[HN Gopher] PhD Simulator
___________________________________________________________________
PhD Simulator
Author : Smith42
Score : 649 points
Date : 2023-07-05 08:39 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (research.wmz.ninja)
(TXT) w3m dump (research.wmz.ninja)
| sarosh wrote:
| Looking at
| https://research.wmz.ninja/projects/phd/rulesets/default/eve...
| provides most of the key 'game loops', i.e.
|
| # idea -> prelim -> major -> 2 figures -> submitted paper
|
| interesting to see the hypothesis about reading more papers being
| borne out:
|
| # increase the success rate as the player reads more papers
| probability: 0.60 + player.readPapers / 100 - itemCount('idea') /
| 20
|
| Also interesting to see that passing the qualification exam
| provides the largest player.hope boost (+10)
|
| Was fun to see the TooManyIdeas random event - now to actually
| get it to trigger.
| lusus_naturae wrote:
| Unrealistic because it doesn't have enough inter-dept. politics
| and other phd/msc students in-fighting.
| drdunce wrote:
| ...and the final step where having succeeded no one actually
| cares and you are now unemployable.
| lusus_naturae wrote:
| Ah yes, the coup de grace. Or you do find employment and then
| find that your major result paper is being challenged and
| have to submit a retraction. The fun is endless.
| eagleseye wrote:
| I notice a lot of negativity and "do not recommend" regarding
| pursuing a PhD on HN recently. That raises the question: Why
| _would_ you go for it?
| sonzohan wrote:
| This illustrated guide explains it quite well:
| https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/
| ikrenji wrote:
| if your family is wealthy and money is not something you need
| to ever think about then, sure, go for it.
| glomgril wrote:
| As painful as it can be at times, it is a truly beautiful phase
| of life during which your main obligations are to become an
| expert in something that interests you and to make enough money
| to not starve and have a place to live. If you are single,
| coming directly from the "broke college student" lifestyle, and
| end up at a university with a good stipend, it won't even feel
| like you are "poor" and the money is mostly enough. But the
| life of a grad student in a large public university can come
| with much more financial instability and heavier teaching loads
| from day one, with less time for slacking off and letting ideas
| marinate. Less so if you are in a field/have an advisor with
| good/consistent funding. The devil is in the details.
|
| Wouldn't change it for the world though, and anecdotally most
| people I know who ended up finishing the PhD feel the same way.
|
| Main shortcoming of the (American) grad school experience imo
| is lack of preparation to join the corporate workforce (in my
| field, there are easily >10x the graduating PhDs each year than
| there are available university jobs). Academia has done a
| terrible job preparing grad students for the harsh reality of a
| non-academic career. Keeping this in mind throughout grad
| school will help a lot -- you can see the difference in non-
| academic career trajectory between people who had a backup plan
| and those who didn't.
| whatever1 wrote:
| 1. If you manage to get through it, you will be a world expert
| in a niche that can be valuable. $$$$$$$$
|
| 2. You will develop the invaluable skill of not giving up even
| when all the odds are against you
|
| 3. You will be able to swim by yourself, parsing enormous
| amount of literature, identifying what is useful and useless
| and solve problems that no one else before you has solved.
|
| 4. Access to academic positions that offer stability
|
| 5. Access to academic network that provide infinite talent
| waveBidder wrote:
| doing a PhD for the earning potential is hilarious. you'd be
| better off getting a normal job, living frugally, and pumping
| as much into savings for the same amount of time
| whatever1 wrote:
| Same can be said for a startup.
| waveBidder wrote:
| the long tail of profit in a startup is wildly higher
| than a PhD. To be clear, I say this as one who's gone
| through a math PhD; none of my fellow graduates make
| significantly more than they would've made bypassing the
| PhD for industry, especially when you consider the
| opportunity costs. Academia is very much for people who
| either prefer ideas or prestige to money.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Well I am bit biased because 2/14 of my PhD class, 10
| years after defending, they are >50M worth, by leveraging
| their expertise.
|
| I can accept the argument that a unicorn startup might
| have higher tail monetary benefit compared to a PhD. But
| a startup job will not open as many research job
| opportunities as a PhD. These are typically the highest
| paid individual contributor jobs in companies.
|
| Of course if managerial track is your thing, you should
| probably not waste your time doing a PhD.
| [deleted]
| Ultimatt wrote:
| > 4. Access to academic positions that offer stability
|
| This one reads like a bitter joke :/ not sure where you live
| for this to sound true to you! But the rest are good takes.
| bityard wrote:
| > If you manage to get through it, you will be a world expert
| in a niche that can be valuable. $$$$$$$$
|
| This depends highly upon your field, the current needs of
| industry, and your own work ethic. For example, if you want
| to write or architect software for a living, a PhD in
| computer science really doesn't get you much. Neither is it a
| good idea to go for a PhD just because you can't think of
| anything better to do to further your career. But if your
| goal is to make new discoveries in a field you are passionate
| about, then that would be a different story.
|
| Also I have met a lot of PhDs who are absolutely not experts
| on anything at all, except for knowing how to thrive in the
| socio-political academic system by being "book smart," and
| writing bullshitty articles/papers.
|
| > You will develop the invaluable skill of not giving up even
| when all the odds are against you
|
| Are you saying people don't wash out of PhD programs all the
| time? Even if this was somehow true, you don't need to throw
| money at a PhD program to learn this!
| Ultimatt wrote:
| I have a book upstairs I authored that I can go to and be
| reminded there was a moment my mind was like a samurai sword
| for one very specific problem. I solved it by holding a thought
| in my brain consistently for ~3 years straight, and trying
| everything known and new tricks to solve it. I can barely read
| my thesis anymore, let alone understand it, the quality of what
| I did feels almost super human compared to what I've been asked
| of by the world outside academia. A lot of people who never
| spent any time post undergrad think its all nonsense, mostly
| because they meet slacker types. But if you really challenge
| yourself you will produce something singular and at the best of
| your ability. It's extremely rare you get that opportunity and
| support in time to do that anywhere else. Unless your PhD
| translates to commercial application directly! Perhaps artists
| with healthy commissions get to feel it. Startup life is
| similar I guess, but the pressure of commercial success is a
| very different driving force vs intellectual curiosity and
| understanding something new in the world. Post PhD I know that
| if I felt like it I can operate at an incredibly high level
| intellectually, that I choose not to post PhD is also the other
| confidence PhD gives you. Most people I know are pretty down to
| earth post PhD and leaving academia, its ultimately a humbling
| experience especially if you had fun with mental health during
| getting it done. You know you can do something, but you also
| know at what cost to yourself and people around you.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| A PhD is one of those rare periods of life where you are
| completely on your own, navigating unknown territories without
| anybody telling you what you should or should not do, where
| your professional success depends entirely on your own ideas
| and decisions. The reason to try a PhD is that you are truly
| free to test your limits. It can be liberating, but also
| daunting. And definitely humbling.
|
| In some ways, it is not so different from being an
| entrepreneur, as in both cases you are forging your own path
| trying to do something new that a certain community likes.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| Interesting that you point out the symmetry between pursuing
| education and entrepreneurship.
|
| One of the tough things about the education route is that
| winning at entrepreneurship can result in huge tangible life
| changes, but it seems like the effects of winning at
| education is harder to visualize.
|
| I get to put PhD after my name, but what else?
| xyzzy3000 wrote:
| Sometimes hotels and airlines mistake PhDs for medical
| doctors and give out upgrades... just keep your fingers
| crossed that there won't be an in-flight medical emergency.
| Ultimatt wrote:
| Dr at the front?
| 78124781 wrote:
| I actually really like the analogy. You are running a
| "business" of ideas. You are competing against a lot of
| other very smart people who are also trying to start their
| own ideas business and competing for a very limited pool of
| support (funding, postdocs, tenure-track jobs, etc.). The
| professors you are trying to impress in grad school are
| "investors" and having their imprimatur on your business
| will help in both advice and in obtaining more funding and
| convincing others that your business is worth supporting.
|
| If you can run a successful ideas business for 10+ years in
| multiple locations and convince several gauntlets of
| committees to keep supporting you, then there's a great
| deal at the end for choosing this education route--your
| business gets a significant degree of permanent support and
| protection (tenure)! But to get to that point, you have to
| sell your ideas and develop a product that will get buy-in
| and support from others in your field.
|
| There are no limits on how hard or how much you can work.
| There are also no guarantees that working hard will pay off
| either. There's a lot of luck and sometimes the market just
| isn't buying what you're selling at that time, even if your
| product is great.
| Derbasti wrote:
| Very much on point. Where else can you get payed for doing
| essentially whatever you like for a few years?
|
| At least for me, that was actually worth the hardship.
| Although there was a lot of hardship. It was still an
| incredible, and ultimately empowering, experience.
| jacurtis wrote:
| I really love what you said, and this is why I did it too.
