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Can Movies Inspire Kids To Be Future Scientists?
Hugh Pickens writes "MSNBC reports on a recent panel that discussed studies showing that people, especially children, often model their behavior on what they see on the big (or small) screen and science shows up in many Hollywood films. In fact, 22 of the 60 top-grossing movies of all time are science-fiction or superhero flicks, including history's No. 1 box office hit, Avatar. The movie science doesn't even have to be entirely accurate, some of the panelists added when asked to consider the role and impact of science in cinema. As long as it plants a seed of curiosity in viewers, it may spur them to investigate scientific issues on their own — and perhaps consider a career in science down the road. 'It's not an educational medium, it's an emotional medium,' says Seth Shostak, an astronomer with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. 'Kids get turned on by the emotion.' Interestingly enough although movies work hard to get the science right, many make errors ranging from the understandable to the egregious, but that's ok, say the panelists. 'Even if a film or media product is not very accurate, that becomes a teaching moment,' says Arvind Singhal. 'So there's room for everything.'"
Avatar is a modern fantasy, not science fiction. There's barely anything plausibly speculative about Avatar. The few pieces of plausible fiction (cold sleep, avatars, aliens, and mechs) are plot devices, not plot points. All of the actual plot is implausible speculative fantasy.
need I say more?
All the worlds a stage, and I'm the guy running the lights...
Is not to inspire future scientists. It is that every kid with an IQ of 90 or more is told that they can be a doctor, lawyer, or scientist, and allocated resources as if they could, when only the 1st percentile or less can actually fill these positions.
I don't see how 'movies' solves this problem: instead, it makes people with Wal-Mart skills, think that they *should* have a better lot in life, and resent that something is wrong if they don't, and spend money trying to get degrees that are meaningless, and so forth ad infinitum.
I know Avatar inspired me to be a one dimensional money-driven corporate manager.
The media also strongly discourages participation in science when it depicts it as a field that only socially awkward people would ever have an interest in. We really see a lot more of that, coupled with a strong push for everyone to become some kind of businessman, than we see of movies that might encourage children to become scientists. Welcome to American culture.
Palm trees and 8
We need Scientists of ALL kinds.
You know what inspires kids to do something? The same thing that inspires people to take jobs outside of McDonald's. Money. Pay them assholes. Until you stop canceling projects and giving the banks bailout money to reward fucktards to game the stock markets instead of making something, expect more bullshit coming out of the schools. And why not? Who the fuck wants to be a starving scientist?
Oh and i almost forgot - fuck you slashdot.
If the average 9 year old can't write a better script, there's zero for humanity!
Going off-topic but let's be clear, Camerons magnus-crapus got the box office record because of hype and ticket prices on 3D screens. If only it were possible to unsee that retarded movie and get a refund...
Some time ago, violent movies were supposed to be what caused violence. Now they generally blame videogames. Whatever, if that was true, smart movies should make smart people too. But to be honest, I think movies are just education. Like any educational tool, it teaches anything. It can teach good, bad, right, and wrong. If people decide to do good, bad, right, and wrong, smart or dumb, it mosly takes a lot more study, education, effort, time, and encouragement, from parents, teachers, friends, family, neighbors, government, and private groups. So do movies contribute to make smart or dumb people? Yes, about a 0,01% contribution towards that end. A lot more is needed.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Are there any good sci-fi movies that have a positive view of the future? Most recent things I've seen paint the world / galaxy as some sort of war-torn dystopian nightmare.
Best I've found so far was AstroBoy... I'm even renting out ST:TNG, though it's annoying because I feel socially compelled to filter out some of the softporn situations :-P
...but I am paying attention. Honest.
otherwise we are doomed on security. every part of password can be verified stand alone in every movie.
but then again, we will have awesome webcams with infinite detail zoom
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
Of course the movie has to be good, and a good movie gets children thinking about stuff, and there are TV shows that inspire. A recent post on Nova (PBS) discusses biologist Caryn Babaian inspired by The Professor on "Gilligan's Island" and she said, "He has a lot of authority... he was a chemist, he was a plant-person, he knew about ethnobotany and different cultures. But he was always wearing this shirt and khaki pants and the sneakers. So I thought, 'That's authoritative. That's scientific...' "
Hey, whatever works. There are shows that inspire me though they never said I also had to deal with unreasonable people and unrealistic projects, long boring meetings, gripes, etc.
mfwright@batnet.com
Can Movies Inspire Kids To Be Future Scientists?
