Failing to inspire
Oct. 1st, 2010 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatI'm supposed to be giving a talk to misc year 10 and 11 maths students (that's O' level students, I think, to us ancient types) on mathematical careers in academia.
I have half an hour and I've been asked to cover: "career path, qualifications, University life, experiences, Job Spec, potential salary (the pupils always seems to ask how much people earn!)"
I think I have just written 10 of the dullest slides I have ever produced. My will to live saps just glancing over them, and I have 4 more slides than I have any right to for a half hour talk. I am also torn between wanting to stress that you should only consider a career in academia if you really want to know more about your subject, and wanting to bang the "study mathematics" drum.
But really, is anyone going to be inspired to study maths because I tell them I once worked on a project called "Proof and Specification Assisted Design Environments", that all these jobs want you to have a PhD, excellent communication skills and the ability to self-motivate research and that the pay scale at the bottom starts in the low £20,000 per annum and goes up to who knows what because Professors negotiate their own salaries.
Or should I ignore the teacher's request and just waffle about satellites and orbital debris?
Advice much appreciated, especially advice on what it would be useful and interesting for me (as an academic with a maths background) to tell some teenagers...
I have half an hour and I've been asked to cover: "career path, qualifications, University life, experiences, Job Spec, potential salary (the pupils always seems to ask how much people earn!)"
I think I have just written 10 of the dullest slides I have ever produced. My will to live saps just glancing over them, and I have 4 more slides than I have any right to for a half hour talk. I am also torn between wanting to stress that you should only consider a career in academia if you really want to know more about your subject, and wanting to bang the "study mathematics" drum.
But really, is anyone going to be inspired to study maths because I tell them I once worked on a project called "Proof and Specification Assisted Design Environments", that all these jobs want you to have a PhD, excellent communication skills and the ability to self-motivate research and that the pay scale at the bottom starts in the low £20,000 per annum and goes up to who knows what because Professors negotiate their own salaries.
Or should I ignore the teacher's request and just waffle about satellites and orbital debris?
Advice much appreciated, especially advice on what it would be useful and interesting for me (as an academic with a maths background) to tell some teenagers...
(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-01 04:42 pm (UTC)I take it that he or she really wants you to cover academia and academia only? Not what doors a maths degree can open in the world of work? Because that gives you more scope.
But even if it's academia, I'd talk more about how it doesn't lock you into one path. How you can start with a maths degree and branch out into all sorts of other fields, because maths is the grounding for so many of them. Like your own field of AI, or working with physicists to explore the way the universe works. Or working with mathematical models that can do anything from explain the operation of biological ecosystems to how financial markets work. From economics to architecture; from astrophysics to crime solving (hey, Numb3rs may be fiction, but it's useful for some things ::g::) How about some of the more recent developments in maths that may have hit the news - isn't one of the theorems without a solution always cropping up?
I think a lot of kids think of maths as being something static - you learn it and then you just apply it; you don't actually do any research into it or anything like that because surely we know everything about maths already? It's just ~numbers~. This might be your chance to tell them exactly how maths is evolving and how new discoveries are being made all of the time, as well as give them a taste for how many different disciplines rely on mathematicians.
I wouldn't use your slides to talk about career progression or salary either - if the teacher is right, then those will be the questions that will be asked at the end (I'm assuming that there'll be a question and answer session) and therefore there's no point in wasting some of your talk on those aspects, although I suppose you could talk about career progression as part of your theme on where maths can take them. But assuming the purpose is to get them interested in maths, then I think you want to give them a taste of the breadth of careers that are open to them once they decide to do maths A level and then go to University for a maths degree, and let them know that even in academia, there's a heck of a lot more opportunities out there than they probably think now.
Make it sexy, in other words ::g:: rather than this view they may have that academia = people simply lecturing in a subject that hasn't changed since the first caveperson decided one plus one equalled two.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-04 09:37 am (UTC)