That’s not to say that as grownups, we’re shallow and greedy, but rather, that we’re simply a bit more realistic and wiser to the way the world works. Money can buy you a lot of things: it can buy you a nice house and a decent car; it can pay the rent and support the kids; it can get you a nice summer vacation every once in a while.

But perhaps more importantly, money can also get you respect. The highest paying jobs are generally the ones we respect the most. Telling someone that you’re a medical doctor, an industry scientist, a lawyer, a CEO — these are sure to turn heads. On the other hand, you can love poetry and philosophy all you like, but there’s not a dime to be made in that profession, and consequently, if you tell people, “I’m a professional poet,” or “I’m a philosopher”, they’re guaranteed to sneer at you, unless you flash the money.

Prestige is associated with money. That’s the way the world works.

One of the more interesting sites I’ve visited is the California Institute of Technology’s Life After Caltech page, which lists statistics on where their students go and how much they make after graduating.

For example, for PhDs, life generally follows two paths after graduating: (1) academia, which includes smaller liberal colleges, as well as research institutes like California’s Scripps Instituteand Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study, and (2) industry, which is broadly defined as “everything else”.

In 2008, the average for those entering academia after their PhD was $45,000 (USD). The average for those entering industry was around $100,000 (USD).

In my experience, these figures are roughly accurate, or at the very least, they should give you an idea of the huge disparity between the left-and-right forks of the road.

The obvious sentiment here is that life in academia is, in a sense, easier; in academia, you get to enjoy the thrill of discovery(!); you’re on the cutting edge of human knowledge(!); you’re your own boss and you set your own hours(!). Jonathan Katz, in his article, Don’t become a scientist urges you to banish these thought from your head. “Science is a profession,” he writes, “not a religious vocation, and does not justify an oath of poverty or celibacy.”

In this case, his use of “science” can be equally interchanged with “academia”.

In Ian Stewart’s article “Practising mathematics without a license,” he writes that the fundamental “problem” with pursuing mathematics is that Prestige = money. But mathematics, rightly pursued, should never be intimately linked with money; licensing and patents work to restrict the flow of free information, and without this flow, the field as a whole would wither.

Prestige is the heavy price we pay to do research in mathematics. The eighteen year-old me would have gladly accepted this proposal. Today, I’m not as cocksure as I once was. Is idealism really enough to keep you going through forty, fifty, sixty years of career ambitions? I hope it is.

One of the most disastrous results of my ineptitude, combined with sleep deprivation was my accidental deletion of the final (and only) copy of my Ph.D. thesis, as I tried to back-up and transfer the files from my work computer to my Mac.

To be more specific, I have lost the necessary files to generate the thesis.

I did the final corrections (after the examination) on my Mac, but the newest copy on my work computer was the copy that I’d used during the viva. In my haste to transfer things over, I accidentally overwrote the new with the old. This, of course, was accompanied by the realisation that I’d stopped religiously backing-up versions of my thesis after I handed in the examiner’s copy.

The good news is that the PDF, which was used for the final printed copy was safely backed away in my e-mail. This, combined with the physical published version, should allow me to reproduce all the changes when it comes time to publish the final articles. It’s a huge pain in the ass and a rather sad realisation that I won’t be able to compile the exact same version of the final manuscript (at least not with some painstaking page-by-page editing), but at least the final physical copy is intact.

It could have been worse. I could have not e-mailed a copy of the thesis to myself, and therefore completely lost the only electronic version of the final thesis. That would have been bad.

That’s it, then. Bags are packed. Computer is backed up (sigh). Desk is cleared.

I’m heading home, folks.

Officially, I still have minor corrections to do before I print out the final version to be held at the Bodleian library (or rather, I should say, to be buried at the Bod)—but this should all be done in the next week or so.

I’m also anxiously (worryingly) awaiting the start of my position at Princeton, which begins September 1st. I’m not a stranger to bloated expectations and new environments, but this one feels different.

The period you spend between degrees and now, between jobs, I find, is the most reflective period of your life. You begin questioning the past and inquiring about the future. Have you taken all the right steps? Are you moving in the right direction? You begin examining your failures and doubting your successes. There is a great deal of pain and frustration, I think, when you begin burrowing into the past.

I intensely dislike this period of reflection.

I just want to get back to work.

In writing my thesis, I was acutely aware of the fact that everyone feels like they need to make theirs as if its their last and final monograph, their pièce de résistance, the one work that defines their career. But I was also aware that this was just an urge and the true bits which define a researcher is what follows after.

