[vitaminj]

There is a third way, one in which research is not a full-time endeavour, but is still a part of your life. It's certainly not for everyone, and is not "pure" in the sense that you still need to make a living doing something with market value. I generally work 3 days in industry and do research the other 2 days in a university setting (a PhD program).

My work is in the broad area of my research (e.g. power systems), and while there's no direct overlap, they aren't entirely different spheres. I quite like my work and I find the industry contact important, so while I could easily live on 1-2 days of work, I've chosen a work/research split that is more biased towards work. Having said that, as a freelancer, I have a fairly flexible arrangement and some weeks I don't work at all.

The key advantage of this approach is that I am not at all bonded to the university. I don't have to participate in the politics of academia, grant funding, the pressure to publish, progress reporting etc, which I see the other grad students struggling with. I suppose I still have to massage the egos of tenured professors, but I can live with that (as a consultant, I'm always massaging peoples' egos anyway). The bottom line is that having independent funding insulates me from most of the pain of being a PhD student and gives me the freedom to pursue ideas that may lead to dead ends.