|
| The journey is long and hard and there are a ton of bumps
| along the way to complain about. But the overall journey is
| worthwhile.
|
| I think it is similar to marriage. If you meet someone who's
| been married for 50 years, and you ask them how it has been
| they will say it was wonderful and then immediately start
| telling you about all the tough times them and their partner
| went through. THey might tell you how hard it was when they
| both lost their jobs or when they almost broke up 10 years
| in, but they still love the other person and are happy to
| have had them.
|
| To an outsider it feels like these aren't compelling reasons
| to get married, but the married person has other feelings
| that are hard to quantify like the joy of being next to their
| partner during the hard times, the ability to share in the
| joys of that new job, the ability to offload some of their
| stress, or even the joy of waking up next to them each
| morning. Those outweigh the shitty things, but the shitty
| things often get mentioned the most because they stand out.
|
| I think the same thing is true for the PhD. It takes most
| people 3-7 years (averaging around 4.5) to get a PhD. This is
| a significant journey that will have ups and downs. You hear
| all the shitty things on here. But there are joys of learning
| something you truly love at a detail of focus that is not
| possible with any other degree. There is the joy of breaking
| new ground with research and the satisfaction of being the
| shoulders that future generations will stand on with their
| own research. The joy of having a paper published or the
| networking that you get to be a part of. The journey is worth
| it. It is unique for everyone and you are in control. Its a
| ~5 year journey that will inheritly have ups and downs. Do
| you need a PhD to succeed in life? Certainly not. But can it
| be one of the core pillars of your life if you choose to do
| it? 100% Yes.
| mizzao wrote:
| I wrote about that overlap with entrepreneurship here:
| https://twitter.com/mizzao/status/1505529213612609536
| PakG1 wrote:
| Me? I just realized I'm not motivated to get up to work in
| industry. I just can't get up to chase and achieve goals that
| serve the needs of shareholders or any other stakeholders. In
| academia, I probably still won't care about the stakeholders,
| but I'll at least get to explore stuff that interest me. Well,
| that's the hope anyway! Haha!
|
| Reminds me of how many entrepreneurs don't become entrepreneurs
| to become rich. They do it to become free from having bosses.
| Except for me, I'm not sure I'd be able to make it as an
| entrepreneur if I only chase what interests me instead of what
| a market wants. If I chase what the market wants instead of
| what interests me, my motivation drops. Been there, tried that.
| So... here I am. Even though it's painful right now.
| glomgril wrote:
| Savor it while you can. As a former academic, for me the lack
| of intrinsic motivation to "create value for shareholders" is
| the hardest part of working in industry.
| ylow wrote:
| A PhD is one of the hardest, yet most rewarding time of my
| life. Its perhaps the only period where I have the opportunity
| to do nothing else, but "think"; where I can spend many months
| just reading papers, learning and attacking what seems like one
| little problem. It is very hard work, no doubt. Going back in
| time, I would still do it again. And in fact, I have seriously
| considered doing another PhD in an entirely different field.
|
| But still I generally do not recommend people do it. You have
| to be in it, because you are very interested in the field. You
| have to feel rewarded by learning, and by solving problems. And
| also there is a lot a lot of luck involved: advisor, topic,
| ideas etc.
| kiwih wrote:
| I wanted to go into academia to do research and teach, so I
| went for a Ph.D. and got it in 4 years in computer engineering
| without much burnout or issue. I was always cheerful and
| enjoyed my journey. I did have a great advisor and while I was
| at a top-100 university, it was outside the USA and maybe that
| makes a difference.
|
| You should really only go into a Ph.D. because you really want
| to, which sounds tautological but basically you need to want to
| go into academia or get the kind of industry R&D job that
| requires one (several of my graduating colleagues). If you're
| on the fence about doing Ph.D. - don't. There's a very real
| opportunity cost.
| toast0 wrote:
| A PhD, preferably from your destination country, is helpful for
| immigration.
| ncraig wrote:
| Because tenured faculty members at research universities often
| have lovely careers. The road there is long and challenging,
| but the result can be exceedingly rewarding.
| Jhsto wrote:
| If you have a cool idea which is novel in your field, a PhD
| might allow you to work on it without selling out to VCs. There
| are still people to convince, but the time horizon for results
| is longer than with an average seed funding.
| elashri wrote:
| As a current 4th year graduate student, I opened the link and
| found the choice to accept or decline the admission offer, I
| don't know why I clicked decline without thinking.
| ketzu wrote:
| I was secretly hoping it will tell me "you win" when I clicked
| decline.
| moffkalast wrote:
| "That is unfortunate."
| computomatic wrote:
| I did the same. The only way to win is not to play.
| diracs_stache wrote:
| [flagged]
| Derbasti wrote:
| That was my first inclination as well, although my PhD is now
| already a few years in the past. Talk about PTSD.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| reading papers --> idea
|
| This is not exactly how it works in STEM, at least not around me.
| Ideas tend to come from working on real-world projects, which
| then shows the lack of understanding and need for research. The
| project forks to do the research and merge back to implement the
| findings. Thereafter, someone on the team will put it into a
| cohesive academic format, and use it for a PhD. Of course there
| is reading papers and such, but it is not the source of the idea.
|
| edit: I am also curious, how many really stop research because a
| similar or tangential topic was explored? "There can be only
| one"?!
|
| that said, the game is fun! Thank you.
| Frost1x wrote:
| I'd say this is where more engineering approachable ideas come
| from or ideas that might be considered translational (or near
| translational). If you work near the bridge of theory and
| application, this is probably more the case. A lot of funding
| agencies are pressuring even theoretical or basic research to
| look at translational application anymore though (capitalism is
| all about immediate ROI) so I'd say this is increasingly
| shifting towards many research domains but in the past, there
| were a lot of pure theoretical areas you could work on where
| there are plenty of unexplored ideas you could build out _and_
| get paid to do the work.
|
| Application is certainly a great driver though because you have
| a demand signal to look at vs throwing darts at the board in
| work that may never manifest to anything solid.
| sweetjuly wrote:
| > This is not exactly how it works in STEM, at least not around
| me
|
| You might want to take a different approach to reading papers
| then. No paper ever concludes by saying "yeah our method is
| perfect and no further work is needed" [1]. Instead, every
| solution has its quirks and questions which need to be explored
| further. Maybe their method has limitations which make it
| unusable for your applications, maybe they make somewhat faulty
| assumptions that don't always hold, maybe they wrongly ignore
| some technique. Seeing how other people approach a problem can
| often give you inspiration for how to take it another way.
|
| [1] https://xkcd.com/2268/
| PakG1 wrote:
| As a current PhD student, the stress of this simulator felt way
| too real to be comfortable.
| synergy20 wrote:
| nobody is going to take on PhD after running the simulator I'm
| sure about that.
| [deleted]
| 1270018080 wrote:
| The text is too wide. It gave me a headache to read somehow.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| This is as engrossing as MUDs from the 90s!
|
| Maybe an endless generation of MUD + LLM are actually the future
| of gaming
| liendolucas wrote:
| Some time ago I watched this movie:
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416675/ (Dark matter). I don't know
| how accurately captures the essence of getting a PhD, maybe
| someone who went through it can expand on that, but I've always
| wondered if it's actually how is depicted in the film.
| stolenmerch wrote:
| This film is a fictionalized depiction of the real-life 1991
| University of Iowa shooting. A PhD student murdered his
| advisors, VP of Academic Affairs, and a fellow student for
| being passed over for a prestigious prize. There were other
| geopolitical influences on this event that I'd say make it
| unique.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Iowa_shooting
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Goat simulator is better
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| I got the most anxiety when I got cloud storage.
| glomgril wrote:
| This is just brilliant. Brings back memories, some fond others
| less so. Only addition I'd suggest is a subplot involving
| teaching/TAing duties and/or money problems.
|
| Good to be occasionally reminded that slacking off is a
| legitimately important part of the scientific process. Wish this
| view was more popular in the industry.
| mrcaosr wrote:
| This is so sad and pretty much captures the PhD experience.
| nrabulinski wrote:
| Can't get time any lower than 3 years and 12 months but it's fun
| trying to speedrun this
| imsaw wrote:
| Shout out to other last year phd students out there! The storm
| will pass
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Didn't reach the roadblock I ran into:
|
| >Professors demand you do exactly what they want for your thesis.
|
| Also, what qualifying exam? It seems like as long as I was worker
| for my professors, they couldn't give a crap. (Although I was
| quite credentialed, so maybe they didn't care)
|
| If I do get a PhD, it will be on a topic I want. So far, I have
| done that better independently and have gotten a bunch of press
| on the topic without needing academia.
| zelos wrote:
| I think some unis require students to start as an MPhil student
| and then transfer from MPhil to PhD via some kind of
| publication/presentation?