Comics, TV and movies have been generating interest in science and engineering for generations. Do you think there was a shortage of NASA engineers in the 1960s who had not read sci fi comics or watched sci fi shorts/serials in the theaters when they were kids? Do you think there was a shortage of engineers in the 1980s who were not avid Star Trek viewers?(*) Do you think there is a shortage of engineers today who were not fans of Star Wars, Blade Runner, Aliens, etc when they were kids?
;-)
(*) How many Motorola engineers were trying to open the Razor flip phone like a Star Trek communicator during the Razor's development?
We're talking about kids here.What grabs there attention and fires their imagination is different than what we see. Even if you don't think Avatar will inspire future scientists, some other film or program might and probably will. Has Slashdot so soon forgotten that why the Milwaukee School of Engineering awarded an honorary doctorate to James Doohan?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Movies may have scientists, but no real science (as in the scientific method). Show kids THAT in a classroom. Show them how powerful it is. Make them experience personal achievements by applying science.
The last time something really influenced kids was getting men on the moon. A movie is just generally background noise and cheap entertainment these days. I certainly wasn't motivated to do something based on a movie I've seen in my childhood, but I was motivated by programming in LOGO and discovering how powerful a C64 really was.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Why become a scientist in the US today? You go to school forever, spend years in a dead-end postdoc, and then can't get a tenured position. You're then 35, a decade behind in starting your career, and overqualified for most jobs.
How about we inspire them with actual science rather than wasting their potential trying to condition them to be passive consumers. The latter is the ultimate goal of popular entertainment. This just sounds like an attempt to use science as a fig leaf.
Kids get an expectation of "COOL, lets do Science!" and end up with boring, complicated, and badly taught stuff that turns them away instead of getting them interested.
How many folks (of a certain age) were so blown away by Tron, that they wanted to do something with computers? Having the PC revolution right around the same time really helped, but there was a huge influx of geeks thru the 80s and early 90s that helped fuel Silicon Valley.
...is putting a man on the moon. Show them every cool science demo you can get your hands on. Get them involved, even if it is a little bit dangerous.
Many Slashdotters have admitted, in various articles over the years, that Mr. Scot (the chief engineer of the "Enterprise") motivated them to become engineers. He out-engineered all the adversaries (of the Federation) by making the "Enterprise" nearly invincible.
Indeed, some of the engineers who were inspired by Mr. Scot participated in the construction of the first, non-functional, prototype of the space shuttle and gave it the insightful name: "Enterprise". This prototype was used to test the ability of the spacecraft to glide back to earth.
Kids that choose science as a future are doomed. Why would you want to be scientist anyway? Besides, the portrayal in movies is absolute nonsense. Another lesson these brats need to learn is Hollywood is fake! Its like deciding to become a lawyer based on watching Perry Mason episodes!
The work is not always as great as you first imagine, the reception is unappreciated no matter what you do and the pay is poor.
Let kids become doctors, lawyers, and business people. They will be smart and have lots of money! America gives a rat's ass about science. If you discover something, it will be stolen and misused. Look at the Wright brothers. Wright had to sell out to Curtis because the gov't broke their patents.
Someone else will make a fortune based on your discovery. Howard Hughes made a fortune based on the oil drill bit, and had very little to do with its actual design and funding. He bought it from someone else.
My high school science teachers taught us how to be past, not future, scientists. We badly repeated experiments with known outcomes to confirm models about which we didn't care. I would not say it was very inspirational.
There just might be something to this future scienist idea.
With the possible exception of the "blowing stuff up" aspect, I think Myth Busters is one of the best programs for inspiring future engineers and scientists.
The movie "Weird Science" inspired gazillions of teenage boys to become scientists.
So, to answer the question, yes.
Good *science* movies are much harder to find. There's some vaguely interesting scientific issues raised in films like 2001 - where did life come from and what would extra-terrastrial intelligent life be like? Solaris perhaps? And film's like Lorenzo's Oil show science in a positive role. I did like Apollo 13 though for showing the engineers doing the almost impossible to save the astronauts. Can anyone help me make a list of others?
