A Grad Student's Day
philip.greenspun.com
philip.greenspun.com
10:31 Realize that you went to grad school because you're intellectually curious, not because you want to incrementally increase Man's knowledge.
10:35 Web drop yourself from all your courses and buy a plane ticket to the Valley to start a startup.
You can live an intellectually curious life anywhere with a decent library and enough time to pursue it. It helps, but isn't necessary, to have others around who are pursuing it too. It's why almost all the early scientists were from families of rich people. They had the free time to pursue their curiosity. If a grad school is willing to pay you to have the free time to do that, it's a good place for it. It's what you make of it (as others have said).
Now, on Vally startups. Very little software today will change the world; in fact, most is just incremental improvements, and all will fall by the wayside. We have no idea what the internet/computers will be like in the future, but I guarantee you it won't have a trace of web 2.0 left (except for the designers who then decide to go "web 2.0 retro").
The great thing about being intellectually curious is being able to look toward the future and bring something from there to the present.
My prediction? HTML, CSS, Django etc... are temporary placeholders for what the web will be. Things like neural computation, quantum computing, etc... will be game changers. Such things will first find a niche application, but then someone will bring them to the broader world and it will change.
Also, you'll be passing up a lot of potential $$ going to grad school so make sure you understand why your doing it..
Don't listen to people to tell you that you will be missing out on money. You only have one life to live. You shouldn't give money much heed.
However, I am not interested in pursuing a PHD. Working on one problem for three years sounds... tedious. Also, I've noticed that my dating market value and social life have declined quite a bit since I left my job. Two years of that ain't bad, but five would be tough.
I knew I wanted to go back to grad school during my senior year, but got a job first to rack up some money and experience. There is so much depth to electrical engineering that sometimes even senior level classes feel like they are barely scratching the surface.
As the typical advice goes with this sort of question: make sure you know what you're getting into. It sounds like you have a pretty good deal in terms of funding, but remember that regardless you need to write a dissertation. Now, you could take the funding and leave after you get your masters, but you'd have to decide if you're morally comfortable with misleading the University.
If you leaving early had such a terrible impact on the university, they would make you sign a contract.
2) Applying to grad schools as a PhD candidate is standard advice given by professors, so that wouldn't be an embarassing thing to do.
it's not really like that.
More time on facebook, less time on tetris. Update for 2009 as necessary.
Note to self: don't go to grad school. You're likely to fail.