SubArcticTundra

A summary of what methods of thinking each profession requires.

I think it can be a good personal growth exercise to try out a job in one of the listed categories that you aren't naturally strong in.

Sorry for the confusing title.

I'm a student trying to establish myself in STEM.

I interned on a team doing ML for a while and when designing networks we'd encounter hyperparameters like batch size, learning rate, or number/width of layers that we'd have to eyeball the value of as we needed a sane, working value, but didn't have the time to play about with.

Then I spent a while on a team doing cellular biology. Again, we'd encounter choices like the selection of medium for cells, the length of incubation, etc. that I'd have no idea what to pick if it was up to me.

Since I'm trying to get a grip in these fields, I'd like to understand why the people I was mirroring chose these values, because to me they seemed completely arbitrary. We didn't get to alter them while completing the project so I never had the opportunity to gain an intuition for how they influence the result and why they selected the values they did.

What should I do? Should I look for the original research papers that investigated these things?

It's manual labour.

I'm a student and it's going to be another few years before I can get a serious job in the field I'm studying. I'm looking for jobs to do while studying to pay the bills in the meantime. I could go and work as a cashier or something but I've been thinking it would be more attractive to pick some sort of skill (eg. being a cook) that I could do to earn money and improve at along the way. Some skill that once mastered pays relatively well. Ideally something intuition-based or hands-on so that I can relax from studying. Also perhaps something you can find a job with anywhere (would come in useful to fill in gaps between jobs for my actual career...) Any recommendations?

Please excuse the quality

I'd really like to study genetic engineering because I find it a cool skill. But at the same time, job positions for genetic engineers are few and far inbetween. So while I'd potentially be good at something few people can do (=high paying). If I studied something like law, I'd be much more flexible geographiclally in terms of finding employment. So I'm wondering whether to aspire to a more common career and take GE as a hobby that I'm studying, or if I should double down on GE and work in a café until I find a job in that. (I might decide I want to pivot away from GE once I learn it anyway.) What do you recomend?

I know depression usually has a grave cause and astronauts have quite an active schedule. But say their family dies. Depression makes you think and perceive time differently. Surely wouldn't it become a risk to the mission? You can't steamroll over it...