[HN Gopher] How to graduate your PhD when you have no hope
___________________________________________________________________
How to graduate your PhD when you have no hope
Author : jxmorris12
Score : 138 points
Date : 2024-03-31 13:12 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (huiwenn.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (huiwenn.github.io)
| thsksbd wrote:
| Based on my observations, marriage is the most reliable indicator
| of graduate student success. At least the male ones.
|
| I don't pretend to know if marriage is the cause of success or if
| it is merely a correlated phenomena. But I've observed it and
| talking among my circle, so has a top engineering researcher at a
| top 10 university. This is a man who has graduated scores of
| students placing half of them at top universities.
| silverquiet wrote:
| What if women aren't interested in you?
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Keep doing the things that make you into a man that women are
| interested in.
| throwaway35777 wrote:
| Go into an industry that's not overly political and where
| you're useful enough not to be judged on arbitrary
| qualities like your (a)sexuality.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Keep doing the things that make you into a man that women
| are interested in.
|
| ... like making lots of money. :-D
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Just don't pick someone that has that as one of their top
| 3 reasons to be with you. But money does help with almost
| everything.
| telmo wrote:
| Try to find out why, and please avoid Internet "red pill"
| stuff. I'm not telling you this as any sort of political
| statement nor am I trying to fight any culture wars here.
| This is just the advice of a middle-age guy with perfectly
| mediocre / average looks, and some life experience.
|
| From what I observe, 9 times out of 10 the problem lies in
| personality. I know plenty of guys with no money and no looks
| that have no trouble attracting the interest of the opposite
| sex. Why? Because they have a great personality, as in, it
| feels good to be around them. Furthermore, people who rely
| only on look and status to attract a partner and do not work
| on themselves are unlikely to have a happy relationship in
| the long term.
|
| I am not blaming people for having unappealing personalities.
| This is usually the product of things that are outside of
| their control, usually some sort of trauma. Life is not fair.
| A lot of people are traumatized and do not realize it. This
| can be overcome, but you must want to overcame it and you
| must be able to face harsh truths. Maybe therapy can help,
| maybe meditation, maybe even things that are considered "woo"
| but that allow you to face your demons. Whatever works and
| clicks with you is a valid answer. All roads lead to Rome if
| you are courageous enough.
|
| Check out this guy, I have the impression he is particularly
| suited for the HN demographics:
| https://www.youtube.com/@HealthyGamerGG
|
| Good luck man, you can do it!
| bckr wrote:
| Awesome, I recommended the same channel.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| I also don't want to dredge up culture wars stuff, but just
| wanted to say it's really nice to see men warning other men
| away from the redpill path. Thanks for encouraging therapy
| and self-healing.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Good advice.
|
| In my observation, especially as you get out of your 20s,
| single guys are... kinda phone it in for various reasons.
| Even moderate effort makes a dude a rockstar.
| silverquiet wrote:
| Do you think living with my parents due to disability could
| be an issue?
| j45 wrote:
| Probably someone else who has had the same experience and
| understands you completely.
|
| The question comes into whether you've continue to apply
| self-effort towards your inner growth, like the other
| person may have.
|
| When we go about seeking our best way, it increases the
| chances of meeting others doing the same.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| This kind of advice is such garbage.
|
| No, reading "come as you are" or any of the shit bell hooks
| writes doesn't just fix issues for people like the OP.
| Telling them then that they have a "bad personality" is so
| fucked up. Personality is subjective, and most people on
| earth can find others who believe that their own
| personality is "perfect".
|
| Someone not being successful in the dating market does not
| necessarily imply that their personality is bad. Saying
| they have no game and implying that this speaks about their
| personality is really hurtful. Women's sexual selection is
| not the arbiter of a good personality - and indeed, given
| what we know about how seductive dark triad traits are, it
| may in fact be a signal of a _bad_ personality.
|
| It's pretty bad when you straight up recommend "woo" to
| people, and effectively say "all roads lead to rome...
