Whitman grad with Ph.D. plays online poker

After spending six years earning a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience at UCLA last fall, 29-year-old Elena Stover chose a career that might, at best, be termed a remote application of her field. She plays online poker.

Stover grew up in Bethesda and is a 1997 graduate of Walt Whitman High School. She did her undergraduate study at Johns Hopkins before heading to UCLA, where, by the time she had finished her degree, she had become "disenchanted with the academic system."

Her mother, Ellen Stover, contacted me after the Los Angeles Times featured Elena in an article under the headline, "Universities are offering doctorates but few jobs."

Elena said she got the idea of online poker from a UCLA counselor -- who must be praised, if nothing else, for thinking outside the box -- after confronting the moribund job market. She moved to Oakland, hired a poker coach and is earning enough to pay the rent.

I asked her to explain her decision. Here is what she said.

"There was definitely a financial element to my decision. I was fortunate enough not to have any student loans to pay off, but there is no real money in academic science until you get a tenure track position. And even then, professors are constantly trying to secure government funding for their research and their employees. It's a situation where there are too many people vying for limited resources. And again, that is assuming that these professorships are even feasible for new Ph.D.s to attain; one of the points emphasized in the LA Times article was that record numbers of doctoral students are entering and completing Ph.D. programs, but there are fewer and fewer academic jobs available for them, and that issue is being ignored by university faculty and administrators.

"My decision to leave was based on a combination of all these factors, as well as a general dissatisfaction with the amount of work required (it's not a "9 to 5" job where you can leave your work at the office for tomorrow; to be successful and competitive in science you pretty much need to be working around the clock) and the lifestyle limitations that result from that, as well as the arrogance, insularity, and often closed-mindedness that characterize many of the occupants of the ivory tower. With poker, I am able to set my own hours and work independently, and I can see a more direct relationship between the amount of work I put in and the success I achieve."