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kickahaI 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?
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?
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*heh*
Date: 2003-06-02 11:03 am (UTC)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.