| jebarker wrote:
| That's what I did (~17 years ago). I was registered as MPhil
| then transferred to PhD after submitting a mini-thesis after
| about 2 years. In the end the mini-thesis actually contained
| all the most significant results that formed the PhD thesis
| and the latter just explored some applications.
| whatever1 wrote:
| This is so brutally accurate
| warent wrote:
| I've never gone for a PhD, so I can't relate to the experience of
| this simulation, but found this game was actually really easy.
|
| I completed my PhD in 4 years and 11 months, which feels quite
| reasonable. My "hope" never dropped below 45, and by the end,
| hope was 76.
|
| If anything, this simulation just made me think getting a PhD
| would be a fun opportunity to do a lot of study, and didn't put
| me off at all.
|
| EDIT: Why downvote? haha I'm just sharing my experience.
| johndhi wrote:
| My experience was: damn, I need to do tons of reading and
| research and writing. Like a full time job, not just chilling.
|
| Which is a bummer. I was hoping I could just chill.
| recursive wrote:
| If you just want to chill, you definitely don't need any of
| the phd stuff. Pretty much everyone chills occasionally.
| Derbasti wrote:
| That's actually sort of accurate. Some PhDs are lucky early,
| and can build on that success. Good for you! Good for them.
|
| Most PhDs aren't so lucky, regrettably.
| spacemanspiff01 wrote:
| Wait... There was only one month where I was working on "finish
| your thesis"
| JaceLightning wrote:
| I declined. Best decision ever.
| ketzu wrote:
| > Your submission to [...] was REJECTED. The reviewers were not
| convinced of the significance your [preliminary!] results.
|
| Thanks for the flashbacks. At least we didn't have any qualifying
| exams.
| Lk7Of3vfJS2n wrote:
| [dead]
| spencerchubb wrote:
| Tip for everyone bothered by the font
|
| document.getElementById('message_window').style.fontFamily =
| 'Times New Roman'
| voxl wrote:
| I was able to easily graduate in 5 years, only one false start
| because the simulation seriously overvalues preparing for the
| qualifying exam. Also, it doesn't consider that you usually get
| two attempts at such an exam, not just one.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| I find one month per turn quite coarse: much more fine-grained
| misery could be added with variable-length activities, waiting
| anxiously for something, real life commitments, or randomly
| wasting time.
|
| For example, 2d4 days to read some papers, 1d6+1 _consecutive_
| days to think about a new idea, a 50% chance per day of being
| busy teaching, resource contention with colleagues running their
| simulations, etc.
| KnobbleMcKnees wrote:
| The idea of a D&D campaign centred around this is hilarious
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| after graduation you become lvl 1 wizard
|
| that explains low hp stats
| JBorrow wrote:
| This is great! The ending phase really gives you the same feeling
| of "screw everything else, I need to finish this paper" rushing
| to get the final stuff out.
| xp84 wrote:
| By that time I had already grinded so long and lost so much
| hope that I HAD to slack off but couldn't because every time I
| tried, my advisor caught me and reminded me of my progress.
| Repeat until I lost all hope!
| dekhn wrote:
| Holy cow, I just played the rules I used when I did my PhD (1/4
| time slacking off, 1/3 on developing major ideas and collecting
| results to support it and resubmitting the rejected papers) and
| graduated in 7 years. Exactly like real life.
| joshcsimmons wrote:
| Pretty good but needs more Machiavellian power games
| dktnj wrote:
| This sounds less stressful than an average half a decade working
| at my current position. It is actually motivating. Whether or not
| that was the desired outcome, I don't know. At least I get to
| travel to half decent academic conferences and not large vendor
| marketing conferences.
| dchftcs wrote:
| The stress comes from constant and abject failure, not really
| the life style. Travelling is also like 2% of the total time.
| dktnj wrote:
| I haven't done any productive work for about 5 years so doing
| something and failing would be an improvement.
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| Depends on the subject matter.
| _madmax_ wrote:
| It is as boring as getting a real PhD, good job to the dev lol
| armchairhacker wrote:
| That was...a lot more straightforward than I thought.
|
| First try: Year 4 Month 5
|
| Second try: a lot more things went wrong. Year 5 Month 11.
|
| Third try: Year 5 Month 11.
|
| I just followed these rules:
|
| - Study for the qualifying exam until I'm "very confident"
|
| - If I have no ideas, read papers
|
| - If I have an idea, work on developing it. If I have a
| preliminary result, work on developing it. If I have a major
| result, conduct experiments etc...if I have a rejected paper,
| revise and resubmit. Prioritizing whichever option gets me closer
| to an accepted paper (because presumably the ideas get outdated
| quickly)
|
| - Whenever I get the "ask my advisor for a break?" say yes.
| Whenever I get "I am tired" and no "ask my advisor", "Slack Off"
| for one month.
|
| Fortunately I got no abusive advisor, rejected papers usually end
| up getting accepted later, no extreme life circumstances or cut
| funding. But my computer crashed way more often than I'd expect,
| especially since backups are so common nowadays.
| whymauri wrote:
| I followed this strategy + parallelized developing preliminary
| ideas and wrapped up in 3 years, 11 months with 100/100 Hope.
| If it only it was that easy! Haha
| fallingknife wrote:
| Nice, but judging from what I have heard about academia, I
| think I beat you and won in month 1 by rejecting the offer!
| womenintech333 wrote:
| A bit disappointing it doesn't go into other details like being
| a women. As most PhD candidates are in their mid 20s and often
| by the end of the beginning of their academic careers they
| immediately have to decide to either have a family or pursue
| academia.
| jvvw wrote:
| Didn't realise at the time but you have made me appreciate
| that that was one good thing about the British system - I was
| 24 when I submitted my PhD which is fairly typical so still
| time before such decisions (it was another 11 years before I
| discovered the challenges of combining a career with
| motherhood!)
| womenintech333 wrote:
| Reducing a PhD program to 4 years can help but in many
| fields this is still a problem. For many fields and form of
| absence of leave can be the end of your academic career. If
| I recall correctly the average PhD graduate is still 26-27
| years old. Which doesn't help much too much even though the
| average US grad is 31. For many field though this would
| help a lot. In tech and stem not so much. I remember some
| of the female faculty I knew telling me exactly how and why
| so many women end up filtered out. Simply because they
| wanted to have a child and by the time they came back their
| research was outdated and their works published by others.
| They themselves never having children. It's why many women
| often leave academia for industry jobs.
|
| I personally believe how we conduct research and academia
| is outdated and does not allow for the proper inclusion of
| women. And does not allow men to be proper fathers. Sorry
| for the long talk.
|
| Edit: Got the average age for PhDs in UK wrong it's mid
| 30s. Even if they started right at the age of 22 it's a
| wall they will face almost immediately.
| fractallyte wrote:
| How should the system be changed to accommodate women?
| (And men/fathers?)
| nikvaes wrote:
| In my opinion, a first step is to equalize maternity and
| paternity leave. It should be equally disrupting for men
| to have children as for women (from the perspective of an
| employer). I like the Swedish implementation of this
| model, where partners get 480 days of leave per child
| which they are free to divide among themselves, with a
| minimum of 90 days for either.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> I was 24 when I submitted my PhD which is fairly
| typical_
|
| Good for you - that's very fast. According to [1] the
| median age for _starting_ a PhD in the UK is 24 to 25 for
| full-time students. So you actually graduated around when
| the typical student _starts_.
|
| [1] https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/PhD-
| Life_T...
| afterburner wrote:
| I basically followed this approach but my paper kept getting
| rejected from the conference which really put a ceiling on my
| hope; ended up quitting the PhD after just under 5 years.
|
| Second try the conference paper got accepted right away.
| Advisor even asked me if I needed a break after I'd had some
| success (never happened on the first run) and was getting
| tired. Wrote my thesis in 5.5 years.
| bogtog wrote:
| > Whenever I get the "ask my advisor for a break?" say yes.
|
| I thought that was a trap, and I was surprised my initial
| strategy of "say no but then slack off" didn't work
| dheera wrote:
| That depends on how good your advisor is and whether they
| understand mental health.
| imsaw wrote:
| I did this and was warned, but got some progress for work
| during shower
| Ultimatt wrote:
| There is also a hidden variable about being tired too, and if
| you don't slack off you waste months in forced situations with
| asking for breaks with the supervisor or burning out.
| azangru wrote:
| I lost all hope and quit. Something that happened to me in real
| life as well.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Every time I tried the game (using OP's described steps) I
| "lost all hope and quit". I thought that was the joke / funny
| commentary: that all paths through the game involve you
| ending up losing. Didn't know there was a path to actually
| win the game until reading the HN comments. So I kept trying
| it over and over doing the same steps and finally won once.
|
| I guess that's an even funnier commentary on how it's pretty
| much entirely luck based.
| 19h wrote:
| I actually got the PhD so it's not all ways leading to
| failure -- just accept when your advisor offers you to take
| time off.
