What do other Aspies do for a living

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I am, in a way, the living portrait of a basement-dweller. I live with the family, the parents and siblings, and while it isn't great, it works for now as I don't have the means to get a place of my own (I dream of that). While I receive supplemented income, I am working toward writing fiction. I am a writer, and I will support myself, eventually, with writing. Since I am teaching myself German, Japanese, French, and Italian, once I'm fluent enough, I may take jobs related to language to support my writing. I have a clear focus on what I want.

@labplet: hehe , oh sorry, i didn't know!

in math or computer science you usually divide into theory and practical work. Only later i found out that theory is really cool, and i am also enough skilled for it.

Sometimes i wonder if it is really a great goal to become a good mathematician, i mean, if you are lucky you find some nice formulas, or some great algorithms. But is this really important? Lots of research is not really important. Assume you solved one of the big math problems, NP versus P, and so on, ok and when you solved it? what next?

Sometimes i wonder if i am in the right academic field. Neuroscience, psychology, neurology all sound so important in this times. The human brain, its the only big secret left. Here the new advanced are made. It seems to me so. But some things keeps me from studying this more: First, i don't have any clue of it. Secondly, i don't know if I really would enjoy studying that and doing research in there. Doing experiments, taking aninmals, maybe i am more a paper&pencil guy. Maybe i don't know. Its not easy to decide what is a good academic field for me.

Thanks for any hints and expereinces in other academic fields,
anton

Sorry antonblock but I would rather not give out my exact subject within chemistry, as then I would have a trail of bread crumbs to my lab door. All I will say is that I have done both the practical and the theory side of my subject.

By the way I am male.

Thanks for your interesting answer! But how does theory look like in your subject?

thanks,
Anton

What does theory look like? Good question ?

I would say that a theory is a hypothesis or fantasy which explains the reality (observable facts) as we see them. The creation of the theory is often an inductive reasoning process. The theory then needs to be tested by experiment to establish if it is wrong or not.

For example copper sulphate is blue, it is blue because it absorbs red light. We then have ligand field theory which explains why copper sulphate is blue and why the tetraaminocopper(II) complex is a deeper blue in colour. Maybe you should ask the other WP scientists what they think about what a theory is.

Years ago I asked a retired military officer what type of officer he was when he was in the military. His reply is similar to my reply about what kind of scientist I am. His reply was "An officer type of officer". My view of what I am a "scientist type of scientist, but I have specialist training in chemistry". The thing about being a good (or even average) professional scientist is that you acquire skills such as the ability to think in a scientific manner. Hence I am able to express an expert opinion on the scientific reasoning of people from other fields as long as they are willing to show their reasoning in public.

I'm a student right now. I graduated with a degree in Japanese language. In undergrad, I studied stuff like computer science and game design before settling on the language side of things. It didn't stick for too long, though, and I came back from Japan wanting to do something different.

So now I'd like to go to medical school and become a physician of some sort, possibly a psychiatrist. Whatever the case, I want to be a part of academia and do research of some sort. That's the idea, anyhow.

I've only taken the base level classes like general and organic chemistry, but from my view, theory is anything that is used as an explanation for experimental results. Both theory and experimental results go hand in hand. A great theory that doesn't match the lab results either means the theory is wrong or there was an error in the experiment. Experimental results that aren't explained by a theory can indicate a gap in the theory or the existence of experimental error. Which is which is up to debate. The general idea, though, is that science is based upon testable hypothesizes. Nothing in science is "sacred" and just because a theory is old and well accepted doesn't mean it can't be updated in lieu of new evidence. That's the beauty of it all.

according my Webster's computer dictionary, the definition of theory is


1. Obs. a mental viewing; contemplation
2. a speculative idea or plan as to how something might be done
3. a systematic statement of principles involved [the theory of equations in mathematics]
4. a formulation of apparent relationships or underlying principles of certain observed phenomena which has been verified to some degree
5. that branch of an art or science consisting in a knowledge of its principles and methods rather than in its practice; pure, as opposed to applied, science, etc.
6. popularly a mere conjecture, or guess