Invisible wrote:
> 1. I am insufficiently intelligent to actually acheive a PhD. (I nearly
> failed my BSc as it is!)

	You're doing a poor job of convincing us of this fact.

	I went to a grad school ranked in the top 5 in my field (nationally,
not globally). There are plenty of people who are just below my level -
and yours (before I begin to start arrogant, there are probably those
higher up on the scale who feel the same about me...).

	Trust me - some of my fellow colleagues had trouble with elementary
calculus - and they were in a field that uses it a lot. And many can't
handle some of the stuff you've been posting here.

> 2. I have insufficient money. (I'm still paying for my BSc. Very slowly.)
	
	No one should have to pay for a PhD. Find funding options. In the US,
in engineering programs, the funding almost always comes from research
grants that your adviser gets. I wouldn't have even joined a grad school
unless I was guaranteed funding. Most students get funding for about a
year from the department as a teaching assistant - and in that year they
find an adviser and hook up with him.

> 3. I don't think I can spare the time. (I have a job to do, sucky as it
> is.)

	In the US, if you have funding for a PhD, then you're paid to do one.
And depending on the city, you can be quite comfortable with that income.

> 4. It is *highly* unlikely that having a PhD will make any kind of
> positive change to my employment situation. Nobody is impressed by a
> BSc, and I doubt a PhD will be any different. Everybody wants
> "experience" and/or "people skills".

	Actually, much of what you do in a PhD can count as experience. This
may depend on the country you do it in. In the US, a MS+PhD could take a
while (5-8 years total). In that time, you have a lot of opportunities
to give talks about your work, and attend talks and interact with them.
Unfortunately, this may not be forced on you, and you'll have to put
some initiative into it. Also, if you're a TA, you interact with students.

	For many companies, just that you have experience talking in public is
a _huge_ plus.

	And all those people you meet (if you take the initiative) can be quite
handy in helping you find a job after PhD. They'll be people with
similar interests.

> 5. Presumably a PhD is a serious amount of hard work. It's not exactly a
> pleasure cruise. So I'd need a good reason to do one.

	Meh. Depends. If you're dissertation topic interests you, you'll
voluntarily do the work anyway, and it won't be considered boring,
tedious work.

> 6. I rather doubt that you can get a PhD in "doing cool stuff".
> Presumably it must be something rather more specific than that.
	
	True. That's what many in their first year do - they just keep looking
at all the options the department offers (i.e. the research areas of the
faculty), and use that time to decide what general area to work in. That
includes talking to professors and finding potential research topics.

	I'll be honest, though. All research topics will sound really boring in
the beginning. You get over that and begin to enjoy it after you've been
working on it for about a year.

> 7. Where the hell am I going to do a PhD anyway?

	Wherever you get accepted and funding is provided for?


-- 
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."-Asimov


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