<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I write for my school’s paper and I’m interviewing people from various levels.</p>
<p>What does a HS diploma mean?
What does a college degree mean?
etc…</p>
<p>You could interpret this question as…Why get one?</p>
<p>I’d greatly appreciate if I could get some opinions on what obtaining a doctorate means to you.</p>
<p>Thank you very much for your help.</p>
<p>Several things (in approximate order of personal importance):</p>
<ol>
<li>It means I’ll have the opportunity to teach the subject I love at a high level.</li>
<li>It means I’ll have the opportunity to research the subject I love.</li>
<li>It means my ideas and the research that backs them up will be taken seriously by my peers (who are currently my instructors).</li>
</ol>
<p>It also means that:
4. I’ll likely spend several years looking for a permanent job.
5. That job may well be in a less than favorable environment.
6. The pay may be abysmal.</p>
<p>But… see 1 through 3!</p>
<p>Is that why you wanted to do it? To find out new things about the subject you love? or is there more to it?</p>
<p>Not just “find out” in the undergrad sense of learning something new from a book or a lecture, but actually to discover new things, draw new conclusions from old evidence, and then present and teach the material to others.</p>
<p>That’s really what its all about - research, publish, get criticized, research, revise, publish… it never ends! And hopefully along the way you’ll inspire a few members of the next generation to come along and keep the cycle going.</p>
<p>And sometimes you can even make a difference on an international level. One of my inspirations, Dr. Brian Rose, is not just a professor at Penn and a well known (i.e. top guy on the planet) archaeologist of Bronze Age Troy. He is also one of the leaders in negotiating treaties to help ensure that cultural heritage materials stay with their countries of origin and to enforce existing laws against looting and “black market” sale of those artifacts.</p>
<p>(As you might have guessed, I’m going into Classical Archaeology.)</p>
<p>What opportunities do you think you would get if you’re going into Classical Archaeology?</p>
<p>Seems like a fairly underappreciated field.</p>
<p>^^ hey… then don’t question too much on what getting a PhD means to us! 
But I’ll tell you my reasons for doing this:</p>
<p>1) Unlike the rest of my family, I’m doing this for respect/fame, not for fortune. Whenever they say “You’re going to live in poverty?” or “When are you going to get a real job?” I tell them, “I accept cash and checks.”
2) I want to inspire people, young and old, to care about my field- Jewish history- especially certain targeted groups that can benefit a lot if they just learn a little more.<br>
3) That said, I want to work in museums and educational fields.
4) As WilliamC said, just doing research on subjects that you’re really curious about and perhaps want to write a book on it…
5) A job that’ll let me stay in the academia.
6) Working with some of the top professors/historians in the country. </p>
<p>Generally, some of these things are huge deal to us because we’ve admired the professors’ works and there’s nothing like being able to meet them face-to-face and learn from them. Be that Super Professor 2.0.</p>
<p>There are two main job paths:</p>
<p>1) Professor
2) Museum Curator</p>
<p>In a lot of cases they overlap as with Professor Rose here at Penn. </p>
<p>Classical Archaeology also overlaps with Ancient History and Classical Philology (Latin and Greek), bumps into Near Eastern Archaeology, most of modern Europe and Britain… There is a vast amount of work to be done in the old “Soviet Eastern Europe”… </p>
<p>My personal interest in the lifestyles of the poor and unknown in Italy. So I’ll be spending a lot of time in the archives and artifact storage in Naples trying to piece together what was found where in the taverns and upper floor housing of the towns around Vesuvius. </p>
<p>Its actually a pretty happening field - there are a couple big international conferences each year (a couple thousand attendees each) plus countless specialized get-togethers. A lot of places to publish articles… and the really good folks (like Dr. Rose) get to be on the History Channel!</p>
<p>a phD is the highest degree offered for any major. Ironically, obtaining a phD doesn’t mean you come to an end of your study. It’s just the beginning of your research career.</p>
<p>Personally, I’d love to stay in academia. The corporate world is icky (to say the least lol). But I’m not limiting myself to that per se, because I don’t particularly want to teach, but rather to focus on research (perhaps Federal research since my interest is networking/security particularly in authentication/biometrics … maybe encryption/cryptography as a fall back). </p>
<p>I’d love to be at the top of my field, not necessarily for notoriety but knowledge-wise it’s something I’m extremely interested in and would love to pursue as far as possible. My research will probably not yield anything MAJOR but it hopefully it’ll be a crucial incremental step to something new (rather than fixing a flaw in something old), that’s my hope.</p>