Oopsie.

[kickaha]

I screwed up.

Ever get to the end of a long journey and realize that you battled long and hard, fought well (generally) and emerged victorious... only to realize you really don't want to be where you ended up?

I'm finishing up my dissertation in computer science... and have been 'finishing' it for, er... two years now. It's turning into the albatross. Is it because I can't do it? Nope. I are a braight won. Is it because it isn't doable? Nope. It's solved.

It's because I'm bored with it, because I find myself not liking it anymore.

Not the project, the field. The instruments of it, the boundaries of it, the *essence* of it.

madness237's quote struck a chord in me that I've mentioned before. And this time it's sticking hard.

A have a friend down here who does genetic studies of tropical plants, complete with in the field collection expeditions. A few weeks ago, in preparation for this summer's jaunt around the world, she went to the Smithsonian in DC to inspect some original color plates in a text a couple hundred years old. I was *SO* damned jealous. The smell, the feel, the liveliness of the paper, the gentle embossing of the inkpress, the decades of tiny funguses, mildews, and molds that have taken refuge in the spine, imparting a life after life to the tome... all of it comes to a fruition of sensation and memory, of body and intellect.

Computers are dead. They spark, they whine, they glow... but they never *live*. It is a dead thing that sits under my fingertips at the moment, and in a life so devoid of life as mine, it feels intolerable. This *is* my life - the phosphor, the ferrite, the silicon... of dead things.

I hate it.

Ironically, computers were my first love, and physics a major I took because I had to declare 'something'. And yet, it was one of my professors there who spurred me to graduate school, who was the first in a long line of so called teachers to take me aside and say "You're good. You're too good not to go to graduate school." Unfortunately, I didn't take her advice and go into material physics - I think I would have vastly preferred it.

You see, computer science isn't a science. It's barely even an art. It's constructed fiction we all tell ourselves so that we can nod knowingly, keep the vestal hearth of silicon fire burning, and feel good that we are Doing Something Important(tm). We're not. It's all a lie.

"Any discipline that has to tack the word 'science' onto its name to be taken seriously as such, isn't." - Fred Brooks, head and founder of my department, and CS luminary... and one of the few folks in the field that sees that the emperor has no clothes.

CS isn't discovery, it's creation. But it isn't creation in a passionate, vibrant, *necessary* sense... it's the most distanced, abstract, intellectual masturbation of creation acts.

It. Doesn't. Matter.

When all is said and done, it gives us, what... PlayStations? Windows Media Player? Napster?

Whee. Big whoop.

I want to discover natural laws, basic principles on which the world works. I want to see those laws put to concrete use for the good of all.

Computers are just a fiction. There are no formulae, no laws, nothing you can point to and say "This is how it IS"... just intellectuals fighting over whose ego posturing is going to make their particular combinatorial justification for their work get the most funding bucks. It's a small short step above 17th century Russian literature studies, when it comes to its scientific merits.

I was drawn to computers, and programming, because I saw a meshing of art and science, of human creation and automated efficiency, of acts of will becoming electronic flesh.

It's all a lie.

There is no art, just MCSE certification courses.

There is no science, just stillborn attempts at formal discipline.

There is little human creation, just cubicle farms of coders.

There is little efficiency, just minds and souls being used to recreate the same old shit as last year.

There are no acts of will, only venture capitalists.

There is no electronic flesh... just the shadows of dreams broken on illusory shores.




So now what? I'm going to finish this fucking dissertation. I will *NOT* let it beat me into submission... but my heart isn't in it, other than to see it *DONE*, and behind me.

Unfortunately, I've then managed to specialize myself into a corner... what next?




Bongo drum concertinas for ballet, anyone?

Comments

[keridwen.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think that your next move should be to come over to our place soon and we can drink margaritas and mourn the loss of our enthusiasm with our chosen field of graduate study...

Margaritas, I can do.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Mourning, I've had enough of recently to last me quite a while.

I'd much rather punch through this and find the next path to get onto... much more useful than maudlin introspection. If I'm going to take the time and effort to examine myself, dammit, I'm going to make it count.

Life's too short otherwise.