| 93po wrote:
| i won on my first try at just under 6 years and my hope
| never got below 65 i think, maybe i got lucky
| Derbasti wrote:
| LOL, wrote the thesis in one month. Very funny.
| trojan13 wrote:
| Now imagine this, but with a "LinkedIn feed" that shows updates
| from your peers, showing their professional accomplishments and
| current salary.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| It should also have a picture of you, Like a current one that
| slowly degrades over the course as you start eating crap and
| stop exercising.
| dhimes wrote:
| haha that would be perfect. Receding hairline, expanding
| waistline...
| drdunce wrote:
| don't forget the back hump!
| 1323portloo wrote:
| I remember my advisor's most relevant advice, "Keep
| working toward your thesis, and one day, you, too, shall
| have a mighty hump!"
| SomewhatLikely wrote:
| Reminds me of the early Duke Nukem games that showed your
| health as an increasingly beat up avatar.
| Aeolun wrote:
| That was surprisingly stressful
| akomtu wrote:
| What's the typical motivation of getting a PhD? The desire to
| discover something novel? The need to look and feel better than
| others?
| chriskanan wrote:
| This is reasonably accurate as far as the average PhD experience
| goes. I do always encourage my PhD students to take some time off
| during holidays and after major deadlines, rather than berate
| them when "slacking off" (unless that's all they do).
|
| Stuff missing: holidays and deciding whether to travel home or
| study / read papers (I missed holidays myself during my PhD),
| feeling envious of peers from pre-PhD living great lives, having
| kids during one's PhD (that would be hard mode), drama in
| authorship of collaborative papers, etc.
|
| The last year anxiety is accurate for most. It is also missing
| the job search in the final years. For many disciplines, 3 strong
| papers is the minimum for graduating, but if one really wants to
| get a faculty position or even a job as a research scientist at
| more prestigious institutes, probably 6 papers is better.
| maxmalkav wrote:
| "The only winning move is not to play."
| jannw wrote:
| seems quite accurate to me - reflects well my own experience.
| tibbon wrote:
| I find this highly unrealistic. Advisors do not notice nor care
| for your mental health. Breaks and rest are not offered nor
| advised. Back to the lab!
| gradstudent wrote:
| Claim your free time. No sane advisor would ever say no.
| blitzar wrote:
| That explains a lot about my advisor then ...
| wpietri wrote:
| Yeah, that's one of the things I was looking for in this
| game. A friend of mine had an absolutely bonkers advisor
| who stopped answering my friend's emails. For a while they
| basically had to stalk their advisor, who would come in at
| erratic hours and quickly lock their office door, just
| ignoring any knocking. It was so wild to me, as my friend
| was just incredibly nice. My friend only graduated because
| other faculty sort of clubbed together as unofficial
| advisors.
|
| I get that if you select only for smarts, you're going to
| get some odd ducks. But I've heard so many stories from
| PhD-seeking friends about the level of dysfunction that
| gets visited upon grad students.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Many advisors are not sane. Many will definitely not tolerate
| multiple leaves of absences (i.e. vacations) due to stress.
| People lie and make up family emergencies to get the time
| off.
|
| Highly dependent on the advisor.
| moab wrote:
| You had a terrible advisor. I'm sorry.
| klysm wrote:
| All too common it seems
| jldugger wrote:
| > UNIVERSITY NEWS: free cloud storage now available to all
| students and faculties. Your data are now safe on the cloud.
|
| This is a trap!
| stusmall wrote:
| I slacked off until I failed the first year exam. I escaped a PhD
| program and was left full of hope. I consider that a win.
| [deleted]
| jebarker wrote:
| I'm interested in how specific this PhD experience is to the US,
| certain subjects or recent times. My own experience doing a maths
| PhD in the UK in the mid-2000s was not like this at all (but had
| a different set of challenges for sure).
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I'm about to wrap up my PhD in a few months here in the US, I
| find that while it's kind of close, it's a bit on the cynical
| side, as is most of the HN discussion about PhDs.
|
| Yes, my advisor emphasizes papers a lot, but there aren't any
| requirements for number of papers for graduation. While there
| are extremely busy periods of forgoing sleep to work (eg right
| before a major deadline), my advisor also constantly reminds us
| to take breaks and enjoy life. There was also the anxiety about
| graduating on time, but that too was sorted out by just having
| a meeting with my advisor and understanding how things work.
|
| On the other hand, the situation with the qualifying exam was
| the opposite, I had to constantly remind my advisor that I
| needed to get that done. It involved a 50 page report on the
| current status of my research and a thesis defense style
| presentation to my committee, so that was a bit of a challenge
| to make time for between normal research. Passing it didn't
| feel like much of a challenge, just meeting the 50 page
| requirement did. I had enough data, but it was still a lot of
| writing.
| cpp_frog wrote:
| I'm a chilean maths grad student and save for the qualifying
| exam, it's quite accurate. So much so that I think I made a
| mistake clicking on this because as it progressed I started
| feeling dizzy. Other commenters here also have their relatable
| experiences, which doesn't make me feel so bad.
| geigco wrote:
| Confirmation that I was right not to get my PhD!
| [deleted]
| joewferrara wrote:
| This game is exactly like graduate school in a PhD program! Love
| it!
| aiertlaijrilej wrote:
| I completed the game the same way I completed real life. I left
| early with a MS instead of a PhD.
|
| Based on my experience, there needs to be a chance that your
| advisor is a narcissistic child who pushes you repeatedly to
| spend your entire PhD either fixing the mistakes in their own PhD
| thesis (without changing anything they did) or doing unpaid
| unpublishable production work for their half-assed startup. And
| hobbles your attempts to establish connections outside of their
| control. And also does a lot of things that could be termed
| "fraud" and "embezzlement" if the university cared to investigate
| when you and others before and after you complained about it. And
| probably some more mess involving petty politics with post-docs
| and competing professors.
|
| I loved grad classes and research, but I hated academia.
| jacurtis wrote:
| > I loved grad classes and research but I hated Academia
|
| Truer words have never been spoken.
|
| I went back to get a PhD after a solid career where I was in a
| prominent leadership position at a respectable tech company (in
| my mid-thirties). I was bored, not motivated with work anymore,
| and wanted to do something that really pushed me and motivated
| me in ways that I hadn't felt in years. I also wanted to truly
| learn some advanced concepts through Grad classes.
|
| I really loved the grad classes (although they were much much
| much easier than I expected). That is why I moved into
| research, to really stimulate myself and do something
| interesting to me in my specific area of expertise. I really
| enjoyed doing the research too. I was personally motivated and
| curious on the topics I was researching. It gave me a lot of
| new-found motivation in life and I really flourished.
|
| But academia: the drama and games you need to engage in to do
| such simple (arguably trivial or non-important) tasks is
| ridiculous. I succeeded in my business career because it was
| results driven. If you produce results, people don't care how
| you got there exactly. But in academia I felt like it was a
| board game of "chutes and ladders", mixed with Risk and
| Monopoly where you had to own parts of the board that other
| people deem important, you hit chutes that set you back for no
| apparent reason, you were constantly collecting personal
| referrals and clout from other professors so you could get
| their blessing or IOUs. There's a lot of favors and ceremony
| around trivial tasks and the actual produced value often gets
| overlooked or forgotten about because you didn't march to the
| same drum as someone else.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Now do an arts PhD!
| jack_riminton wrote:
| lol at the downvotes, you know it's true. Most of the made up
| papers in the "Sokal squared" affair that made publication are
| considered PhD level within those fields and they're literal
| nonsense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I like declining the offer and going on with my life. Relaxing.
| cosmic_quanta wrote:
| Very cool!
|
| I was surprised that writing the thesis was an immediate success.
| I've seen many PhD students struggle at this point, taking > 12mo
| to submit.
| logifail wrote:
| In the sim, at "Year 3 Month 9" I apparently "lost all hope and
| quitted your PhD".
|
| In my real one (20+ years ago), I submitted my thesis after 3
| years and 6 months, by which point I was no longer on speaking
| terms with my supervisor and was hanging on to my sanity by the
| skin of my teeth.
|
| My viva went surprisingly well, after which I did the minor
| corrections that were requested, handed in a copy of my thesis,
| packed up my stuff and left that hateful group behind me.
| b555 wrote:
| if given a chance to do it all again, would you?
| ikrenji wrote:
| absolutely not lol
| logifail wrote:
| > if given a chance to do it all again, would you?
|
| Yes, definitely, but maybe(?) in a different research group.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| The proportion of slackings off for which you are caught by your
| advisor is unrealistically high, but exactly as high as it
| _feels_. I definitely got my fair share of those emails...
| lqet wrote:
| This is great and exactly captures the PhD experience. Both in
| the simulator and in real life, I mostly survived until the end
| by slacking off frequently, and needed around 5 years.
|
| Some highlights:
|
| > INBOX: Based on the reviewers' comments, we regret to inform
| you that your manuscript has been REJECTED for publication. One
| of the reviewers pointed out that there is no comparison with a
| state-of-art method.