| EXCEPT THE RED PILL!"
|
| The reality is that no matter how garbage Tate et all are,
| the alternative explanations for why increasingly large
| amounts of men have no game are so bad that huge swaths of
| men get seduced by tate's bullshit.
|
| Your kind of response only takes impressionable men who
| would fall for it and further entrenches their beliefs that
| the red pill is the "subversive", "real" way that alpha men
| are ending up with harems while billy the beta ends up
| making another HN post about typescript
| hilux wrote:
| Something can be hurtful and true. In fact, it's almost
| always the case that the most true and important things
| are hard to hear, hard to believe.
|
| When you can accept that your problems are your own
| responsibility (which is not the same as "fault"), you'll
| start to move forward.
|
| Yes, I'm speaking from experience. It's not easy.
| j45 wrote:
| This channel looks to be a solid recommendation.
|
| Personality is everything, and can be developed from
| leveraging one's sincere ability to be curious.
|
| As someone who accidentally outgrew gaming after playing
| them more than anyone I knew, a channel by this name, with
| this kind of content can shine the path forward to other
| equally interesting sides of one's self.
|
| In my case, I rediscovered creating and building things was
| more interesting than playing in others worlds.
|
| I never really quit gaming. I just didn't identify as
| someone who played games any longer.
| hilux wrote:
| I can't express how much I appreciate this - thank you!
| bckr wrote:
| You've got significant foundational work to do. I'd start
| with Healthy Gamer GG's channel[] and also pick up the book
| How to Win Friends and Influence People.
|
| [] https://youtube.com/shorts/693UD3V1KSU?si=6IiRwP0Q1qRqErnp
| anewhnaccount2 wrote:
| You don't know that this person has lots of work to do on
| themselves. These things are partially a matter of
| compatibility, putting yourself out there (which is a thing
| you do rather than a thing you become), and yes,
| unfortunately, pure dumb luck.
| j45 wrote:
| Being out there a lot is the dumb luck of human
| propagation. Seems pretty effective.
| bckr wrote:
| I do know, because "what if women aren't interested in
| you" is a question you don't ask after a certain degree
| of development.
|
| I don't know how long it will take to do this work. With
| a foundation of personal development and the right
| attitude, I bet you can go from "what if women aren't
| interested in me" to successfully dating in under 6
| weeks.
|
| If you need to learn how to develop yourself, it could
| take 6 months or more before you're able to internalize
| the needed lessons.
| silverquiet wrote:
| Been through it. Never really could take any of this stuff
| all that seriously. Especially after the woman I ended up
| closest to passed away. I'm mostly wondering how the people
| who recommend marriage as a solution to a lot of ills (and
| I think it's an issue worth exploring but I also think
| there's a lot of correlation/causation mixups here) expect
| people to take action on that.
| bckr wrote:
| My heart goes out to you with regard to the death of your
| loved one.
|
| Do not let death and grieving pull you permanently out of
| the realm of intimate relationships.
|
| Human connection is foundational to all kinds of success.
| Taking it seriously has served me well.
| silverquiet wrote:
| Loved one is probably overselling it - she cut me loose
| for the man she would eventually marry and then passed
| away a few years later, but it certainly made it all seem
| even more pointless than before.
|
| I'm mostly responding to all the advice I see about the
| benefits of marriage. My response tends to be something
| like, "so...?". It occurs to me that no one of these
| people really talks about the benefits of dating, which
| seems like a pretty significant prerequisite. And again,
| I suspect there's a lot of selection effects going into
| that data as well.
|
| Not that I don't appreciate your comments.
| hotdogscout wrote:
| Newton died a virgin, averages are defined by average people,
| don't stress on their anecdote and don't put your value in
| what women think of you.
| j45 wrote:
| It's everyone's personal choice but if Newton had some
| descendants, I wonder how that might have turned out.
