I have a friend who also didn’t want to do a Ph.D. in astronomy because of the time commitment. She had a REALLY hard time finding a job, even though her MS in Astronomy was from MIT. Another friend who is pursuing her Ph.D. in astrophysics did a Master’s first because she found that almost all the jobs in astrophysics are academic positions. She used the TA opportunities in her Master’s program to evaluate whether she would be ok with being a professor as a career.
Based on those anecdotes, your hunch that it will be tough to find jobs in astronomy seems right to me. I have no idea about meteorology, though.
What I can contribute is that my mom was in school for 2 decades. She decided to switch from public health to education when I was 7. She’s a single mom with three kids. She went back to school for a teaching certificate (1.5 years at night while working during the day). After teaching for 3 years, she decided to get a Master’s in Elementary Education, which took 4 years of part-time course work. Then she got a specialists certificate in Gifted and Talented–that took another 2 years, I think. After that she started a Preparing New Principals program–training for teachers who want to become principals. Not a degree, but required for advancement in the Palm Beach County school system. That took 2 years. Once she became an Assistant Principal, she started her doctorate. She was able to apply some of her Master’s and other professional development coursework, since it was from the same university, but it still took 5 years. While working on her dissertation she woke up every morning at 5 to write for 90 minutes before getting my siblings up for school.
We joked that between the kids growing up and moving out and her lack of homework, she wouldn’t know what to do with herself once she had the doctorate. She didn’t–now she teaches night classes in the education program at the local community college.
Two lessons here: (1) it will be hard work, but if your true goal requires the advanced degree, go for it, just be willing to go to school part time. (2) Don’t be a single parent if this is your plan–my mom would have a lot less gray hair if she could have told her spouse to deal with dinner/getting the kids to school/earning at least some of the income while she studied.
Good luck!