|
| > You came up with a bunch of ideas. However, upon further
| searching, you found that they have already been done before.
|
| > You found the missing piece during a shower. You develop one of
| your preliminary results into a major result.
|
| > You found one of your ideas appears in a recently published
| paper. You can no longer work on it.
|
| > Three years passed. You have witnessed many graduations. You
| began to worry about whether your can graduate on time.
|
| > The simulation took a much longer time than you expected. The
| results are not available yet.
|
| What was missing:
|
| 1.) Growing feeling of getting too old
|
| 2.) Growing family obligations (marriage, kids, trying to write a
| thesis at 3am with a crying baby next room)
|
| 3.) Questions asked by friends and relatives regarding progress
|
| 4.) Teaching obligations
| bluedevilzn wrote:
| Was it worth it?
| smodad wrote:
| _> You found one of your ideas appears in a recently published
| paper. You can no longer work on it._
|
| This is one of the things I thought of right away when ChatGPT
| got released last year. "God, there's probably so many PhD
| candidates right now in NLP feeling despair like all their work
| was pointless ...as if million of voices cried out in terror
| and were suddenly silenced."
|
| It's hard in the moment to know whether what you're working on
| has any utility. So just do your best and keep chugging!
| 93po wrote:
| I met someone recently who finished their PhD in computer
| vision related work a couple years ago and she said all of
| her specialization now felt useless, but that her PhD was
| still useful for understanding the fundamentals for a job she
| now has but does absolutely nothing with her research
| experience.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Math is pointless from start to finish, but that doesn't stop
| them.
|
| PhD is granted for novelty, not practicality.
| libealistand wrote:
| > Math is pointless from start to finish
|
| And this attitude, my friends, is the reason why so much
| software out there is so bad.
|
| We need more of a math mindset when developing software.
| What can we be sure about, what are the invariants, what
| can we prove? There is so much crap out there that somebody
| lacking understanding just tried to wing, and I'm
| constantly ashamed of it.
|
| Computer science is applied math.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Why is this the case? Wouldn't having more than one paper
| proving/discovering the same thing be good for confidence in
| either of them?
| markus92 wrote:
| In theory yes, in practice many journals are only
| interested in work with a clear novelty factor.
| tsumnia wrote:
| Its sort of a mix of a lot of small things - 1) The coming
| conferences will be flooded with LLM analysis, so the space
| will be heavily saturated and more difficult to find a
| significant contribution; 2) LLMs are a new model that you
| might need to include in your analysis, which means
| learning about and becoming familiar with them; 3) your
| work might get overshadowed because its now obsolete in the
| land of LLMs
|
| A slight equivalent I can think about would be the
| emergence of neural networks. When I was working on my
| Masters on face recognition, neural networks were not the
| major force they are now. Facial landmarks used a
| combination of haar features and edge detection. These
| methods weren't outright abandoned, but if NNs had taken
| off during my research, then I would have had to restart my
| work.
| [deleted]
| khazhoux wrote:
| This is also missing the part where your friend in your same
| class drops out for a startup, and you can choose to join him
| or stick with PhD.
|
| Then give you the option a year later to congratulate him on
| the startup's multi-billion exit.
| chias wrote:
| One dynamic I experienced that also isn't in the simulation: if
| you focus too much on classwork early on in order to pass your
| RPE, it can actually be hard to find an advisor. Classwork is
| basically dead-end work and the more you focus on it the less
| you have to show for yourself when trying to convince an
| advisor to work with you. Your goal should be to optimize for
| doing _just well enough to pass_ your classwork.
|
| Also, random catalysmic events, like in year 4 your advisor
| accepts a job at a different university in another state.
| 78124781 wrote:
| Generally, the focus here should be on: 1) Not bombing any
| classes (i.e. A/A- in all, maybe a B+ in one; a B or below is
| failing) 2) Doing very good work and trying to write an
| original paper for professors that you want to work with
| while doing just enough to get by in other classes [this is
| in part how you figure out who you want to work with] 3)
| Being good enough with the literature to pass the
| comprehensive exams (or, as another comment points out, have
| some kind of protection from a sponsor; it is not uncommon to
| have profs use comps as a chance to take out students they
| don't like for various reasons, even as small as "they do X
| field, which I don't like" or "they work with Y, who really
| gets on my nerves).
|
| Of course there's plenty of additional ways to derail this as
| well, including advisor moving, advisor getting into a fight
| with the rest of the department, advisor giving poor advice,
| advisor deciding that they don't like you, etc.
| lumost wrote:
| It really makes you wonder if the university should just
| have a mechanism to "fire" a grad student rather than
| pretending that these events aren't simply a mechanism to
| "fire" someone because they didn't pass X hurdle.
|
| If the advisors can vouch for, or strike a student
| regardless of their qual performance - then why not simply
| have an end of year performance review?
| 78124781 wrote:
| Most depts do have some kind of official review, but it's
| more of a formality. I think they're also concerned about
| how students would react if they suggest that academia
| isn't for them directly. So instead they resort to more
| passive-aggressive or arbitrary measures.
|
| On the other hand, not all departments are good fits with
| students and there's a very wide asymmetry in information
| between many new students and programs, even if you "do
| your research" beforehand, given just how specialized
| these disciplines are at a high level. It would be nice
| if transferring programs was made easier and if more
| departments would just agree to help students "master
| out" and look for jobs rather than discard them like
| roadkill.
| krastanov wrote:
| This would be incredibly bad advice in half of Physics and
| most of Math. An adviser would simply not trust a graduate
| student with middling grades to be competent enough to work
| with.
| jacurtis wrote:
| I think this depends on the field. For example in CS, my
| advisor straight up told me multiple times to stop worry
| about class work. His exact statement is that "There isn't
| anything more that you will learn in classes that you won't
| learn in greater detail doing research".
|
| His logic is that when you are doing research, you are
| pushing the envelope into new territory that can't be
| taught in a classroom. When you are in a classroom you are
| learning old material that is already well-known and
| established.
|
| This is very true in CS. But far from true in Math and
| Physics where there probably is a lot of advanced learning
| available in classes. The few classes I had that he
| actually endorsed being "worth your time" were Math classes
| focused around encryption (of which I took 3 different
| ones).
|
| But my advisor was unique because he was 100% there for the
| research. He only taught because the university forced him
| to. He lived and breathed research and that was the only
| reason he was in academia. He was truly passionate and
| worked 10+ hours a day on research, but thats why he was
| there. He had a very low opinion of classroom teaching.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I was thinking, this sounds very much like a person with
| a vested interest in getting you to do more research.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| That's not very unique of your advisor. Most researchers
| are there for the research, not for the teaching and it
| shows.
| rprospero wrote:
| As a counterpoint, I knew a physics prof that would drop
| any grad students who got above a B average, since it meant
| the student had bad time management. Bad time management
| being defined by spending more tine outside the lab than
| strictly necessary.
|
| Then again, knowing that that @PS&$EURY= would drop you
| might make it a good plan.
| ke88y wrote:
| IME it's more that the advisor doesn't trust the student to
| make it through the annual layoffs (quals culling), and
| only wants to invest in people who they know will be around
| long-term.
|
| At least in the poor (and honestly mostly useless) parts of
| Mathematics. Maybe Physics is less poor.
|
| (Fortunately I was in CS, where the research output is
| actually needed by society and usually not pure
| masturbation, so the attitude toward coursework was "do
| well at what you need, enjoy what you want, and ignore what
| you don't need or want"
| libealistand wrote:
| [dead]
| dazed_confused wrote:
| Or your advisor retiring in year 2...
| joshvm wrote:
| Every department I've worked in mandates 2 supervisors to
| mitigate against this, because it's reasonably common for
| people to move departments, go on sabbatical or just quit.
| Even with tenure, life happens and people need to leave
| their jobs. In theory, the department shouldn't allow
| advisors to take on more students if they're close to
| retirement though.
| amwales wrote:
| oddly specific
| Lk7Of3vfJS2n wrote:
| Or your advisor accepts a job at a company in another state
| in year 2...
| peteradio wrote:
| Buddy of mine, his advisor _died_ in like year 4.
| [deleted]
| fugue88 wrote:
| I had picked my advisor at the start of my PhD. I also had 2
| backups. My pick was on sabbatical my first year. He and I
| agreed I'd load up on the required classes that year.
|
| He e-mailed me right before the year ended saying he had
| changed his mind and didn't want any more grad students,
| basically dumping me.
|
| Right around the same time, my first backup decided to
| retire.
|
| My second backup passed away.
|
| I was left no longer making "sufficient progress" and no path
| to do so, losing my financial aid.
