Entirely changed my computing experience once I stopped using a mouse for everything except graphic design-related tasks. You can learn most of the big ones for your most used apps in an hour, keep a cheat sheet nearby yr PC in case you forget some. Like cooking its an easy skill to build quickly if you're a knowledge worker since you're always in front of a computer anyway.
Love this humorous approach to anti-natalism; Sarah Perry wrote a great book that deals with the topic a bit more seriously and is definitely worth checking out:
yeah the debt is why I'm so skittish about going back to school. I was fortunate enough to come out of undergrad w/o debt the first time, but didn't have enough foresight to use those four years to hone technical skills rather than read Derrida lol
Good point. I'm assuming this problem of letting the ET know a message is being sent can be overcome with certain design choices, such as using a really narrow bandwidth for transmission to mark the signal as artificial (most cosmic radio sources have really large bandwidths).
What sort of clock recovery strategies are you thinking of?
wrt 'waste of time,' i've just heard from plenty of people that employers look unfavorably at candidates who get late starts in careers and have switched from radically different lines of work since it demonstrates 'lack of commitment' &c., not to mention the downsides of doing entry level positions in your early 30s, which is probably where I'd be by the time I finished any programs
If you're concerned about that, then you should start talking to potential employers/professors early before switching. For instance, in my office, we have a guy (about 35) going back for his CS degree to get out of a support role and into a developer role (he has an associates degree, and was hired to do limited IT work and paperwork). Yeah, he'll be older when he finishes the degree, but he's already started getting development work in the office. And the office, staff, bosses all know him and his interest and work ethic.
If you can do something similar with your current employers, that'd be a good way to transition. Alternatively, network and reach out to people. And don't be afraid to use the services of your university when you complete the degree. Your professors there and the staff of the university will be well-connected with industry if you don't go to a bottom-tier university (and even there they'll have something, even if it's only regional connections).
A few reasons--for the last few years, I've mostly worked as a science writer and have learned a lot about the fields I cover at a high level. Although I can write competently about these subjects now, I feel that because I don't have a background in the actual fields I'm covering I am doing a disservice to my readers and am limiting myself as a science communicator. At the same time, it's made me realize how much of the world my brain effectively treats as magic for lack of the basic knowledge that comes with just an undergrad degree in almost all STEM fields. Finally, when I look at career trajectories in media, i've realized that financial incentives are not great unless you make it to the top 5% of those employed in this field and many of these positions aren't something I'd want to do anyway, much less work my ass off for decades to get there.
So I guess from STEM, I'm looking for:
-financial stability/mobility in career
-understanding of the world at a deeper level
-the chance to actually be work at something that can change the world, rather than just writing about the people doing this work (arguably, media does change the world, but from the inside I'd say I'm being generous by saying that 2/3 of media is entertainment 1/3 actually results in change).
Well, in my view, we need science writers who really get the science (and who can really write) worse than we need more STEM workers. I say this because such science writers are far more rare than STEM workers are.
But you don't necessarily want to be that writer. You're somewhat unlikely to get the financial stability that you're looking for out of it (much more likely to get it in a STEM career). But if you were interested in being that writer, the world could seriously use you...
