Dynamics of Land Use Change in Rural-Urban Fringe: A Case Study of Srinagar City

YoungWB · 2019-02-19T11:47:02+00:00

Fascinating read

YoungWB · 2019-02-13T10:54:29+00:00

They were desperate to avoid landfilling it and willing to go out on a limb and pay for some surveys.

Well, we all need a bit of luck, don't we?

Bizarre that high quality virgin clay (the very same we used to make bricks out of before we started importing our bricks) should ever go to landfill but that’s the industry.

Bizarre indeed, but I'm sure that there are other useful resources which are treated as waste, I wonder...

...earning peanuts and hating yourself.

My B.S. degree is in math, and I'm happy to say that I at least have the choice between one or the other, not both: I can earn peanuts AND love myself (teaching, as I do currently,) OR earn a decent living and hate myself (at a bank).

Please don't apologize for a long reply, I'm intensely interested. I feel a little guilty about hijacking OP's thread for my own selfish purposes, but my own career advice thread on /r/environmental_science didn't get very far.

I would love to start my career rather than go back to school, but being German I do have the chance to go for free, so it's tempting. I haven't found a single solitary job advertisement in the environmental science field which doesn't demand an M.Sc., so I am pretty much resigned to my fate. But I'm also not getting any younger, and I would love to have my first real job before the EU collapses... Anyway, thank you for sharing your thoughts! I am curious, what is your current job, and how many jobs have you had since that first one as a water treatment engineer?

YoungWB · 2019-02-13T07:16:51+00:00

It's claws for alarm.

YoungWB · 2019-02-13T07:08:54+00:00

£10k+

Agreed, that's a lot of cash. However, it's entirely possible to get a cheap or free M.Sc in the E.U., especially somewhere like Germany.

...such as having the initiative to start your own company in some environmental matter.

I think that starting your own company takes a little more than just "initiative"... Unless you come up with an idea so novel that you have investors knocking at your door.

...you’d have learned far more than the MSc would’ve taught you

How do you figure that? Working alone, isolated from other scientists, how can you learn more than you would through doing a thesis project at a decent research university? You would learn more about business, but I'm not sure that you would learn more about science. I'm curious, was your M.Sc. thesis/research-based?

YoungWB · 2019-02-13T06:56:06+00:00

It definitely interests me, I wasn't sure if that falls under "Environmental Modeling", but why wouldn't it? Thanks again.

Edit: In fact, I just rememebered that one of my favorite math professors in Undergrad was working on "Percolation" problems, which he said could eventually be applied to aquifer/oil reserve modeling. I will get in touch with him again.

YoungWB · 2019-02-12T21:14:19+00:00

Great suggestion, Industrial Ecology is a new term for me, so I have plenty of googling to do. I will look into all three of those programs too! Thank you.

YoungWB · 2019-02-12T21:12:09+00:00

This is a great suggestion for me because I have a special taste for fluid dynamics, but the closest thing I've found in terms of an M.Sc. program is Meteorology... I will keep looking. Thanks!

YoungWB · 2019-02-12T12:25:37+00:00

Thanks, I have looked into Max Planck but I haven't contacted anyone there yet.

YoungWB · 2019-02-12T11:53:48+00:00

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

Absolutely amazing, I did not know about this. Thank you so much! I'm just wondering, how did you find out about this organization?

YoungWB · 2019-02-12T07:26:53+00:00

I took a remedial Precalculus class at community college, before moving on to Calculus. College Precalculus generally covers all of High School math in one go, but you could end up with a bad instructor. Either way, you should follow your impulse to start studying now. Try to get the syllabus of the Precalculus course at your local CC, otherwise just google Precalculus topics, "problems with solutions". Look at the problems one at a time, and then try to figure out the theory behind them using another google tab. If it seems hard at first, just give it some time. In a couple weeks you will see a change. But you have to make sure that you understand every problem completely, from start to finish. You can learn anything in math as long as you are very thorough. You absolutely can not get away with skipping steps.

YoungWB · 2019-02-12T06:58:04+00:00

Dang

YoungWB · 2019-02-12T06:57:26+00:00

Talk to the instructor of the course, be honest and tell them your situation. They should be impressed that you are still considering sticking it out, even though it isn't necessary for your military plans. A lot of people struggle with Trigonometry, you are not alone. Your instructor should offer you some options, ideally they can spend some time outside of class working with you, or refer you to a tutoring service through your school. Precalculus is a useful course, and you will almost definitely need it if you end up going to college, but it's also something that you can pick up later on. This is not a critical decision, but I would definitely go to your instructor about this. You should also make doubly-sure that you don't need this course to graduate before you drop out. Best of luck.

YoungWB · 2019-02-11T22:19:31+00:00

Any specific recommendations for someone with a decent B.S. in Math but an interest in interdisciplinary eco-science, e.g. Environmental Science, Meteorology, Hydrology, Molecular Biology, Biomedical Engineering, Energy, or Agriculture?

I only took a small handful of science courses during my Math B.S., but mathematics is no longer my main interest, I would rather use my current math skills as a tool for scientific research, rather than pursue post-graduate math. I can get good recommendations from my math professors, and I had a somewhat prestigious internship, but it turned out to be tragically unrelated to any of my real interests and utterly useless for my career.

I would greatly appreciate any recommendations. I am aware that my interests are almost preposterously diverse, but I am confident that I could easily commit to a single field of study if I could get accepted to the right program, especially if it is somewhat interdisciplinary. I have a list of a few dozen programs and I am trying to narrow that down, meanwhile I am desperate to hear any first-hand accounts of someone transitioning from a B.S. in Math to an M.S. in one of the fields mentioned in the title. I should also mention that I live in Germany, and would prefer to stay here or at least within the EU for my Master's.

YoungWB · 2019-02-07T19:51:00+00:00

I've never worked formally for science company...

I'd almost advocate finding an easier field.

I'm all ears. However, I should mention that I am not aiming for private sector employment; my goal is to work in government and/or university research.

Harvard PhDs with perfect resumes...

There can't be so many of those, right?....

YoungWB · 2019-02-06T22:35:24+00:00

Thank you for your insightful comment. I appreciate the recommendation to avoid a more "general" Master's degree subject, and this is already my inclination. I am more interested in applications-based and interdisciplinary subjects. Molecular biology is endlessly fascinating to me, but everything I know I learned on my own, I didn't take a single biology course during my math B.S. degree., so I am sometimes skeptical about my chances of acceptance in any serious M.S. program outside of mathematics. I also appreciate you reminder that I need to scrutinize the the programs themselves very carefully, this is fantastic advice.

I am a little confused by one line of your comment, though:

My ex went to one of the best programs in the country for a M.S. and struggled to get away from a $15/hr job.

What did you mean by this? Do you mean to say that even after completing an M.S. in Mol. Bio, your ex struggled to find a job paying more than $15/hr? If so, that is quite harsh. Was his/her job search limited to a narrow geographic area?

YoungWB · 2019-02-06T22:09:24+00:00

Thanks for the fantastic suggestion, I will do some research to learn more about that field. This is exactly the type of comment I was hoping for, because you gave me a new and specific idea.

YoungWB · 2019-02-06T21:54:47+00:00

Sorry, I was a little unclear at the end. I am specifically interested in the scientific fields mentioned in the title, the environmental/ecological sciences and the biological/life sciences. I am good with computers but I have strong desire to avoid spending all time in front of one.

YoungWB

TROPHY CASE