| hotdogscout wrote:
| Mediocre probably. I don't think biology is the
| bottleneck of great ideas.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family
| j45 wrote:
| Everything is a function of the self-effort place into self-
| growth.
|
| Because everyone's special, and therefore no one is special,
| there is someone just like you who you will be very
| compatible with, both in the beginning and growing through
| the seasons of life together.
|
| It just begins with deciding how you want to look at
| possibility, or not. Our minds go how and where we focus.
| j7ake wrote:
| My theory: PhD is inherently unstructured, and requires wading
| into the unknown without many markers to tell you where you are
| going.
|
| Marriage creates a structured life outside of work that gives
| PhDs an anchor to return to periodically. This leads to better
| long term and consistent progress.
|
| Stephen King describes his success in writing in part due to
| his successful marriage. There may be some similarities there.
| Solvency wrote:
| Nonsense as a general rule.
|
| Love my family. love wife and kid. Have never been less
| productive or efficient in my life.
|
| As a stickler guy between 20 and 34? Relentless productivity,
| focus, and time.
| bsdpufferfish wrote:
| People don't typically start a Phd at 34. You're at a
| different level of maturity now.
| rightbyte wrote:
| No way. Family puts alot of "make money now" and "be home for
| dinner" pressure on you. Hardly a good environment for doing
| research. Not even bringing kids into the equation.
| bsdpufferfish wrote:
| Research in a Phd program is 90% long term habit, 10%
| creative musing. Marriage structure helps with that 90%
| part.
| etrautmann wrote:
| Having been through all of this, young kids are both
| wonderful, but definitely restrict the ability to
| completely focus on a research sprint. While 90% habit is
| important, there were periods where I needed long hours
| and focus, and those are harder to find now. Adding
| finances to that, and I'm really glad that I waited until
| after my Phd to have kids, though plenty of people do it
| successfully.
| bsdpufferfish wrote:
| No disagreement.
| thsksbd wrote:
| Structured, disciplined, habits make you far more
| productive than working long hours.
|
| At an old job (natl. lab) there was a guy who does his
| research job for, maybe, two or three hours a day. The rest
| of the day he is reading unrelated books.
|
| But those three hours are so productive that by March he
| has filled his employer's scientific paper quota. His
| managers hate him because they see his fucking around 70%
| of the time, but by any performance metric (especially
| quality. His papers are the consequential ones)he's blowing
| everyone away.
| donor20 wrote:
| A lot to this - marriage with no kids. Kids flips this though
| - you want to be done with the bigger push at that point
| thsksbd wrote:
| This top engineering professor had two kids in grad school
| and a third one during his first tenure track job.
|
| His theory is that wife and kids out a gun to his head that
| he had to learn to swim and quick
| Cloudef wrote:
| If that's true, the future doesn't look good for male. Honestly
| though, marriage and having children come with financial
| stability and good life balance.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Marital status is also correlated with age. Students who enter
| the PhD having spent a few years working following their
| undergraduate degree are often a bit more motivated and
| experienced (though I've had successful students take both
| paths.)
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| Likewise people with bigger feet are better at math. Well
| actually that's just because infants have tiny feet and are
| notoriously terrible at math.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Well that depends on our definition of bigger. If we're
| saying bigger is "larger than baby feet" then okay but i
| think a better definition is "larger than the mean/median".
| Would baby feet drive down the mean/median that much?
