Questionaire for profesionals

[pandinus]

I'm currently writing a paper over careers in science, and my choice was arachnologist. part of the assignment is that i actually interview some and ask questions. So if you would humor me, and at the same time, inform the rest of us, i would deeply appreciate it if you would answer some basic questions. please remember, this is for PROFESSIONAL arachnologists and those CURRENTLY studying to become proffesionals ONLY.

1. please state name and job title. (ex: Dr. John Smith PHD., professor of cheese at Bob Jones University)

2. what are the requirments for this field? this includes

• required courses
• minimum/ average GPA
• special tests
• experience required
• Job opportunities
• starting sallary
• etc

3. What do you like most about your job?

4. what do you like least?

5. would you reccomend this field? explain.

6. what do you feel is the outlook for this field?

7. do you have any advice to those starting out or considering this field?

thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions about this. i deeply appreciate it.

-John

 

[pandinus]

anyone???

 

[Brian S]

Well I'm no professional. I'm just a peon amatuer hobbyist

 

[skinheaddave]

While there are a great number of very dedicated amateurs on here and even a handful with formal training and/or numorous peer reviewed papers to their credit, I know of only a couple professional arachnologists with accounts and none are frequent contributors. You would do best to contact them directly through email or by phone.

Cheers,
Dave

 

[pandinus]

While there are a great number of very dedicated amateurs on here and even a handful with formal training and/or numorous peer reviewed papers to their credit, I know of only a couple professional arachnologists with accounts and none are frequent contributors. You would do best to contact them directly through email or by phone.

Cheers,
Dave

well, that's my luck isnt it:wall:

anyone have a link to any info from question 2?

 

[skinheaddave]

well, that's my luck isnt it:wall:

How so? I think you will find there are very few school assignments you can complete merely by posting on these forums. Not that these forums don't have a use in that respect, of course. I would suggest you start here:

http://www.science.marshall.edu/fet/euscorpius/images/gallery.htm

Some are professionals, others aren't. Some will be useful to you and others won't. I suggest you start sifting through them to find the useful ones. Then do enough background research on your topic and their research so that you are not wasting their time by contacting them. For example, since they will all have a PhD in a science field, you should be able to find your GPA etc. requirements for graduate work online. Asking about a salary is in poor taste and in this case somewhat hard to say because it is hard to define where the start is. Is a master's student with a grant to work on a project a professional? What seperates them from a postdoctoral fellow with the same grant? An associate professor? etc. etc. So basically your interview, by the time you get there, should focus only on those things which can only be related from experience. These are likely to stray from your questions but this is also where the real benefit of the exercise is likely to lay.

Above all, please try to be one of the people who graduates from college actually knowing how to use the library, search the internet and do research beyond asking the gal in the next row what she got. You would be surprised (perhaps not) how many people did not.

Cheers,
Dave

 

[Specialmias]

1. please state name and job title. Student

2. what are the requirments for this field? this includes

[*]required courses- Calc 2 + all other basic bio requirements of organic chemistry (CHEMISTRY HELLL) and whatever other things your university asks.
[*]minimum/ average GPA 3.0ish
[*]special tests - Your personality is tested by department
[*]Job opportunities- Not many
[*]starting sallary- 28k+ (With a grad degree...)


3. What do you like most about your job?
Don't work in the field yet, just starting to get to know the people as an intern at the Smithsonian. It's a great field for discovering things as our understanding in arachnology is relatively low.

4. what do you like least?
No Job ops. You must know someone to get an education in this. If you're looking for a "school" to teach you the field you'll be disappointed.

5. would you reccomend this field? explain.
You have to REALLY like it. If you can stand being treated as a medschool student undergrad and moving on to a field getting paid alot less when you could be in another field for graduate school. Take it. If not it's not for you. I've seen too many people complain about how much they hate their job at the zoo/museum/etc because they didn't know what was involved.

6. what do you feel is the outlook for this field?
Not good, the economy is very very bad atm for research money. People in "popular" fields like medicine are struggling for grants, imagine those in things deemed "useless".

7. do you have any advice to those starting out or considering this field?
Get to know who's who and talk to who you can. Know people in entomology first, they can point you towards people who are in "arachnology".

 

[pandinus]

Above all, please try to be one of the people who graduates from college actually knowing how to use the library, search the internet and do research beyond asking the gal in the next row what she got. You would be surprised (perhaps not) how many people did not.

Cheers,
Dave

oh yee of little faith.
i assure you, this is not my only source of data on this paper. It is one of several.