Ask HN: How do you moonlight (and career advice)?
I'm a 28 year old 4th graduate student at the terminal end of my PhD (at a top 10 in the US if that matters) in a computational physics subfield (less than a year left). I have a few startup ideas I'd like to try and pursue but the problem is at the end of day I'm completely wiped energy-wise. I am taking a two courses (a grad course in machine learning and time series analysis) which may be a part of the problem but those are two things I've always wanted to learn.
I'm completely dispassionate about my research which I'm really just cranking papers out using well established methods and not focusing on a single problem. I publish a paper and move on to the next thing since we promise different things to different funding agencies.
I've though about leaving my program because I'm so dispassionate about the work. I really just want to build something cool, interesting and useful.
I'm curious if anyone else has been in the a similar situation.