Speaker 1: The first thing you need to do if you want to work out if something is worth it, specifically a PhD in chemistry, is you need to start with the end in mind. When I did my PhD, the last thing I did was think of what I would do after I created this massive awesome book of knowledge. Now the problem is too many people get into chemistry because firstly they like learning chemistry, which is completely understandable. That's why you would do it at university and go on to do a PhD. The thing is, is that every single job that I've ever had is not like learning chemistry. It's like a job and so you've got to start with the end in mind and think about the sort of jobs that you're going to get after your degree. So the first thing I would do is head over to something like this Indeed or Seek or another kind of career guide. I would start googling the sorts of careers you can do with a chemistry PhD to see if any of them tickle that interest. Tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle. So this is from 2022 so it's a little bit old but not too old. You've got what is a PhD in chemistry, you've got all the different sort of like types of chemistry which is great but this is what I'm interested in. I go all the way down here and I want to know the money right? Because ultimately and the reality of this is a lot of people value their skills based on how much they can earn with those skills. So after doing all this effort going through an entire research project and PhD and producing your thesis, you want to be well rewarded. So I'd go here and I'd look at technical writer. Okay with a PhD I could become a technical writer and I could earn $57, $373 per year. That's not too much is it? That's not enough for me to do all of this effort. Anyway let's have a look at the rest of them. $65. Okay and this is US dollars by the way. Starting to get there. Chemical engineer. Now the thing is is that with my chemistry PhD I could not be a chemical engineer. I was like a physical chemist so this means that if I wanted to be a chemical engineer maybe I should do a degree, a PhD in chemical engineering. Pattern attorney. $154,000 US dollars a year. Okay I like that money but also I thought I would become a pattern attorney at one point and I actually went to a number of different pattern attorney offices to see what it was like and let me tell you it was snore boring. It was so very very dull that I was like I don't care how much money you pay me I would not want to spend the rest of my life in these little cubicles looking over the pattern attorney stuff, looking over the pattern applications. No thank you. So this didn't stand out to me. So this just tells me like you know starts to give me that little inkling of these are the sorts of things I can expect with a PhD in chemistry. So I would look at that. The second thing I would go to is just look for jobs that currently exist. So if you're pre PhD this is so very important. I just wish more people would do this. So go to something like seek.com. This is the Australian version and just type in chemistry. This will tell you whether or not there are jobs out there that you want that actually require a PhD in chemistry because quite often you can get a load of jobs that you actually want with an undergraduate, with a master's in chemistry. So I would start with the end in mind and do this. Let's have a look. I want to go through all of these. Production chemist. Does that interest me? It's in Melbourne. Melbourne's a little bit too trendy for me. There's lots in Sydney, Melbourne but research chemist, minerals, graduate chemist, junior lab base role. So none of these are actually sort of like you know utilize your PhD background. So this one requires me to have a PhD and they want to pay me 56 to 63 dollars an hour. That's not so bad. Is that what I want to do though? Postdoc research fellows. This is in a university. You'll find that there's a lot of PhD scholarships. There's a lot of postdoc stuff. The thing about a postdoc is it has to be very very closely related to your PhD. Otherwise you don't stand a chance in hell in getting called for an interview. So all of these are very very specific. I would need to know about computational materials chemistry and have a PhD in that to get this postdoc. Dulux group. Dulux. Dulux group. Research scientists. R&D associates. So I've gone through these and I'm starting to think do any of these actually capture my interest? Are these things that I would want to do for a long time to earn money to live? And to be honest with you a lot of the things that I saw after I graduated from my PhD I was like this is very boring. I wouldn't want to work in you know a quality assurance lab. I don't want to work as a lab chemist. You know I enjoyed learning the things. So this is how you make sure it's worth it for you. Go out and make sure that the qualification you're getting actually opens the doors that you want to be opened so you can make your life better. In fact I'm not sure I would have done a PhD if I knew this was on the other side of it. But there are reasons for doing a PhD beyond just this job sort of like outcome and I'm very pleased I did a PhD in chemistry but it took me a number of years to get there. This is what I mean. So since graduating with my PhD in physical chemistry I have become an explosives chemist. I have had my own startup. I've also worked as a science writer for Cosmos magazine, for Science Alert, for the Royal Institution Australia RIRs. So I've had a number of different jobs and I've actually enjoyed every single one of them for different reasons. Right now it's this. It's my YouTube channel and I'm just so amazed that I've been able to use my PhD to end up here. I absolutely love what I'm doing at the moment and let me tell you is that when I've jumped from job to job normally it's because the job that I've got isn't satisfying me in some way. It doesn't have that perfect combination of being something I really enjoy, being well paid and something the world needs and I think it's that overlap of things that makes something your purpose or the reason you get up in the morning and importantly you enjoy it. So for example science writing I really liked but no one was paying good money for it so I had to stop because there was no future in it. So in that case I moved on to start my own startup. Once again I really liked it. There was actual money in it but the world didn't need what I was offering them so I had to move on and now I feel like I've just found that perfect overlap of all of those three things. So you can shortcut that process. That took me you know 10 years after my PhD to make sure that I actually ended up with something, a job, a career, a purpose that I actually actually loved and so you can shortcut that by just understanding what it's like going into a PhD. Do the searches, make sure that you understand what the options are when you come out of a PhD and the skills that you develop are so so useful it's just a lot of people don't know how to market themselves outside of their PhD so let's talk about that. I hear it all the time from PhD chemistry graduates saying I don't know what I would do if it wasn't PhD chemistry related stuff. Now let me tell you we all end up very very institutionalized like we're behind bars and we're like I don't know what I would do if I wasn't in chemistry. The thing is is there's so many things you can do it's just we're really bad at marketing ourselves and also our ego gets in the way because we're like I've got this many papers, I have this research experience but the outside world gives no shits about that at all and so what happens is is that we misalign our offering to the world with what the world wants in industry or outside of academia. So for each and every one of these jobs that I've been talking about you need to make sure that you delve into the skills you have specific for that individual job because otherwise you're just screaming into the world that you think are very important and you've been told and led to believe that are very important in academia and the outside world's like so and that is where a lot of frustration comes in after your PhD and I see so many people saying a chemistry PhD, a STEM PhD isn't worth it because your skills aren't valued outside and I think we need to take a look at ourselves and say this is now how I need to market myself to the outside world. They don't care about publications, they don't care about the amount of grant money you've brought in what they do care about is how you can make their money or how have you provided value to all of the stakeholders in a project. It's all of that sort of stuff we need to get used to sort of like marketing ourselves as if we're going to see value in our PhD in chemistry or our PhD in STEM because otherwise it's just going to be a frustrating journey for you. So let me know in the comments if your PhD in chemistry has been worth it and if you like this video go check out this one where I talk about whether a PhD is really worth the effort. It's a really great watch, go check it out. you