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G'day mates,

Just thought I'd toot my own horn and say that I got offered a job two days ago, as a Research Assistant to a one Dr Jo Arciuli - A Psychologist here at CSU Bathurst (Australia).

I've been hanging around the Uni for the last two weeks doing a research project with Professor Terry Bossomaier getting Text-To-Speech and Voice-Recognition systems working on the Nintendo DS (with great success, I might add). And just two days ago at a private conference about the possibility of future games development, Jo approached me and offered me to work on a research grant under contract for a year, studying and analyzing the stress patterns in the English language to better represent pronunciation of Text-To-Speech applications. (I know that doesn't sound like much, but it involves quite complex Neural Networks and tonnes of data to analyze, tweak, compute, and finally to come up with a generic algorithm that will do it in sub-real-time)

It's quite a large offer, since it means that I can work part-time with them whilst finishing my 3rd Year at Uni, gaining both my degree, and (well-paid) industry experience.

The kicker is, if I take this job, then I could screw my marks over (I have a current GPA of 6.38; which is pretty high up), but it also means that I could end up as an Academic for the rest of my life.
Prof Terry was even talking about me getting my PhD - That was a shock! I hadn't even thought about going for Honours, let-alone another 4years at Uni for a PhD...

So anyhoo, just thought I'd let y'all know.
I'm excited, but scared at the same time!

Awesome! Congrats Jess!


Would that be a good thing or a bad thing for you? I'm not sure how to interpret it hehe.

Well, that's the thing - It's a 50-50...

If I'm an Academic, I'm involved in all the cutting edge research, and can take on a particular field and pretty much be the person to talk to about it.
But then again, I have to take on a particular field, and be the only person to talk to about.

See, I always planned my future as having a good programming job, and then pushing up to lead-programmer for some big projects. Always in the Games industry (of course), and as such, I could be on the front-lines of some pretty kick-arse stuff... Just not research kind of stuff.

It's hard to explain, but in summary, it's a double-edged sword!

I see what you mean... I wouldn't know what to do in that situation. I'd personally rather make games, but then again, to be the leading authority on a subject would be a pretty nifty way to be remembered. I guess it's really a matter of where you'd rather be ten years from now. This industry could possibly make you richer from a monetary perspective (also a double-edged sword), but then the innovation department is probably going to be less intriguing. But then the academic career path could lead you to just about anything, and you could still probably be involved in games as an academic... who knows, maybe you'll develop C++10x or some new interpretation of HFSM or something, and you certainly couldn't do that as a game developer... where would you get that sort of time? I dunno, that's a tough spot. But for the immediate future, congrats on the new job

It's certainly a sticky situation, but I've got a couple weeks to decide, so I'll be right.

I think that ultimatly, I'll seize the oportunity, and take it on with arms wide open...

Cheers for the encouragment, thought