I Traded Grad School for Life Without WiFi

I had planned to be in graduate school right now. Instead, I’m in a place where WiFi is illegal and the nearest Walmart is an hour away. My phone stays in airplane mode—there’s no cell service. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

I graduated last year from the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), where I earned bachelor’s degrees in physics and mathematics. While there I spent a lot of energy making sure that I was doing the exact right things to get into a good graduate school. I planned to get a PhD and then... well, I’d have at least five or six more years to figure that out. But when I stared at the blank graduate school application forms, I couldn’t bring myself to commit to more schooling.

I liked the coding I’d done in classes and research, so I started looking for software jobs. I doubted I’d get a job in a field I didn’t have a degree in, but I tried anyway.

Then, in January of my senior year, I got the offer that brought me here: a software engineering position at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, home of the world’s largest fully-steerable radio telescope.

The observatory, and the surrounding area, has strict rules prohibiting radio-emitting devices because they interfere with the telescope’s sensitive observing work (and that of the nearby National Security Agency site)—hence the lack of WiFi and cell service.

Green Bank seemed like a strange place to live, and the job didn’t match my major, but I accepted because it sounded like a fun challenge. It ended up being the perfect move for me! I help with all sorts of groundbreaking science while learning new skills and drawing from my existing skill set.

My experience is actually quite common. According to the American Institute of Physics (AIP), about half of the physics and astronomy majors in the United States go directly into the workforce after earning their bachelor’s degrees. And most of their jobs don’t have “physics” or “astronomy” in the title!

The problem-solving skills physics and astronomy students learn are transferable to a wide variety of fields. That’s one of the great things about the degree. Most jobs rely heavily on on-the-job learning, and many employers want to hire people who know how to break down problems into their constituent components.

I’m sharing my story with the hope that I can help others find the right path, like I did. The last year of college can be incredibly stressful, with advanced classes, deciding what to do next, applying for programs or jobs, and awaiting your fate. In physics and astronomy, many majors don’t know a lot about options beyond graduate school.