Summer and salaries

I hate summer. Really I do. Walking to school makes me sweat like I've been through a marathon. Wish I could transform myself to a fish and live in a bowl. But then I would need to get someone to feed me. Clean my bowl. How troublesome. Knowing me I might do something crazy too like jump out of the bowl and end up experiencing a near death experience too. Eek.

I was planning on enrolling in a summer project this semester but then the co-ordinator said you couldn't do that if you were a full time honours student, you could only do it if you were a part time honours student. Turns out today my supervisor tells me that you can enrol in one, that's no problem with the school. Then she tells me 4 students have. And I said well obviously they didn't ask the course co-ordinator. Argh. Stupid university ambiguous rules! Hopefully I can still do one, less workload next semester. I realise I'm competing with some really smart arses. There was this one person who had 7 publications upon completion of honours. Not sure if he recieved the university medal or not, but probably yes. I'm sure he will end up being a PhD doing research for the rest or most of his life. Not sure if that's good or bad, but anyhow the best thing is to always compete with yourself. Besides, I'm not doing that bad. It's good to be a generalist, i.e. one that has multiple skills, in today's society rather than a specialist, i.e. one that only has a single specialised skill. Actually I would say it's essential to survive. If the area that you're working in experiences some economic disaster at least you can always branch out into a different area.

The education system in today's society is flawed especially in the way salaries are paid. Why would I say that, well look around you, the brightest people are not necessarily the ones who make the most. My parents used to say work hard so you can get a good job with good pay, and I'm sure everyone's parents have said that to them but it's not true. In fact, a few months back over at UQ where there was a summer research internship thing going on for undergraduates, the PhDs who gave the talk actually said do not do undertake this research program if you want to make money. It was paying about $200 a week, you can probably survive by eating grass off the ovals, okay it's not THAT bad, just really awfully bad. So the students are conditioned to acknowledge that hey, even though I make a slightly pathetic salary, at least I will get something done in my resume. I don't think that's the right thing to do. Heck someone I know who will be doing a PhD soon has said to me she just wants to study and doesn't really care about the money she makes as long as she has her own nice apartment. Do people look upon themselves so lowly (lack of ambition) nowadays??

99% of the honours students who graduate with me will probably be made use of (aka "hired") by someone who wants their skills but not give them the salary they deserve. Then again everyone has their price, so I suppose as long as they are happy, but I know I won't be working under anyone unless we were joint partners.