I’ve work towards my Ph.D. since 2001 when I started on my M.S. I took qualifying exams and completed my masters thesis. Along the way I lost most of my respect for academic institution. I sat through classes that should have been interesting and challenging. Of course there were one or two classes that were different and enjoyable, but most were boring and pointless. Faculty wasted my time and made me feel like I had simply thrown my money away.

About a year ago, I decided the entire process was completely (instead of mostly) bull shit and I decided that I wasn’t going to waist any more time or money getting a Ph.D., even though I had reached the stage of being all but dissertation. Instead of finding a challenge in academia, I found a world of petty politics, idiots and wasted time.

To satisfy my need for challenges (god knows my job is pointless and simple) I became a tech diver and a cave diver. I’m pushing myself in ways that most people don’t even understand. But fate is cruel, or at least, like to play petty tricks.

Texas has one of the largest karst regions in the world. The entire central and west Texas area is a swiss cheese of caves, some dry and some wet. Still, there is no cave diving going on. No one I have found knows where the divable caves are, aside from one deep tri-mix cave and another cave that has been closed since the 1970s. So, I’ve begun a project to find divable caves and I’ve quickly learned that the volume of data involved will require some level of automation. There are 6000+ of caves, 1000s of springs and those are just the ones that are officially documented.

I find myself talking to the geoscientists and learning that, what I think is a trivial project is a Ph.D. level project in their eyes. So that leaves me with the question: do I get a Ph.D. in a different field, even given the severe burning I suffered at the hands of incompetent faculty that I’m still recovering from, or do I just ignore the academics and do my own thing?