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Based on my observations, marriage is the most reliable
| indicator of graduate student success. At least the male ones.
|
| At least in math, I would rather say that marriage is a
| counterindication that a great PhD thesis come out at the end,
| for the simple reason that being married means that math is
| only your second love, while writing a great PhD thesis in math
| requires the topic of your PhD thesis to be your nearly only
| love for the duration of your PhD studies.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Ya know, that makes sense and all. But I'd want to be careful
| about subtly implying that doing nothing but your research
| and forgoing personal relationships in favor of work is
| _better_ than having a life and a little worse thesis. Most
| of a career in research happens after the PhD anyway, is it
| possible those "This is my life" people do worse later on,
| when their potential contributions to fields would be
| maximizing?
|
| Having a life is an okay thing to want, if for no other
| reason than the people who are really crazy for it and want
| nothing but math research aren't going to listen to anyone
| about relationships anyway. If you find yourself seriously
| considering turning it down a little bit to find other
| avenues to personal fulfillment then you might not be one of
| those crazies and i think that's okay, maybe even better
| thsksbd wrote:
| My sister is in a relationship with a top, young, number
| theorist. Ill have to let her know the damage she's doing :D
| brandall10 wrote:
| Generally it seems both are grad students, or at the very
| least, met in school and the relationship has an academic
| foundation.
|
| Imagine having a partner to wade through such an experience who
| can relate, is pushing you, helping you see your blind spots,
| quelling your doubts/fears, and in general cheering for your
| success.
|
| And then the clarity you get for doing the same for them.
|
| There's also the extra level of responsibility that marriage
| entails, that forces one to 'grow up', for want of a better
| expression.
| j45 wrote:
| Not just grow up, but one of the easiest cheat codes to
| prioritize and increase effectiveness.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| There are two factors to this.
|
| 1. If your partner is not in a PhD program themselves, then you
| can rely on them during what I call "crunch time", and there
| are a few of those in every PhD when you're doing 16 hour days
| 7 days a week just to get something out of the door. Single
| students don't get that luxury and thus inevitably have to be
| miserable during that period.
|
| 2. Secondly, successfully navigating a relationship/marriage
| takes a lot of the same skills as successfully navigating a
| PhD. A good PhD at the end of the day is built on a lot of
| compromises: between your vision and your advisors', the
| fields', your collaborators, and if you're interning, your
| industry partners. A relationship teaches you how to navigate
| that without burning bridges, which may not be true for a
| headstrong "I'm gonna change the world but I don't know how"
| PhD students.
| Beldin wrote:
| > _A good PhD at the end of the day is built on a lot of
| compromises: ..._
|
| Don't forget "your skill level". Recognising your own
| limitations as a researcher is rather important for a PhD
| student.
| analog31 wrote:
| My observation is that the married students had a real fire
| burning under them to get done and out. They had a real
| tangible motivation.
|
| Disclosure: Married to another PhD student.
|
| Also, somebody to drive you to the hospital when your
| experiment explodes. Fortunately, she wasn't seriously injured.
| richrichie wrote:
| Marriage solves the problem of sex. Especially for male phd
| students. This is a huge factor at that age, and for the
| species types that are found in phd programs. Takes the edge
| away, saves time and energy, etc. Not fashionable to talk about
| it in such terms. But it is a factor.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| God if only. Unfortunately, they call it the ol "ball and
| chain" for a reason.
|
| Most men would happily sleep around with many women as they
| could if they had a "pass" from their partner. I wouldn't
| even be surprised if more than half of all married men would
| describe their sex life in terms like "mediocre" or worse.
|
| Marriage is supposed to solve that issue, but I claim that
| among other things, falling marriage rates indicate that
| increasingly large numbers of (usually men) are prioritizing
| sleeping around over settling down.
| richrichie wrote:
| Most phd students are not the bar hopping pick up artists.
| And female students in campuses don't exactly hunt phd
| students to sleep with either. Marriage works. I am not
| talking about over 10 or 20 years. But during this period,
| it solves the problem of sex.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Significant swaths of Ph.D students would abandon all of
| their scholarly endeavors if they could go bar hopping
| and be pick-up artists.
|
| "Female students not hunting for Ph.D students" is
| evidence that, especially for men, getting lots of
| education is straight up "unattractive".
|
| Why should I even want a Ph.d if all it signals to the
| other sex is that I'm not just a nerd, but a nerd with a
| poor ability to calculate ROI. At least a lot of the
| "jocks" ended up with a good ROI job in finance that they
| got from their frat brothers rich dad.
