Re: vert. paleo paths

[Phil Bigelow <bigelowp@juno.com>]

I'll add that most people that I have spoken to on this subject often say
either of the following things:

PhD candidate with mainly biological background:  "I wish I had received
a better background in geology before I started my PhD."

0r:

PhD candidate with mainly geology background:  "I wish I had taken more
biology courses before I started my PhD."


There's probably a  moral to the story in there somewhere, but at the
moment I'm too tired to figure out what it is.

<pb>
--
"We recognize, however dimly, that greater efficiency, ease, and security
may come at a substantial price in freedom, that law and order can be a
doublethink version of oppression, that individual liberties surrendered,
for whatever good reason, are freedoms lost." - Walter Cronkite, preface
to the 1984 edition of George Orwell's _1984_.



On Wed, 03 May 2006 00:47:22 -0400 Michael Habib <mhabib5@jhmi.edu>
writes:
> I do not have much to add to Andy's excellent post, but as a PhD 
> student that reached paleo via a rather different (and unusual 
> route), 
> I thought I might serve as an example of the diversity of 
> backgrounds 
> that can lead to paleo work.
> 
> My BA and MS both came from UVA, and they were both essentially 
> focused 
> in conservation biology (though the BS was rather general).  There 
> is 
> no focused paleontology program at UVA, nor any real paleo faculty.  
> I 
> worked under an advisor whose expertise is in applying 
> macroevolutionary analyses to broad-scale conservation issues, and I 
> 
> found ways to merge that sort of work with my growing paleo 
> interests.  
> I took (and taught, during my MS years) whatever organismal courses 
> 
> were available, but I picked up a lot of useful information from 
> courses that would not seem to be applicable to a paleontology 
> background at first glance.
> 
> The punch line is that, as has already been suggested, there are 
> many 
> potential paths to a career in paleontology (and some of them may 
> seem 
> unlikely at first).
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> --Mike Habib
> 
>