| cushpush wrote:
| sorry this happened to you, wishing you success in spite of
| the setbacks
| PakG1 wrote:
| This emphasizes how much you need to know before you even get
| into a program. If you don't know that much, you NEED those
| classes to just catch up to your peers as to understanding
| what the world even says about various things at a
| foundational level. The weight is so much easier to carry if
| you go in with a certain level of knowledge so that you can
| slack in classes if you need to rest.
| 78124781 wrote:
| This. Most grad school classes are poorly taught and the
| professors indifferent or discouraging to actually helping
| you learn. PhD students are assumed to be capable of
| learning these things on their own or already knowing them.
| If you are encountering things for the first time, you'll
| likely be behind.
|
| In contrast, if you come in mostly ready to go and these
| classes are just refreshers, you can spend time in that
| class working on actual research and impressing the prof as
| well as not panicking if/when you realize you don't
| understand what's going on.
| ke88y wrote:
| This also depends on the field. I think this is good advice
| in fields where grad students are primarily there to help
| with grant-funded research. In those fields, the course and
| prelim requirements are reasonable because professors need
| warm bodies doing work. Eg, CS.
|
| It's less good advice in fields where grad student research
| output doesn't matter as much, and where students do more
| teaching instead. Those fields tend to make much more
| aggressive use of weed-out exams to ensure that they have
| enough young grad students to meet teaching demand but not so
| many older (>=3yr) grad students that they saturate advising
| capacity. Mathematics in particular comes to mind.
| waveBidder wrote:
| > Classwork is basically dead-end work and the more you focus
| on it the less you have to show for yourself when trying to
| convince an advisor to work with you.
|
| nearly half of my year didn't get this and had to master out
| when we got to quals.
| hgsgm wrote:
| You mean they passed quals but couldn't get an advisor?
|
| Or failed quals?
| ke88y wrote:
| Are those different things? At departments where quals
| have high failure rates, it's really more of an annual
| layoff than anything else.
|
| In many programs, the department aims to admit far more
| people than will pass the quals. They need the Calculus
| and Pre-calculus TAs but do not have the advising
| capacity.
|
| Even if everyone gets a 95% on the quals, the majority
| will "fail" _by necessity_ because the department simply
| does not have the advising capacity for the number of TAs
| they need. Of course, the department typically designs
| the quals to these needs either explicitly or implicitly.
|
| This is usually at least implicitly understood by the
| faculty, who will navigate it when absolutely necessary.
| For example, I've seen it happen that if a professor
| really needs a student and vouches for/protects them (eg
| because the research is computational and the student
| came from 5 years at Google), then the student gets more
| goes at the plate on quals than is typical.
| waveBidder wrote:
| er, right, what other people call quals we called
| prelims. our quals were a presentation of early stage
| work, so when the deadlines rolled around, they didn't
| have an advisor, or hadn't been working with them long
| enough to have any results.
| fho wrote:
| > Growing family obligations (marriage, kids, trying to write a
| thesis at 3am with a crying baby next room)
|
| Oh ... I felt that one :-/
| mjfl wrote:
| at least you have a family.
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| Teaching obligations are assumed, had students break things
| multiple times.
| rewmie wrote:
| > What was missing:
|
| n) Your old college friends have secured their material needs
| while you barely make rent.
|
| n) a PhD student that joined the program after you just
| surpassed your number of publications.
|
| n) your thesis supervisor just bumped you off primary author to
| contributor in your own paper.
| Balgair wrote:
| > your thesis supervisor just bumped you off primary author
| to contributor in your own paper.
|
| I mean, woah. Even that's a little too far for phd-land
| cycomanic wrote:
| I would also add that the hope trajectory is quite right in the
| simulation. You really should start quite high and it starts
| dropping until your first conference, but then towards the
| middle of the PhD it gets very low. It only really goes up
| again when the end is in sight.
|
| In the game it pretty much continously went up.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| > Teaching obligations
|
| any advice for people aiming for teaching instead of all the
| publishing stuff?
| toxik wrote:
| Yeah don't do a PhD
| gs17 wrote:
| Tried that, the university considered lecturers to be
| disposable if there was a chance to replace them with a
| tenure-track who could get grants, and told me I could come
| back if I got a PhD.
| tsumnia wrote:
| Agreed. I found I loved teaching, but with only a Masters
| I was limited to adjunct hell. I took the pay cut and
| made the push for my doctorate.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| what to do instead?
| a1o wrote:
| But how to get hired then?
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| This should be obvious but never sign up for a degree in
| a field where only PhDs can get jobs.
| jacurtis wrote:
| In academia, your Resume/CV is basically a list of what you
| have published.
|
| Even if you are an awesome teacher, you are going to be
| required to continue publishing a minimum amount every few
| years and you will be hired based on what you published.
|
| Sorry, but that's just academia. If you want to teach without
| doing research, then maybe look at Community Colleges, High
| Schools, or getting a job at a corporate job and being an
| Adjunct Professor for 1-2 classes a semester.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| There are also smaller (typically private) colleges and
| universities that heavily focus on their undergrad
| programs. The Jesuits seem to lean into this style with
| both Santa Clara U. in the Bay Area and Loyola Marymount U.
| in LA falling into this pile. Research at these
| institutions definitely ends up taking a secondary role.
| hattmall wrote:
| A teaching university and not a research university. You can
| / will still do some research but your job is teaching
| students not doing research. The pay is generally better, but
| of course, you will have to actually teach a lot and have a
| lot of office hours. Maybe once every few years you can work
| out a research semester. The initial pay is better but less
| so the opportunities for advancement as you won't be
| publishing much. That makes it harder to differentiate on
| anything other than time.
| 78124781 wrote:
| I'm not sure the salaries are better. Most R1s are now
| offering 90-120k starting in my field, but regional
| teaching Us start around 50-60k, with liberal arts colleges
| in the 50-80k range.
|
| The point about the lack of opportunities for
| advancement/moving due to the course preps and teaching
| taking up your time is very true. While your friends at R1s
| are on pre-tenure sabbaticals, getting course buyouts, and
| teaching a nice grad seminar for a semester, you might be
| doing 3-4 new preps a year and likely getting piled with
| service work.
| krastanov wrote:
| If you want to have a tenure track "professor" position
| focused on teaching in a top-tier university, you need to be
| a great researcher as teaching skills are not considered much
| -- you just get to decide to focus on teaching after you get
| tenure. Thankfully, many universities (even the prestigious
| ones) are now starting to hire more semi-permanent teaching-
| focused staff (and some even use the title professor for
| these). You do not get as much independence in such a
| position, especially if you want to make a class for more
| senior students, but it is a good middle ground. Or you can
| be a professor at a school that is not in the rat-race to be
| "top-tier research institution" - you still need to have some
| small research output (but that is actually an awesome way to
| introduce a couple of undergrads a year to research) and you
| get to focus on making awesome classes (of course, there is
| still the expectation that you have a PhD to apply for these
| positions, but at these places your teaching experience is
| actually taken seriously in the hiring process).
|
| As to what to do during your PhD: find an advisor that is
| happy to have one or two students focused on teaching and
| outreach (they would like to have that because when applying
| for grants it makes it easier for them to explain how they
| have broader impact, pointing to your work).
| davidgay wrote:
| > If you want to have a tenure track "professor" position
| focused on teaching in a top-tier university, you need to
| be a great researcher as teaching skills are not considered
| much
|
| Not completely true. UC Berkeley at least has tenure-track
| lecturers, now apparently mostly referred to as "Teaching
| Professors" (https://apo.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/t
| eaching_profes...)
|
| A random (old) job post for this:
| https://gsso.ce.gatech.edu/2022/01/12/tenure-track-
| teaching-...
| tsumnia wrote:
| Source: Teaching Professor at NC State
|
| During the PhD, I was a TA and instructor on record for
| several classes. Schools may have some form of mentor
| teaching assistantship that lets you get experience teaching
| while in the program. I think I taught ~6 courses by the time
| I graduated.
|
| It can also help to position yourself in the "education"
| research space for your field. There is a strong CS education
| research space, so you can incorporate your classroom as your
| "lab", though you'll want to study up on Cognitive Sciences
| to ensure your findings support current literature. My
| publication count is much lower than my peers, but I was
| still able to receive several offers for teaching faculty
| positions.
|
| Teaching faculty positions are available, though not in as
| much demand as traditional research oriented profs. However,
| I know at least in CS there are several universities looking
| for them. Likewise, by situating yourself in the education
| space, you can land a research prof position while still
| focusing on education. If you get funding, then you can buy
| out course obligations so you can specialize in teaching a
| single class.
| peteradio wrote:
| > 3.) Questions asked by friends and relatives regarding
| progress
|
| This one in particular had me temporarily cut off contact with
| people who could not be bothered to remember that I had no
| interest in answering this question!
| sgt101 wrote:
| It shocks me so much that publication has become the only metric
| of a Ph.D.