In theory, that’s how it should have been. In practice, however, the thought didn’t help me from fawning and frowning over my font choices, the size of my margins, and little itty-bitty details that don’t really matter. As an artist, photographer, and (lapsed?) perfectionist, I can’t help but treat the thesis like my little baby. In the end, I did eventually re-write the preface about four different times, which included four vastly different versions. The final version was (perhaps disastrously) written at about 4 am in the morning the night before—about the time my brain decided to switch off. You can have a look at the front matter here

But in the end, I’m reasonably happy with what I did. I am proud of my thesis, and proud of what I managed to accomplish in so little time. Someone did point out to me that, given my exaggerated standards and mindset, I’d never admit to producing my ‘best work’, anyways, so this is a satisfactory submission.

I’m happy with that observation.

I have felt something strange lately though, something I haven’t felt for a long time. You know that feeling we used to get when we finished school for the year, and summer was upon us?

I hadn’t had that feeling since high school, but I guess I feel it now.

The air is sweeter. The heat of the sun and the coolness of the wind has never been more apparent. And day-dreaming? I’ve started day-dreaming again! What incredible bliss!

That said, in the month (or now, twenty-or-so days) until my thesis defense, I have a great deal of work to get through, including the preparation of various papers for publication, as well as preparing myself (spiritually and academically) for the full impact of my job-to-be in America.

Finally, I’ve begun thinking about this blog, and perhaps more generally, about what directions I want to take my ‘hobbies’ (if you can call them that) in the next few years.

Almost two years ago, I made the comment that statistically, things weren’t looking too good for Phil’s Proof:

Occasionally, I struggle with what to do with the blog. The post rate has dipped down to catastrophic levels, I’ve lost pretty much all my readership, and to be honest, the whole thing stinks of lack-of-focus. A blog can only work with constant updates and with a clear idea of what it offers. This is what separates a truly successful blog from the work of an emo high-school teenager looking for catharsis.

However, it still doesn’t feel right to pull the plug. I like this blog, I like its history, I like its potential, I like how it looks; deep down, I like it. I really do.

But deep down, I also know that my life is moving in a direction in which I find it harder and harder to blog. When it comes to my work and career (as a mathematician), I’ve never been shy to admit that it takes precedence over any other aspect of my life. But being young (and being fond of high school and everything it entails), I’ve never been comfortable with letting go of things like blogging.

Blogging is cathartic, and moreover, it’s one of the ways that I—at least in the past—kept from being too immersed in the cold and weird world of maths. It’s one of the ways I kept connected to the outside world.

But in the last year, I think I’ve began letting go of that security blanket. And I think this is why the blog suffered.

Today, however, I had an epiphany.

I know now how I can continue this blog (at least in spirit), and rectify my ever-advancing immersion in the world occupied by professional mathematicians.

The world is changing, faster and faster, every day. Things like Facebook and Twitter (and blogging) have changed the landscape of how we communicate and how we interact. Mathematicians have to recognize that fact, and with the ease in which video conferencing and video blogging (hint, hint!) is done, you’d have to be an idiot not to embrace this change and everything it entails.

It does very much come down to focus. What do I want? How will what I do be different from what’s currently available? What does it take to separate myself from the pack? Those are some of the questions I need to ask (and answer) in the coming months.

It’s all very much on the down-low and totally in the works at the moment. In fact, it’s nothing but a vague concept in my mind. But the gears will turn, ever so slowly, I can assure you, and I hope that you’ll continue to visit as things change.

Two weeks left. Can’t….focus….

Deadline is June 20th, and I’m in a great deal of fear at the moment.

So go away.

Occasionally, new graduate students will pick it up for a read, but that’s about it.

What matters is the publications that arise from the thesis and not the actual thesis.

Knowing this, I’ve been writing my thesis in the reverse order: I’ve written each chapter separately as a publication, and I had planned on jamming everything together a month before the final copy is due. In this way, I get to cut down on the guff that a lot of students tend to put into their theses, but that doesn’t make the final publications.

For cryin’ out loud, my Master’s thesis was about a hundred pages, but the results were printed in a 20-page article. That’s the kind of bloated inflation I don’t like to see.

It’s not difficult to write a 250 page thesis. After all, you’ve been doing the research for how-ever many years, you certainly have enough to write as much as you want. The real difficulty is writing a tight, well presented, and concise thesis.

That’s what I’ve been aiming for.

In the end, I’d expect my thesis to be about a hundred pages long (single-spaced), of which around ninety pages will make it into publication.

“I’m not wrong, am I?” I asked my supervisor, “Your thesis doesn’t really matter. Nobody’s actually going to read it, right? Nobody actually cares.”

“Your mum does!” he said.

Case, meet point.