If you're swimming in the ocean, it doesn't matter how deep the water is. All you can do is swim.
–Steven Wright

A job for a troublesome son.

The father of a problematic son goes to his friend in the government and asks for help.
Father: "My son doesn't study, doesn't work, has no degrees, qualifications or skills whatsoever. I would like to find him a job so that he can leave the house and start doing something, perhaps learn a trade."
Friend: "Well, I've got some positions here in the government that he could fill. He could get 200K per year and be an adviser to the minister."
Father: "God, no! That is too much. He will get spoiled and will not learn how to value money."
Friend: "Could pay him 100K to be my assistant."
Father: "Still too much. Can we find something for 40K?"
Friend: "Well, that is harder. We've got only a few of those positions. He would have to be a professor, instructor or researcher, and he would need a PhD degree for that."

Sad, but true. Some stats on the market for young scientists in America are available here.

The Corporate Professor

http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2012_Spring_intro.php

A Doctor, a Lawyer and a Mathematician about Mistresses.

"There are three men in a bar, a doctor, a lawyer, and a mathematician ... and they are discussing whether it's better to have a wife or a ... mistress. The doctor says, "It's much better to have a wife because you work all day, you come home at the end of the day, you want to have a steady, settled family life." And the lawyer says, "No, no, no, no, no. It's much better to have a mistress because maybe for the first 5, 10, 20, 30 years you'd like to have a steady family life, but if you change your mind, it gets incredibly complicated, so it's much, much better to have a mistress." And they're going back and forth, they can't agree, so they turn to the mathematician. "What do you think?" And the mathematician says, "It's better to have a wife and a mistress. And the reason is, your wife will be afraid to ask if you are spending time with your mistress and your mistress will know that of course you have to spend some time with your wife. Which means you can spend your time doing mathematics!"

Source: Joel Cohen, http://bigthink.com/ideas/19346

Who needs all of this education, anyway?

This is the big joke played upon you:

"Higher education is even more susceptible to the law of diminishing returns than most fields. Every extra year of higher education costs you more in terms of foregone income in return for less in terms of added value"

I know. It's not funny. For you! But...

"PhD programmes are life-enhancers for professors: they give them acolytes to massage their egos and relieve them of undergraduate teaching while also doing much of their research for them. But they teach you less than you could have learned on the job and a PhD may leave you unemployable. There are far better things to do with your 20s than acquiring yet more letters after your name."

Full text at: http://moreintelligentlife.com/node/3829

Scientific Process - Perceived vs Actual

So true...

MAY 4, 2011 BY PAUL VALLETT

Good advice

Advisers are there to remind you that a PhD is not easy.
"But all you need to do is to believe in yourself, make a plan, and go through with it."
See:
http://youtu.be/8rDgE9d3GXE