This is not a sig
Well, I'm a scientist now and am so for two reasons:
1. Bill Nye. Because, honestly, who wouldn't want to have your own theme song that repeats your name 'BILL BILL Bill bill bill!' (And, really, the guy was legitimately cool)
2. Weird Science. It was always going to be way easier for me to synthesize the girl of my dreams than win her.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
Documentaries, yeah.
Two things go into making a scientist. The first is surviving a rigorous academic program. The second is developing a natural wonder.
In the case of these types of movies (which are quite entertaining, btw), the emotional component is so strong that it really supplants any kind of genuine wonder. Perhaps the seeds of that kind of wonder are really innate in (some of?) us. In any case, the wonder really needs to be put aside a good way through much of the (initially mundane) academic program, which is about 5% wonder (gets better as you go), and 95% business/industry. (Heck, perhaps the damn work ethic too is largely innate, or else inscrutably "nurture".)
So, to summarize, maybe we enjoy a little wonder in the beginning, then it all gets SHELVED as e dig into our programs, and we just hope there are some shreds remaining when we get out*. And these syrupy types of emotion might encourage someone to fill out an app, but it won't carry them past the first 3 pages of a dry text book.
These people who think feature films are going to generate scientists have been smoking their own underwear. Probably not bad for the box office, though!
*And, the other major problem is that most of those who DO make it through have had the wonder beaten out of them by the modern scientific apparatus, becoming, themselves, wonks. Still, for those who cultivate some wonder, learning science is its own reward.
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Venture capitol also had something to do with it. Not to mention Berkeley and Stanford. The VC investments in SV is more than 60% of all VC money spent on new business. Higher for tech business.
Fuck Slashdot.
I'm not sure if I was "inspired" to be a scientist by film, but I would say that the movies "Ghostbusters" and "Back To The Future" certainly provided me with a lot of motivation for "Science!" (with the exclaimation point). I'm not sure, though, if those movies actually helped shape my interests, or whether they just resonated strongly with my existing interests and proclivities. And those were two of the most popular films of the 1980's, so it might be more correct to say "Awesome movies inspire people", which is one of the general reasons for pursing cinematography as an occupation (I'm sure GB and BTTF also inspired a lot of comedians and film students, too).
And it's not like Ghostbusters or BTTF are particularly accurate protrayals of the scientific or engineering process, either. I'm not sure I'd want to see an "accurate" film about the scientific process, though: wouldn't it be just a long montage sequence of all the reagents that didn't work; with a gripping B-plot on writing a grant proposal. That said, most films about a particular field or occupation are heavily dramatized. Haven't several people commented that shows like CSI use incredibly compressed evidence gathering cycles; and that in the real world it takes a month or so to process DNA evidence, and most crime scenes are either inconclusive, or heavily contamiated by the victim's dog before the cops ever get there.
As a very broad, crude generalization, introducing the reality of occupations, like science or business or the technical fields or agriculture, into movies is probably desirable, more as anti-inspirational "warning" than anything else. Most of these jobs are boring most of the time, so stay away. But if we present the jobs honestly and with reasonable fidelity, then the one-in-a-thousand that isn't turned off by it might actually be a good fit for that job. The film doesn't have to "inspire" people, just broaden their horizons so they are at least aware of the opportunities available.
Anyway, this is what happens when I ramble on caffeine.
What's nearly as bad is the science career advice children receive at school. Almost no teachers anywhere have ever met a professional scientist. Even the few who might be married to one have no real idea what their partner does on a daily basis and they are in no position to advise on either the suitability of a child to try to become a professional scientist, nor on what that child could expect from a career in a scientific job.
The single biggest failing of science is that it does nothing to prepare the next generation for work in the field. Meaning that those children who leave school to attend a university science course, assuming it will be like the science they did in school, have one hell of a big surprise when it turns out to be completely different from what they expected. The surprise is nearly as big as the one science graduates get when they discover, in turn, that working as a professional scientist is again, nothing like what they thought it was when they were students.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I saw The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai at the tender age of 6 and immediately set out to build my own oscillation over-thruster. Didn't get very far... but the seeds were definitely sown.
You can't win by fighting popular culture. Today science and technology are very, very low on the pop culture totem pole. Drug dealers aren't that great, but they score better than scientists. Hip-hop rappers are way, way up. Rock stars are out. Supermodels aren't cool, but pseudo-idol teens are in.
And none of them are getting A's in school.
Avatar is a horrible examine of a pro-science movie. The scientists for the most part got kicked off the planet in the end. The chief scientist for the Navi cause died. No, I don't think it is inspirational to present the idea of dying on a far off planet in a feud with a paramilitary force.