| milancurcic wrote:
| It's been mostly like this for a long time, but it is slowly
| changing. Open data repositories and scientific software
| libraries/products are beginning to count more and more (at
| least many of us are pushing for this). It also depends on the
| target career past graduation. Papers matter a lot for tenure-
| track positions, and much less for science support (scientific
| software developers, data engineers, lab managers etc.) in
| academia, or most jobs in the industry.
|
| The 3 paper requirement in the game is also not a formal
| requirement in most universities--it's more of an implied
| requirement by individual PhD advisors. FWIW, my first lead-
| author paper I published a year past my PhD. During my PhD, I
| produced two relatively large scientific software applications
| (one open and one closed source) and a few open datasets. I'm
| now 8 years past my PhD and relatively successful in my field,
| 90th or so percentile based on common metrics--papers,
| citations, and funds raised.
|
| Bottom line, papers are important but not the only thing that
| counts. Outside of tenure-track careers where they are crucial,
| it's possible to establish yourself as a scientist and be
| respected by your peers by publishing software and data.
| bogtog wrote:
| In what fields is 3 papers expected? In my field, Psychology,
| 3 first-author papers sounds like a reasonable lower bound,
| but that seems like it would be a lot to expect out of
| Biologists or hard scientists.
| milancurcic wrote:
| Ah, good point. I'm in Earth sciences. 3 papers before PhD
| is reasonable here, just not a formal university
| requirement.
| fht wrote:
| Current 4th year in Biology. Generally, 1 paper is
| expected, but it is not strictly necessary to graduate.
| Highly doubt that the PI will let you go without finishing
| your project though.
| crawsome wrote:
| TIL month-long breaks are required to pass a PHD
| geysersam wrote:
| Thanks for the ptsd relapse.
| mjfl wrote:
| one issue is overemphasis on qualifying exam. Most advisors, at
| least for experimental disciplines, value publishing papers much
| higher than jumping through these academic hoops, and make sure
| that either qualifying exams are easy to pass or can be retaken.
| jszymborski wrote:
| This is great but it's missing one thing: having to apply for
| funding each year (time consuming!) with the statistical
| expectation of not receiving it. Then having to TA to help
| towards making-up the difference (it does not).
|
| Then, spend egregious amounts of time each year filling out
| expense reports for conferences you attended. Also, take-up more
| part time work because it takes 4-6 months for the reports to get
| processed and you need to pay off your credit cards.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Do PhD students tend to apply for funding where you're at? In
| most CS PhD programs it's the advisors job to do that.
| ketzo wrote:
| n=2 but my friends in humanities PhDs both have to do all
| their own funding work. sounds exhausting.
| LASR wrote:
| I wanted to go all the way to a PhD. So did my classmates. We
| were going to change the whole world.
|
| But after an internship at a FAANG during my 2nd year undergrad,
| the money was too good. Got some return offers and basically
| slacked off the rest of my undergrad, just waiting to graduate.
|
| I was not born into wealth. I am a 1/2-generation immigrant. My
| parents struggled to keep me afloat during my undergrad years.
| Even my internship pay was more than my parents' income at the
| time. So really I had no choice but to sell out early.
|
| Now 10 years after undergrad and a couple of FAANGs later, the
| baby crying in the other room at 3AM, parents retired and
| vacationing around, I think I made the only choice for me. But I
| cannot help wonder how life might have been different, and if I
| really did have a chance to change to world.
| rewmie wrote:
| > But I cannot help wonder how life might have been different,
| and if I really did have a chance to change to world.
|
| You made the right choice. Life as a PhD student is ultimately
| a life of poverty and uncertain future. You might get lucky and
| be able to explore a meaningful research topic, but more often
| than not you would end up in a miserable path with no future,
| and with the best option at securing your material needs to be
| in an ungrateful and very hard to reach academic role.
| mebassett wrote:
| or after a few years of postdocs and job security that comes
| in 12-24 month bouts, you might have moved into industry
| anyway and just starting making 60% of what you're making
| now.
| godelski wrote:
| I think the most realistic thing here is the luck element. You
| have people around you passing and making it look easy and saying
| to do exactly what they did and those people make it all out to
| be a skill game. But you follow their exact method and still
| fail. And keep failing. Making you think there's some secret
| sauce that they aren't telling you about. But in reality the
| difference was just luck. That in one game you can slack off half
| the time and graduate just fine and the other half of the time
| you can't even get a single paper submitted. The tyranny of the
| stochastic system is probably one of the most damning things in a
| PhD.
| laewirjtlawejtl wrote:
| Reminds me of the poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.
| Initially it seems like it's a poem about working hard and
| taking risks, but it's actually about old people lying to
| themselves, trying to forget that their success was actually
| just luck.
|
| About half the professors I worked with were responsible
| adults, and half were narcissistic children who would do
| exactly what you described, "just do what I did", and when it
| doesn't work they quickly changed to personal attacks and
| insults.
|
| And of course, the professors who had PhDs from MIT or Stanford
| just breezing through, getting approved for everything they
| applied to on the first round, even when their past
| deliverables and future proposals were garbage, and people who
| went to second-tier schools having to fight tooth and nail
| every incremental gain. Just a pile of crap. Couldn't stand it.
| godelski wrote:
| There's a saying I really like "the harder I work, the
| luckier I get." It being about how the time you invest makes
| you able to take advantage of more opportunities. BUT it also
| recognizes that the luck element exists. I think Veritasium
| also had a video along the luck+work lines. Basically if you
| just are unlucky you just have no opportunities and you'll
| fail no matter what work you put in. But if you don't put in
| work, you're also passing up possible lucky opportunities.
| Either way, it is a combination of a stochastic process plus
| skill (think about the design of any good {video,board} game.
| They require both skill and luck, just like life.
|
| You definitely need both, and I think this is what people
| forget. Work is incredibly important, but you can do a lot of
| good and hard work and just be unlucky. That honestly is
| probably one of the more distinguishing differences between
| students/faculty at top institutions vs mid. Especially since
| success is a compounding event, thus an early success can
| catapult someone forward. We shouldn't diminish their hard
| work by saying it is all luck, but neither should they
| diminish others hard work and frustration as a lack of
| working hard enough when luck plays a significant role in the
| system. Neither is failure strictly due to luck. It is messy
| and we need to accept that this is the reality of the world,
| especially if we want to make the system more efficient and
| more "meritocratic" (quotes because previous comments and
| their relationship to Goodhart, the difficulties in
| evaluation and necessity to embrace noise).
|
| Though your last point about the top tier breezing through, I
| can completely relate. I see a lot of low quality papers from
| those institutions get high marks and it is very surprising
| and definitely not consistent with a blind evaluation
| system... but I think most of us already know that.
| spidersenses wrote:
| For some reason I found the font really hard to read. My brain
| has the impression that the text is vertically compressed,
| squished even. Just that no amount of resizing the window changed
| the strange effect. Is that only me?
| spencerchubb wrote:
| It is vertically squished. I had to modify the CSS myself in
| the dev tools because I couldn't bear it
| amir734jj wrote:
| I took qualifying exam on the last semester after I finished the
| thesis. They [university officials] thought in their system I
| have left the program. I had only 4 weeks to study for the exam
| because my advisor gave me a ultimatum after he thought I took
| the exam already. I was working full-time at this time and
| couldn't take 4 weeks off. After so much praying, I got the
| highest score, and I ended up becoming a Christian because of all
| the praying. It worked out at the end.
| jmercan wrote:
| Sounds like this is how my life will be like for a couple years
| if I get accepted :p
| fwsgonzo wrote:
| I'm doing it right now and I kind of envy my colleagues that
| are doing normal work. There are times when I enjoy the ability
| to focus on things that really interest me, but the paper
| writing and publishing processes really suck. Also, the random
| stuff from the university that I have to jump over sucks fun
| out of the process, for no gain to anyone.
| [deleted]
| gus_massa wrote:
| A very important part of the work of the advisor is to pick a
| subject that is not been researched by other group, so you can
| work on it without the fear of been sniped. It not foolproof, but
| if three or four ideas get sniped, it's probably better to kindly
| consider an advisor change.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > An item in your cart was on sale, you bought it immediately and
| felt much better. +5 hope
|
| Feeling personally attacked.
| Lk7Of3vfJS2n wrote:
| Looking forward to a Job Search simulator.
| ryandrake wrote:
| You could adapt the same game logic to a lot of things in life:
| Job Search, Career Success, Startup Founder, Stock Investor. In
| most life situations, it is possible--even likely--to "make no
| mistakes and still lose."
| xbkingx wrote:
| lol I wish it was this easy. I got through the simulator in 6yrs
| 11mos on the second try. At no point was hope above 40%, except
| once early on (ended at 33%).
|
| The funny thing is that I had 1 conf paper, 1 major result, and 1
| figure left over. That's a good year extra, so I assume a perfect
| game would be to get the 3x papers and GTFO (which is the second
| best outcome, after not enrolling). There were a couple folks I
| knew that made it out in 5 years, but more that took 7+. Our lab
| was notorious for taking over 10, which I skirted by.
