Interview with Applied Math Instructor Dr. Joel Nishimura
What Dr. Nishimura likes best about being a professor is that he gets to control what he thinks about whereas most jobs a worker has a boss that tells them what to do and what to think about. He finds it enjoyable to talk to students and that working as an applied math professor has a self serving ego component in the sense that not everyone esteems mathematics to be highly useful or even a subject to easily converse with anyone, thus the workplace in which he is in mathematics is viewed as highly important and interesting. In return he finds this very rewarding. What he finds the worst about being a professor is that he makes less money than most of the colleagues that left from being a professor and have gone to industry jobs. He also dislikes that even though he can see how his work has an impact on his students, there is an abstract view of his impact on society. He also dislikes how the job can at times become highly stressful because of research, and research that has to b