Face it, in the US today isn't respected to be a scientist. It is respected to be a drug-addicted rap singer that can't use the word "woman" but instead says bitch constantly. It hasn't been respected to get good grades in high school and to spend time studying. There are popular songs with phrases like "Should I be a straight A student? If you are then you think too much." This is the culture we have created and what we are going to have to live with for the next 20 or 30 years.
Look at Asian families where if the kid brings home a B they are beaten. The kid knows it, studys and doesn't get the beating so there is no awful social stigma. In the 1950s white middle class families did the same thing which is why we have science and technology companies in the US today. As a society we have lost that motivation and it is going to hurt.
After seeing Tron: Legacy I wouldn't doubt seeing a surge of students changing their majors to computer science or at least visual effects. That movie is damn inspiring.
Forbidden Planet --> Voyage to See What's at the Bottom --> Star Trek --> 2001 --> submarine nuke --> Fermilab main control room crew chief. ymmv.
I remember after seeing the first Indiana Jones I was interested in archaeology and medieval history. All I could find in my school library about archaeology was a 30 year old book in a discard bin. All my teachers could tell me was something I could study after finishing a college degree. Sure, there was history: timelines and name lists from 1492 onward.
I'll always be left to wonder how my life would have turned out differently if I had someone in my life at that time to help me explore the interests provoked by that movie all those years ago. Probably poorer. Maybe happier.
Public education in the USA is an employee factory. That's its history. That's why it was created. That's what it's for.
We will never succeed in making education not an employee factory until we succeed in bringing about a society that does not depend upon a majority of the working age population being employees. We have the technology to satisfy our basic needs with less per capita investment of time than at any point in recorded history.
"How the White House secretly hooked network TV on its anti-drug message: A Salon special report."
... kid to read up on science and scientific issues .. and drugs and soda ... and wars ... and diet and .. [you got funding?]
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2000/01/13/drugs
"President Clinton's drug czar, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, some of America's most popular shows -- including "ER," "Beverly Hills 90210," "Chicago Hope," "The Drew Carey Show" and "7th Heaven" -- have filled their episodes with anti-drug pitches to cash in on a complex government advertising subsidy."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/04/movies/04flyb.html?_r=1
Pentagon's New Goal: Put Science Into Scripts
From drugs to science to a positive view of military life, its all been emotional blended in for generations.
If your movie gets too "historical", funding and support can stop.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
it's our job to inspire them. I've always been peeved by the assumption that 'oh, they are too young to teach that.' Expose them to the ideas, and let them decide. The other problem I see is we have a lot of educators (in the US anyway) who went to school to learn education. These people have been exposed to very little levels of math and science, and as such dismiss it often as difficult. When you hear something is difficult for the first 16 years of your life, why would you want to go into it?
Heck, Spiderman comics first got me interested in chemistry (I stumble across some old issues where Parker was actually a scientist). Show kids that their favorite hero likes science too and who know where it could lead.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
I was inspired by The Core. :)
Just getting them to spell "lose" and "loose" correctly would be enough..
Most kids who watched "Back to the Future" identified with Marty McFly. I did, to, but I also aspired to be Doc Brown. It was a major inspiration in my pursuit of science.
However, it ALSO gave me aspirations of pursuing science even if it's outside of the traditional routes. Thusly I didn't care to put up with academia and only do "garage science", exploring pet crackpot hypotheses in my spare time. So maybe we should take things like that into account.
a recent article:
'Business leaders have cried "scientist shortage," but scores of thousands of young Ph.D.s are laboring in U.S. university labs as low-paid, temporary workers, ostensibly training for permanent faculty positions that will never exist.'
http://www.miller-mccune.com/science/the-real-science-gap-16191/
The article shows there is no scientist shortage in the US, but a shortage of jobs for scientists, and so "If the nation truly wants its ablest students to become scientists, Salzman says, it must undertake reforms — but not of the schools. Instead, it must reconstruct a career structure that will once again provide young Americans the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career."
make movie , sue anyone that downloads it for added profit and you want kids to be scientists for that reason? NOT gonna happen. Don't bother. ...arrest or kick ya off the net.
Science is dead and dying cause of the movie industry. People hear movies they go its all crap now.
Watching older stuff might make em scientists for the sci fi and special affects but nothing new is inspiring.