|
| Like others said, this was lacking outside events
| (social/political junk). Hopefully version 2 will take into
| account: at least 1 family death and 1 additional tragedy, at
| least two months lost to helping or waiting for help from another
| grad student or post doc (they did have the lab equipment
| breaking, which was good to see, but missed the lobbying for
| every little purchase), at least one scope change, a half dozen
| favors to gain some political cache, a few experiments and/or
| rewrites to satisfy faculty members that just read about a
| technical issue they should have known, but didn't so they're
| highly sensitive to it, at least 6 months of arranging the
| data/results in a way that faculty can understand, 3 months of
| arguing that the lab standard procedure for some basic component
| is a decade out of date, a few months worth of preparing
| premature data for unnecessary meetings, one (and it better be
| just one) instance of an offer to help getting waaaay out of
| control, the hope boost after your first big conference and
| subsequent conference hope drops, the drops with each thesis
| defense from folks a year younger, etc. There's more, but that's
| off the top of my head. Oh, and that slight boost in hope when
| you hear someone else has a worse problem than your current one.
| That's a fun one.
|
| Tip for those interviewing - ignore all the year 1-3 folks. 1 and
| 2 are basically undergrads plus some extra classes. 3 probably
| hasn't hit the first pile of bullshit yet. Find a year 5 or 6 in
| your field and talk to them alone. There's a reason they
| generally don't have senior grad students at recruiting events,
| and it isn't because they're too busy. Talk to them long enough
| to get to their exhausted attempts to rationalize some aspect of
| the experience. If their demeanor doesn't change, you might be
| safe. If they start hemming and hawing, that's a problem. They
| haven't even gotten to a specific, non-personal problem and
| they're having trouble keeping up the facade. The layers are: 1)
| Hey, social event, I get to take my mind off lab problems. 2)
| Getting a little boost by talking to someone still excited. 3)
| The quiet whisper, "Let me give you some advice." 4) The
| realization that there's nothing but lab to talk about. That's
| the threshold. 5) The rationalization alpha - The view from
| 30,000 feet isn't terrible. 6) The rationalization beta - The
| rundown of broad problems they're having. This is the point where
| they will probably, as if by magic, remember that thing they were
| going to do needs to be done now. (I've got some analysis running
| I need to check, I need to feed some lab animals, I promised my
| parents I would call, I told a lab mate I'd help them with this
| thing and will be up all night, etc.) 7) The rationalization
| gamma - Specific cases of major problems they're seen other have.
| 8) The rationalization delta - Specific problems they're having.
| rwxrwxrwx wrote:
| Too real.
| bradreaves2 wrote:
| As a former PhD student who is now faculty, I have to say that
| the pace of the game is one of the most realistic aspects. Every
| small step forward takes about a month, it may or may not pan
| out, but it passes in the blink of an eye.
|
| It's a game, so it can't model everything. But I thought the
| biggest missing thing was "leveling up." As you accomplish more,
| you should have a higher likelihood of future success, and your
| hope should increase as you gain confidence and experience.
|
| That's how a PhD works -- those who can get early wins (or stick
| through a lot of bad bounces) can build on success will finish
| well.
|
| To rip off Tolstoy, "Happy PhDs are all alike; each unhappy PhD
| is unhappy in its own way."
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| I have never heard of a "happy PhD"
| tnecniv wrote:
| I heard of one but the guy went back to do his degree when he
| was in his late 30s. He came in with a game plan, executed,
| got out.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| It's interesting because I know maybe two dozen people with
| PhDs and every single one of them has a story about a moment
| of hitting rock bottom during the process and losing all
| hope. Obviously they all pulled through and make it out to
| the other side but it really doesn't sound like a pleasant
| experience.
| dragontamer wrote:
| My sister is the opposite.
|
| She's got her bachelors back in 2010 and got a Masters
| while working full time. This part was brutal, but not
| technically PhD yet. She's in Health Policy, a lot of
| statistics and junk.
|
| Anyway, she works for some special interest think-tank for
| a bit, works on insurance company some other bit, and
| finally settles down in the CDC where her skills in
| statistics / health policy were very much appreciated.
| She's getting to a point where it takes a Ph.D however
| before she can move forward with her career (she's already
| surrounded by Ph.Ds, and she sticks out in a bad way by not
| having one), so she's going for her Ph.D.
|
| From her side of the aisle, she's seeing a whole bunch of
| silly 20-something year olds who don't even know what the
| field of Health Policy is about, trying to create Ph.D
| Thesis topics that have obviously no relevance to anybody
| in any of the fields she's ever worked in (politics,
| insurance, or CDC).
|
| Meanwhile, her first idea was basically "Think of something
| CDC is blind at, which she can think of rather easily
| because she's worked there for 5+ years and everyone at the
| office is basically spitballing complaints about the CDC's
| statistics every damn day", and propose it as a Ph.D
| thesis.
|
| Granted, her day-to-day work is filled with constantly
| interacting with Ph.Ds who are interested in improving the
| CDC's statistical collection techniques / improving
| accuracy / finding new ways to slice the data and
| innovation. That's literally her job. And those subjects
| just so happen to be very useful Ph.D thesis material for
| advancing the state of Health Policy.
|
| --------------
|
| How much blood, sweat, and tears are we setting up Ph.D
| candidates for because they're straight-out-of bachelors
| with no real world experience or knowledge of their damn
| field?
|
| Some of these things _are_ easy to figure out after you've
| got 5 to 10 years of real world experience.
|
| The treadmill of Bachelors -> Masters -> Ph.D is broken. It
| probably needs to be Bachelors -> Real world experience ->
| Masters -> Real World Experience -> Ph.D.
|
| This "Read paper -> Think of idea -> Woops, someone already
| did it -> Read another paper" loop from the video game, is
| that how most Ph.Ds try to come up with their thesis? Isn't
| that obviously broken compared to other "life-loops"?
|
| -----------
|
| Ex: her office solved the question of "how to report
| statistics within one month to policy makers", because as
| late as 2018 or so, CDC was still on a yearly schedule of
| death statistics releases.
|
| Imagine if we were still on the yearly-schedule when
| COVID19 happened, instead of the rapid schedule of monthly-
| statistics that we actually had! Monthly statistics, much
| like Inflation NowCasting, is actually a forecast /
| prediction because not all the data is in. But coming up
| with a forecast for this month (or last month) of data is
| still a problem that needed to be solved, especially in a
| way that policy makers would accept in a political
| environment where everyone's nitpicking at the details.
|
| There's so many blind-spots and questions about how to
| improve statistics and statistical reporting at the Ph.D
| level in that field. But you are only aware of these blind-
| spots if you actually work in the field for a bit.
| bumby wrote:
| > _It probably needs to be Bachelors - > Real world
| experience -> Masters -> Real World Experience -> Ph.D._
|
| This was my path and my experience largely mirrored your
| sisters. I came to my program with a decade+ of industry
| work and I think that was invaluable to understanding the
| context of what problems are of interest. When I
| eventually matriculated to a position that valued PhDs, I
| now had a pretty concrete handle on what problems were
| enough of a stretch to be useful to a thesis, but not so
| far away as to be unrealistic. I also had a way to fund
| my studies without the burden of teaching and while
| making better pay. The younger cohort I worked with
| seemed to struggle because they often lacked a grounding
| in understanding real and feasible problems. So they were
| left bouncing between one half-baked idea to the next.
| That's what a lot of research is, of course, but it also
| left many to be either dropped or leave the program
| willingly.
|
| I think you're right that we do a disservice to treat the
| bachelors >> masters >> PhD as a template to follow.
| There's lots of ways to skin the proverbial cat.
| ftxbro wrote:
| I mean the bad part comes after you get the PhD. The lucky
| ones it got bad during their study and they moved on.
| [deleted]
| tnecniv wrote:
| Building on early success isn't even easy. I had some early
| success in mine but then years of stagnation until I developed
| enough understanding to iterate in a way that didn't feel like
| a trivial waste of time.
|
| On the other end, the suffering paid off. I'm a much better
| thinker and researcher for it. However, it was brutal getting
| there.
|
| What I found interesting and I think is true for almost
| everyone is that doing a PhD is hard, but it will likely be
| hard for different reasons than you expect. Because of the PhD
| students I knew as an undergrad and their experiences, I
| expected to be grinding out work in lab 12 hours a day. My
| advisor didn't push me that way (thankfully), and gave me a lot
| of freedom, but that also meant having very few training wheels
| and guidance (I liked him as an advisor and he cared / wanted
| to help as he could, but I got into topics he didn't know much
| more about than I did for a long time and I just had to figure
| it out myself). As a result, my PhD was less of a death march
| but more a constant battle with existential dread stemming from
| the uncertainty of whether I'd ever figure things out.
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