Originally Posted by
Amir Allam
If you can get full support (fairly common in the hard sciences), then I advise that you go to grad school, get a degree or two, have a ball. I can't think of a job that can give you more flexibility to not just train constantly, but also to live in an analytical headspace wherein you're dissecting every action with the goal of continually improving your life. Grad school is a trajectory, a teleological system that readily complements martial pursuits. In addition, it is really difficult to get rid of a shitty graduate student who isn't *too* shitty; the time-consuming process is more like starving a plant of sunlight than putting foot to ass.
I know a guy who started jiujitsu when he moved to LA for grad school. After a rigorously scientific but difficult social year spent in the world's most superficial city, he burned out and started eschewing science in favor of grappling. He began training upwards of 5 hours per day, and working more like 3. Somehow he managed to barely pass his qualifying exam, and in a stroke of divine coincidence his advisor went on sabbatical for a full year immediately afterwards. Guy trained like a maniac; I barely saw him in the office but he'd show up to teach classes with black eyes from MMA sparring.
Anyway, the point is that you can have a stable (albeit small) income, freedom to train when you want, and very little oversight if you pick a good advisor.