It costs too much now ot get movies and music that can inspire legitely....and if your pirating they gonna sue
AND WTF is up WITH GAY PLUGINS at websites lately....
Pretty sad when i have to add line breaks ina text editor cause your edit box won't let me...
but Wargames made me want to be a hacker.
So did Tron.
Be seeing you...
I have heard many times, for many different nerdy professions stories or surveys that show countless nerds were inspired to their professions by some work of fiction. Yet, I rarely hear that about non-nerdy professions. I have never heard a police officer point to a cop movie as a source of inspiration, nor a fireman, nor a teacher, nor an athelete, nor a soldier... OK, I can think of one exception to this, I have heard some pilots point to movies, but other than that it always seems to be nerds. What gives?
I wouldn't try to inspire people through movies that you watch maybe in the theater once, maybe rent it once, possibly see it a grand total of two or three times. People aren't always watching movies. However, a lot of people watch a generous amount of television, something where you get a persistent storyline that spans seasons. You don't just get into the characters for an hour or two, you get into them several times a week. Just think, how many people wanted to get into forensics, much less learned that forensics existed, after shows like CSI got really popular? I can't count the number of people in my anthropology department that joined because they started watching Bones and really wanted to be a forensic anthropologist.
The Andromeda Strain has already been mentioned; I would also count Contact, Mon Oncle d'Amerique, L'enfant sauvage, Gorillas in the Mist and - with a grain of salt - Evolution as great science movies.
I do neuroscience research for a living, and I can definitely say that I wouldn't be where I am today if it weren't for Hollywood. I remember watching computer-glorifying movies like "Flight of the Navigator", "Tron", and "Star Wars" when I was in first grade in the early '90s. That was an era when we didn't have a VCR at home and going out to the movies was something of a treat. Since today's elementary school kids all have iPods to take to school and DVD players in the family minivan, it's easy to remember that it wasn't that long ago that movies and computers weren't so commonplace. I grew up in a middle class, college educated family, and we had only one television in the house and didn't even have a family computer until the mid '90s, except for my father's Apple IIGS that he used for work. To say that movies inspired me would be an understatement. I was a Star Wars nut for a long time, and Flight of the Navigator made a huge impression on me, too. Funnily enough, I only saw FotN once, but remembered vivid scenes from it for over a decade later (and when I rewatched it last year I was amazed how accurate my memory was).
By second grade, I was teaching myself how to program BASIC on the school DOS 4/286 boxes. Heck, in third grade I taught the teacher how to use Applesoft Basic on her IIGS. Learning the math to write programs put me into advanced placement math the next year, and by sixth grade I was teaching the other students how to write programs to solve their algebra homework. By high school I was doing database and IT work for the local university that I later graduated from.
Somewhere in there, my parents took me to see "Apollo 13". That spurred another interest in space physics and engineering, which led to reading books about the disaster and spaceflight in general. Eventually, my 7th grade teacher loaned me her copy of Kip Thorne's book "Black holes and time warps". Bottom line, I ended up with a degree in physics. IT work paid well, but was boring as hell, so I made the switch into doing real science and worked my way up to lab manager.
... most people want to work to live, not live to work. And unless you are really good/passionate about science and have the work ethic you're not going to get anyone into science.
The real issue is cost/benefit and status, if you want more scientists you have to pay them like you do doctors or bankers. That's the truth, you have to make science a high status job.
So kids want to be eight foot tall and blue?
So in the next 20 years we are going to have a bunch of scientists needing grants to study vampires and werewolves?
Kids have the science gene first, that causes the emotional response to such films. Science is about thinking about how stuff works, it doesn't need any external catalysts to kick it off. (Preaching to the converted here I know bit hey).
:)
Mind you, hoping the cricket highlights tomorrow morning will inspire my little boy
We need someone to make Science propaganda films for 10 year old students again. The Bell Science series produced by Frank Capra and starring Dr. Bunsen Honeydew (or the prototype of his character) were terrific. If you had any sort of interest in how things work an exposure to these was a huge recruiting tool.
The science in these films was pretty forward thinking too.
