Re: academia.

Though I'm a dude I can relate to many of these things, especially since I'm also now officially on the market, though this is belied by my continued lack of a web page or any significant social networking presence beyond snarking on Twitter. ;)

I feel that while graduate school gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of cool people and do a diverse selection of cool things, I still fell afoul of the same problems people complain about in industry. At least in the dimension of the work I have been doing, it has been the worst of both worlds. Perhaps it is simply because of being at an American university or something. I guess I shouldn't complain because I've been trained in how to make money at something, in theory at least, but it's not why I went to grad school---it was because it was supposed to be greater freedom than simply going to a Real Job.

I'm still looking at academic jobs but I've become a little cynical about the benefits of academia. If I can't find a job that affords me the freedom I want, why not make money? So I'm trying to be more open-minded about the private sector because of my developing lack of faith.