*heh*

[lirrin.livejournal.com]

I chuckle, because you've tumbled to something I've found instinctive for years. I find computers (and oddly, mathematics) to be cold and unfeeling. Dry, if you will. Lacking in color. Can I do them? Sure. Do I care? Um, no.

I watched most of my friends in the computer industry in one way or another, and tried it out. Software testing. Ew. Run far, far away and never look back. Scream, if you must, while running.

There's nothing wrong with "wasting" your time pursuing a degree you no longer find interesting. You're young, and you've learned something valuable about yourself and what you want, and you'll at least impress people with the degree, regardless of whether you actually apply it IN your field. My Masters in Teaching hasn't been used to teach, but it still opens doors.

What next? Unspecialize yourself out of the corner. Take a 114.6 degree turn and see where it goes. Easier said than done, I know. But like you said, you are bright and accomplished...don't stick with something that you don't like just because that's the path you're on. Grab a machete, and chop a new path. ;-) And, uh, don't let me into the metaphor jar. It's just not pretty.

[songhawk.livejournal.com]

Wel, I can think of a place where computers do matter, a lot. Working with the handicapped. Providing fully searchable audiobooks for the audiobooks for the blind (braille is good, amazing, and vital, but in college you literally can't carry by yourself braille editions of certain books. too bulky). Providing a way to communicate *at all* beyond twenty-questions level for someone who cannot speak and cannot write and cannot sign- but they can move a pointing device. Or they can move their eyes and the computer tracks them.
Robots to help with household tasks (ok, they aren't as good *yet* as say. helper monkeys or assorted service dogs- but they don't throw feces when angry either.)
And a hundred other uses.
CS attempts at trying to progam AI's have led to new insights into the way autists percieve the world (and those who work with autists have been able to give the AI folks some pointers, too. it flows both ways... -example here; a computer can't tell a scream of joy from a scream of pain because it hasn't been programmed w/ facial expression recognition algorithms. So they study faces, and talk to high functioning autist who say things like "I watch the eyebrows and the mouth wrinkles and I've just memorized it, and the CS guy hmms and programs and comes back with "the way the eyes squinch up is important too...")

For those of "normal" abilities the computer is perhaps a fun but meaningless toy. We can certainly live without and have for hundreds of years. But for thousands who before computers were assumed to be mindless idiots because they couldn't communicate, they are vital...

Us damn EEPers.

[flinx.livejournal.com]

We never seem to be able to make up our minds. I should know--I've been where you are right now. That's why I left the U of Chicago behind and walked out with an MS, instead of the PhD, which "might have" taken just another year more. Admittedly, my primary reason was that I didn't want to play politics and spend all my time writing grant apps, I just wanted to stick to benchwork.

And I'm still planning on leaving the lab behind in another few years. I've spent the last ten years in biology, and it's enough.

Stick it out Jason, you're so damn close, and kill this thing off. THEN go and find something else that floats your boat--you'll have earned it. In my field, an MS is more portable, but I imagine in your line, no matter where you want to go, the PhD is a lot more attractive.

Brian

been there, done that

[gilthalas.livejournal.com]

As you know Jason, I've been right where you are. I thought for years Physics was my thing - only to find that after being in the lab all day on a Sunday with the equipment STILL not working that it didn't give me the "spark". I woke up in the morning dreading going into the lab to do my thesis research. So I decided to do something I probably should've done in the first place -which oddly, is Computer Science. I finished the MS in Physics, got a MS in CS, and haven't looked back (although my job does warrant some crossing of my 2 fields). My job does give me that spark I need to get up in the morning and get going - I can't imagine what I would've been like today if I was still in Physics.

So having said that - go with where your heart and desires take you. If you're not happy change. If you are happy, stay there. If you can find a happy medium, do so.

Just don't lose your Apple geekness. I still have to have someone to call my "Apple geek friend". ;)

Saw this posted today ...

[byrdie.livejournal.com]

... and it made me think of you:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/metaphorge/352308.html

[jinasphinx.livejournal.com]

I say kudos for deciding to stick it out to finish the dissertation. Like everyone else says, you've come this far, it'd be a shame not to finish and know that you *can* do it. And then take a break. There's nothing like grad school to burn you out; you need a rest after that. Then when you're feeling rested, you can look around and decide where you should go next.