I haven’t revealed details of the job to people at uni other than four staff at the uni that it was necessary to discuss with, for the reason that I don’t have the job yet! Unfortunately to my dissatisfaction the grape-vine has much stronger ties than one could imagine.

So in summary my reasons for leaving the PhD:

• I’m just outright sick and tired of working by myself, every minute, of every day.
• I miss the interaction with others that you have in a team environment.
• I will probably never want to work on thermoacoustics problems by the time I finish the PhD due to “subject fatigue”, so what is the point in becoming highly specialised in this field? I read an article recently that suggests you should not mention on your resume you have a PhD unless it is directly related to the industry you are seeking employment with.
• I have a more worthy of ultimate sense of achievement, marathon running. It’s something that I am good at, and a long-term passion since as long as I can ever remember. The self-satisfaction and personal confidence I get from running is greater than with a PhD, for whatever reason this is. I think most people can directly relate to the effort it takes to be a marathon runner whereas no one really understands anything about what a PhD is in engineering unless they’ve done engineering.
• I realise that to make use of a PhD in thermoacoustics would involve travelling either interstate or even more realistically, overseas, which I don’t necessarily want to do at this stage of my life.
• Since returning from the UK there are four letters, CEng that float my boat more than the two letters Dr.
• I don’t like being the insomniac that I am (currently almost 3am whilst writing this), it’s unhealthy, anti-social, and if you’re not careful it could lead to depression by isolating yourself from interacting with other people during the regular day.

I look forward to announcing how I go formalising this job offer I’ve talked about in this post. I’m really not sure what I’ll do if I don’t get it, but like all things I never jump without a parachute. The true meaning of this may or may not become revealed in my blog depending on circumstances, but please ask if at all interested.

And now just purely out of my own personal archival interests, here is a screenshot of my name on the Active Noise and Vibration Control Group website: