If you self identified as a mathematician, why couldn’t you earn more money being a bartender in Australia while spending your free time doing math and participating in the mathematical community?
I do self-identify as a mathematician. I’ve worked abroad as well, and the amount of math I was able to do while working full-time abroad was a very small fraction of what I’ve been able to do while employed as a graduate student. Maybe I didn’t have enough discipline, but I was usually exhausted at the end of a day and needed the weekends to recharge.
Unless you already have credentials (by which time you’re probably past 30 or getting there, and not eligible for the OP’s advice) participating in the mathematical community is more difficult, because the world is full of crackpots cold e-mailing their proofs of the Riemann Hypothesis.
As annoying as the lost income from being a graduate student in the United States is, I wouldn’t give it up for my proximity to the second or third-tier mathematicians of our generation.
I do self-identify as a mathematician. I’ve worked abroad as well, and the amount of math I was able to do while working full-time abroad was a very small fraction of what I’ve been able to do while employed as a graduate student. Maybe I didn’t have enough discipline, but I was usually exhausted at the end of a day and needed the weekends to recharge.
I think this applies more generally to any intellectual output. There are people who can be intellectually productive even when they have a near full time day job. I’m not one of those people. Academia or a research position it is for me.
I do self-identify as a mathematician. I’ve worked abroad as well, and the amount of math I was able to do while working full-time abroad was a very small fraction of what I’ve been able to do while employed as a graduate student. Maybe I didn’t have enough discipline, but I was usually exhausted at the end of a day and needed the weekends to recharge.
Unless you already have credentials (by which time you’re probably past 30 or getting there, and not eligible for the OP’s advice) participating in the mathematical community is more difficult, because the world is full of crackpots cold e-mailing their proofs of the Riemann Hypothesis.
As annoying as the lost income from being a graduate student in the United States is, I wouldn’t give it up for my proximity to the second or third-tier mathematicians of our generation.
I think this applies more generally to any intellectual output. There are people who can be intellectually productive even when they have a near full time day job. I’m not one of those people. Academia or a research position it is for me.