You can ask a mod to undelete it and close it as off-topic, and then comment with some guidance to better places

The guy was a 17 year old asking about jobs in physics. Why send him off to the one place where job prospects are notoriously described through a veil of insanity?

@dmckee could you undelete this and close as off topic?

I'd like to contact OP and inform them of other resources.

My coworker:

> Matplotlib: the worst plotting library, except for all the others.

@DanielSank Sorry, I was unaware that Academia.SE was a bad resource. For what it's worth, I read it a lot, and it looks pretty balanced to me.

And the OP was specifically asking for jobs in academia.

@knzhou I'd be surprised if a 17 year old really knew what academia is. Physicists can also work outside academia, like DS.

As somebody gunning for a job in academia, my perspective is the opposite of @DanielSank's. When I was OP's age, I continuously read articles about how job prospects in academia were terrible. It'd be a new one every week.

I almost quit physics before I started because of that.

I feel that nobody needs to hear about this even more. The message is already out there.

What OP needs to hear is reassurance that physics is worth studying at all -- at the undergrad level. (Permanent jobs come way later.) And Academia.SE is very good at this.

@DanielSank I'm fairly comfortable saying on behalf of the mods that we're not going to override a user's decision to remove their own content from the site for that reason, especially given that it's not a good, on topic question. cc @dmckee

However, you can certainly look out for when the user posts on Academia and comment there.

Honestly, I don't think that question is going to be on topic at Academia either, but if they post it, we'll see.

Out of curiosity, and being in the same position of 17 and looking for a future in physics, what would you suggest as ways to get closer to a physics career? Or where would you suggest I look for such ways?

I want to publicly state that I love @DanielSank

@BernardMeurer nice...carpet?

@ACuriousMind That's DS's table cloth :)

@DavidZ Wasn't my idea :) Thought I'd try.

@knzhou Not bad, just sort of one-sided.

@BernardMeurer do you want me to send you my QM homeworks

w/ solutions

@knzhou Yet for some reason everyone goes to grad school thinking they'll be a professor.

@0celo7 I want reading material on calc

@knzhou Excellent.

@Ulthran Do you like working with equipment, i.e. in a lab? If so, get experience building stuff. Anything. Electronics, construction. Whatever.

Learn to program too, for theory and experiment. Absolutely essential.

If you can work in any technical capacity at all it will help with physics.

@BernardMeurer read Larson

best calculus book

amazon.com/Calculus-Ron-Larson/dp/1285057090

This?

@ACuriousMind how tf am I supposed to determine the subspace topology inherited by a line from $\Bbb R\times\Bbb R_\ell$

I certainly can't look at every line!

@0celo7 That one?

@BernardMeurer sure

What do you mean sure? That's a yes or no question

sure is

250 USD for a book?

I can't afford that

my physics textbook was $300

You have money

There seems to be a bit of an unwelcome feeling towards homework-style (and beginner) questions. What are your opinions on a scheme like the Math/Mathoverflow division (for research-level questions and general questions)?

@DanielSank I've been programming in all sorts of capacities for years now and I worked in a lab (chem lab) this summer.

'capacities'?

Doing a bunch of different things with it

Ah, I see

Sorry, I also read LotR a lot so I tend to talk like J.R.R. Tolkien (or George R.R. Martin)