Academia as a career choice?
I found this TED talk interesting ("How to make hard choices", Ruth Chang).
I suspect we all came to our current career paths (in science research/academia) through passion and idealism (the reasons we create ourselves) rather than through a rational decision based on the pros and cons of the path itself...
Why else would we pursue a path so fraught with challenge, instability, isolation, criticism (peer-review), and lower remuneration than many of our friends who decided against a PhD...
I guess the question is 'now that we've chosen this career path, how can we continue to make it work for us?'.
