>> 1. I am insufficiently intelligent to actually acheive a PhD. (I 
>> nearly failed my BSc as it is!)
> 
> You think you're failing at what you're doing now anyway, yes? So fail 
> at something bigger.

LOL. Riiiight...

> It's like saying you're not going to take a job 
> just because some day you might get fired.

Mmm, whatever.

> Plus, you'll meet girls. :-)

Oh. My. GOD! >_<

You cannot *possibly* expect me to take anything else you say seriously 
now, can you? :-P

>> 3. I don't think I can spare the time. (I have a job to do, sucky as 
>> it is.)
> 
> Go where they'll pay for you.  You can't reasonably do a PhD while 
> you're holding down a full-time job, IMO.

Agreed.

>> 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".
> 
> Experience and people skills is what you get with a PhD. You meet 
> bunches of people doing exciting stuff you enjoy while you're doing a 
> PhD. Do you think, for example, that if you're doing a PhD having to do 
> with (say) optimizing functional languages that you're not going to have 
> dinner with the guys at Microsoft Research working on GHC?

Heh. Actually, a few weeks back I did look at MSRC. But I couldn't 
figure out what they were talking about. I surmised this probably means 
I'm too stupid to be there. :-}

Much as it would be fun to meet the legendary Simon PJ, I rather doubt 
they have any PhD openings to do with Haskell right about now. Sure, 
lots of people are working hard on GHC, but most of it is not "new" in 
any way, it's just getting around to applying techniques known from 
other compilers. It takes a while to alter a codebase that huge.

> All but one job I had since I got my PhD was through knowing people I 
> met while I got my PhD. I had a couple of job offers guaranteed by the 
> time I finished, because I was doing just what they wanted and they knew 
> I could do it.

That's pretty impressive, right there.

Other than my lecturers, I didn't meet *anybody* during my degree. And 
now I'm trying to track down some of my old lecturers just so I can 
maybe get some references out of them...

> And yes, people actually do get impressed by PhDs.

I guess it depends who you're asking...

>> 6. I rather doubt that you can get a PhD in "doing cool stuff". 
>> Presumably it must be something rather more specific than that.
> 
> You have to pick what you want to do, then find the place that's doing 
> that sort of stuff, then go there.
> 
> Here's how you do it: decide what kind of thing you want to research. 
> Functional languages? OK, find research papers about functional 
> languages. Look to see if they're funded by grants (usually mentioned in 
> the ack's on the front page). See what university got the grant. Surf 
> that university's web site, and look over the professors.  Call them up 
> and ask them what their interests are because you want to get a PhD.

Hmm, time to track down all those Haskell papers which I carefully 
linked from our Haskell group for safe keeping. 8^D

(And if you believe *that*, you'll believe anything...)

> 4) Profit!

Anybody know the origins of this curios meme?

> Find people who have written papers in things you're interested in who 
> have PhDs. Ask them who they recommend you go to. Note that *where* you 
> go is less important than with *whom* you go.

Mmm, OK.

>> I seem to vaguely recall somebody (I forget who) claiming to know who 
>> to go to for this kind of thing, and offering to help me arrange it. 
> 
> I've done it in the USA. Apparently the UK is much different. But don't 
> limit yourself to the UK.  Lots of people travel abroad to do schooling 
> like that.

Taking a PhD for no apparent reason is slightly crazy, but I'm gradually 
coming around to the idea. Leaving the UK is an absurd idea. :-P

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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