I'm an academic. I did my PhD in fluid dynamics and now I work at the University College London in an interdisciplinary department looking at patterns of human behaviour in urban settings.
Asian countries produce eight times as many engineering bachelors as the United States, and the number of U.S. students graduating at the masters and PhD levels in these areas is declining.
In PhD, my topic was Stage Techniques in Sanskrit Drama - theory and practice. I wanted to combine my drama training with Sanskrit drama, which has a very rich history in literature.
I grew up on Harvard Square and I watched 50-year old men walking around with green book bags slung over their shoulders going for their fourth PhD, never having left the world of academia to alleged reality.
By that time I was hooked on a career in academic research instead of one in the pharmaceutical industry that I had originally considered in deciding to get a PhD.
Many of my memories of my mum are of her in the bath with a book, utilising her limited spare time by simultaneously washing and studying. She left school with no qualifications and now has a PhD. If I seem like I am bragging about this, I am.
When I got my PhD, it was a time when there were just no jobs for PhDs. Period. PhDs were getting the lowest paid technician jobs, if they were lucky, in any kind of science.
I came from a two-parent household and my father is a PhD from west Africa, but at the same time I grew up five blocks from where Obama lived and five blocks from the projects.
