How do you deal with the fact that a good fulfilling science/math career cannot give you a good lifestyle?

How do you deal with the fact that a good fulfilling science/math career cannot give you a good lifestyle?

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Why can't it?

Let me break it down to you. OP is a highschool dropout. Feels bad for not going through. Feels the need to justify his mistake: "Oh well I wouldn't be able to lead such a luxurious lifestyle, the way I currently do, in my mums basement"

>basically le smart but lazy meme

no, nice try though autistic sherlock. I'm a math major

What I am saying is that when you achieve the amount of education you planned, you're making half of what someone who majored in economics makes.

then go and become a code monkey
who the fuck cares that your greedy ass isnt satisfied?

did you think mathematicians are the most paid people on the planet or something? of course some jobs make more, you could have googled that before you started your major

do you think money is the only thing that matters in life?

>autistic sherlock
That's a tautology.

not at all, I did this for knowledge. But the fact that we're just going to die and not even be remembered makes me sometimes believe it would have been better to just go into business and get rich and have fun

you know math professors can easily make 150k/year? is that really not enough? what kind of lifestyle are you hoping for

it sounds like you have virtually 0 confidence in your ability to produce anything over your lifetime

you probably should drop out/switch majors while you still can

Are all mathfags this retarded? Do you enjoy math? If yes, then who gives a fuck you aren't going to be remembered, as long as you enjoy doing it. If no, then why then just go and do shit, become rich, fuck bitches, whatever.

>we're just going to die and not even be remembered
sounds like you just suck at what you do man
git fukken gud

People just like you and I will take our place when we die.
They will display the same range of emotion, suffering, and fulfillment from life.
You won't be around to appreciate the fruits of a more modern civilization, but you can appreciate the fact that they will, and that's objectively just as good.

>objectively
you mean subjectively
or equivalently, who the fuck cares? just git gud and do math

>just git gud and do math
You mean just do math and git gud.

and is commutative

Professorship is perhaps out of my reach. I'm a straight A student at an Ivy, but there's a lot of bright minds here, many better than I can ever be.

It's not lack of confidence, I just know I can't be the next big mathematician, and that's fine. Sometimes though, I wonder if I really have made the right choice.
Like I said, I think I'm a good student, but there are many great minds in mathematics today.
I guess that is one way to look at it. Hard to accept though

I don't think so. You git gud by doing it. You don't git gud and then start doing it

I didn't say "git mediocre"
I said git fukken good

kinda like this
youtube.com/watch?v=MnEzbt0oQAg

stop wasting time and go study

>dem dopamine
Imagine a world where being a scientists/mathematician/engineer is just as, or even more rewarding than playing video games. We could have had the ToE, habitats on major planets in our Solar system, fusion reactors, etc.

>Professorship is perhaps out of my reach.
>I just know I can't be the next big mathematician

>It's not lack of confidence
Yes, that's exactly what it is. Hard work might pay off, but no work will certainly never pay off. Go read Atiyah's advice for young mathematician or something, even him and Serre both thought they wouldn't make it either.

Why are people this mad at OP? There is nothing wrong with wanting money and comfortable life style for studying a difficult major like pure math. 90% of Veeky Forums are engineers anyways because it's pay well even though they seemed more intersted at science more than engineering. You guys don't have a right to blame OP.

because he's a self-defeating cuck who doesn't understand how the world works or what his degree is for

Pretty sure I understand the world, I love math, but I can't get a great fulfilling job unless I'm near genius. How am I self defeating for that? I went into the major knowing this, but it does make me comprehensive sometimes. Professorship is getting increasingly harder

lol. Getting straight to the point would be an understatement

advice: go talk to your professors and ask how they felt at your stage

reality: most professors are old baby boomers who are dying and slots are opening up

>baby boomers
>dying
Implying those motherfuckers will ever die.

>math major

you do realize math majors have like zero job opportunities unless they studied something applied, right?

like economics.

I came from a relatively small uni to a large UC for my PhD. You have no fucking idea how much money these professors are making. some of them never even show up except to teach and they are pulling 150K/annum average. this is a tenured prof. of course. assistant professors make something to the tune of ~85K with a massive pay bump when they are tenured.

to put it in perspective, a guy who just retired from our uni was making 330K / annum as a professor. that is his university salary and does not include any money he made off of patents or anything.

ill give it to you that becoming a professor is incredibly hard, especially in the UC system, but study the right subjects and you will have a fat paycheck in industry doing science. math is not one of them unless, like you said, you go int finance.

news flash, pretty much no one is remembered, including the executives of big companies. I literally dont know what you are talking about. did you think you would be the next einstein only you would have millions of dollars and be fucking women left and right?

I never said I would have good job opportunities. In fact, I think I stated that I expect to go into something completely irrelevant. Yes, I would love to be a professor, and I will try, but it's a narrow job.

Nowhere in this thread did I say I think Im genius, in fact, I think I stated the opposite in the thread. Sure, we won't be remembered, but I would like to make a contribution to the future generations

again, i dont understand what you want from this thread

you opened with an expression of disappointment that math wont "give you a good lifestyle"

then you expressed how you feel about not being acknowledged for what you accomplish and how you could have made an assload of money doing something other than math

now you are expressing indifference to being remembered and having a relevant career

The final answer is: do math. I dont know what else t tell you. if you want to make a contribution and dont care about the other stuff then do math and publish it. being a prof is going to be the best career to do that.

if you want to do math, then fucking do it and work hard, NOW
if you don't want to, then stop and find something else NOW