Here's a clip from one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7ksqNV1IiE
Movies are about ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Even superheroes are ordinary people "infected" with extraordinary abilities. Scientists and intellectuals in general are never shown favorably. Even when they have good intentions, they tend to do the bad/wrong thing. It started with Frankenstein and it never stopped. Actually it started with the Bible and Eve wanting to eat from the tree of knowledge. Eve was the first scientist and where did that get us? We got kicked out of Paradise. Avatar has nothing to do with science. Maybe to the /.ers who are interested in "how did they make this'. To the average person/kid the only thing it inspires is to fight heroic battles while flying on top of dinosaur like creatures. This can easily be accomplished with the purchase of the video game version of the movie.
If you want to make kids smarter, turn to a different channel. Propagandist lies is bad brain fodder.
Not if they are in any way realistic.
Kind of like how kids who love video games decide they should study computer science... only to discover that the two are completely unrelated? If someone decides to pursue a career as a scientist purely because of Sci-Fi movies, they're setting themselves up for failure. Experience and breadth should guide career choices, not movies and video games.
I always thought that was a pretty good movie to inspire kids.
I just hope that more hot young females are inspired by the fine example of Christmas Jones to become nuclear physicists.
Sometimes books are better because movies make us more ADDish. Michael Chrichton achieved the same effect in his Jurassic Park novels. They might not be completely accurate, but did they inspire...
Who is telling them that? Last I checked, we were telling our children that they should aspire to be either businessmen or celebrities.
Don't forget lawyers. THIS is a respectable profession. ^^
Movies will more likely inspire kids to jump to unsubstantiated conclusions and think that their shortcuts can save the day.
Of course they can, but if they'll be in for a disappointment if the primary reason they're going into science is because of exciting movies they saw. Actual science, be it education or research, is usually quite unlike what's seen in the movies.
I sure do know one way to make a scientist out of a kid,I would ask him to watch the IRONMAN and become a blacksmith first. He will turn out to be a scientist out of sheer frustration.
I'd bet most people have been in a school and a hospital, and met at least one lawyer. Have they ever had the least bit of resemblance to 90210, ER, or LA Law? I'm in finance, and every time I watch anything that's meant to depict it, it's so ridiculously off target I can't watch it. I'll bet the rest of you have jobs that are similarly unrealistically depicted on TV.
They sure worked on me. I wanna be either a sci-fi actor or a scientist.
But books can.
The original Frankenstein movie with Boris Karloff certainly inspired me to pursue science, even though I grew up to be an engineer rather than a research scientist it planted a seed that shaped my life.
Not the sequel, the original. Saw it when it came out, read the book, and that's part of the reason why I sit here now doing what I do for a living. Wish that movie had never been made. /disgruntled.
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
In Disney's 2008 "Tinker Bell" Tinker Bell is an engineer. She spends much of the movie fighting "her destiny" because, basically, the "tinkers" are not cool. The general theme though is that she has a powerful gift for engineering and that she should recognize that. The climax of the film is Tinker Bell frantically producing blueprints while schematics and equations float around her head. She saves the day, wins the admiration and respect of the community, her friends and her self. She also earns the privilege of participating in a group activity she though the was going to be excluded from because she wasn't cool.
Personally, it chokes me up a little bit to imagine 6 year old girls saying, "When I grow up I want to be an engineer just like Tinker Bell."
"I've been a working scientist for 20 years, and its a great job." - by joe_frisch (1366229)
on Tuesday December 28, @07:03PM (#34693164)
What a great answer - &, especially after 20 yrs. worth of it on your end? You're probably QUITE good at your job... mainly because you love it!
(You've really "got it made" man... going to work for you, isn't like you detest going, because you're "into it")
I hear that, totally.
(It's also a BIG part of why I stuck around computer programming & network administration roles, rather than going into mgt. - it's a LOT OF FUN, interesting, & at times, frustrating (but when you solve the hassles, it's as good as money (well, almost)).
APK
P.S.=> However, the money, better money? It's in mgt. roles, & it's only a matter of time before I go that route eventually anyhow (it's where I came from anyhow, before comp. sci. related roles)... I remember that I just didn't like it as much as actually being where "the rubber meets the road" & making stuff work/happen is all!
Talk's cheap, as the saying goes, but... not when money does the talking! Sometimes, you have to go to another role, to get ahead (faster), is all... apk
I don't think the children of tomorrow want to be techno-babble spewing flunkies or plot devices, as scientists are often portrayed in the movie.
Did your stupidity do you in again? See the URL below:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1925236&cid=34675566
Depends. Does the mountain weigh less than a duck?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."