Unbalanced Vision

Sometimes I have the bleakest view of academic research life. In a room full of PhD students wannabes, the graduate student tutor ended the workshop with something like, "The good thing about an academic research career is that you will have the most autonomy in what you produce; but--you won't get to have nice cars". That is just profoundly sad. Unfortunately, this is not the only dark side of it all: You are basically on your own; you lead a solitary life. It's most unlikely to get a funding, and in the end, you might end up doing studies that people have already done ages ago. So, first do a research on "a gap in the market". Sigh...