| fwip wrote:
| > Why should I even want a Ph.d if...
|
| I dunno dude, why do you do literally anything in life?
| Surely your life doesn't revolve around finding a wife.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Well, this also discounts the whole "is a problem for the
| types of guys found in phd programs" thing. Yeah, a large
| majority of guys would like to sleep with women. It's not
| just a factor of, "does my wife expect me to not fuck
| around", and is significantly, "is there anyone in my life
| that i can actually have sex with". Loneliness is a big
| deal and for a quiet and introverted, private guy having a
| wife raises the potential partners from 0 to 1, an
| infinitely higher amount.
|
| Yeah, if you have the body type and personality type and
| time and willingness to seek out and sleep with random
| women then go for it. But just because you don't fit that
| bill doesn't mean you don't need sexual comfort in your
| life. (I don't believe you said that, but it's a useful
| statement for me to make)
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Marriage solves the problem of sex. Especially for male phd
| students. This is a huge factor at that age, and for the
| species types that are found in phd programs.
|
| In my observation among the students who do well in PhD
| programs, you can find a lot more asexual people than in the
| general population. In this sense, you are probably right in
| the argument
|
| > Takes the edge away, saves time and energy, etc.
|
| but for a nearly opposite reason.
| hilux wrote:
| Checks out - Feynman was married.
| fromMars wrote:
| Didn't work out for me. I was pursuing a PhD and got married
| and shortly after had a child. I could no longer comfortably
| subsist on the salary of a Research Assistant. So I left
| academia to make more money.
|
| I could imagine marriage helping if one doesn't have kids and
| the cost of living where the school is located isn't too high
| or if one's spouse has a successful career.
|
| The advantage of being married is that you don't have to spend
| as much energy dating and other social activities.
| dmarchand90 wrote:
| I did a phd and really enjoyed it, a lot of my friends did as
| well and hated it. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter:
|
| Note this advice is only if you're average or feel average. If
| you're a superstar and you know it please disregard (but in that
| case you're probably not reading this anyway).
|
| 1) I had a professor who was very strong in the field and could
| point me to high impact work and steer me clear of useless
| activities.
|
| 2) I got a good stipend. I do not recommend borrowing money or
| living wretchedly for a phd.
|
| 3) My professor hit a good balance between pushing me to work
| harder and puling back when I felt I was going to hard.
|
| 4) I avoided doing much work as a TA as much as possible. I did
| the minimum amount that delivered reasonable value to the class
| and the students.
|
| 5) I avoided working weekends and the evenings. Conversely I put
| a lot of pressure on myself to do work during work hours.
|
| 6) I would occasionally work holidays and weekends (this only
| applies to European phds which get 5+ weeks of vacation. Do not
| go below three weeks vacation. )
|
| 7) I did not try to be "a hero " I didn't do crazy ideas without
| discussing with my professor first. I didn't take more than the
| minimum amount of classes and select material that seemed
| extremely relevant.
|
| 8) I worked a job first (2 years). This made me really appreciate
| my phd a lot more and gave me a lot of much needed time
| management and interpersonal work skills.
|
| 9) i avoided reinventing the wheel at all costs.
|
| 10) I learned to say no and said no often
|
| 11) I always yes to social activities
|
| 12) I did hiking on the weekend and running during the week.
|
| 13) I prepared for a non academic career often.
|
| 14) on special occasions I would disregard all the above and work
| really hard on something. I cannot say how often this happens and
| it's kind of a spiritual question. Probably no more then 3-4
| times a year is sustainable and sometimes not even every year.
|
| My goal the whole time was to be a 'forgettable' student.
| Forgettable in that I tried to avoid being memorably good and
| avoided being memorably bad.
|
| Of course there were genius peers I worked with and worked the
| weekends and evenings. I think this was right for them as the act
| gave them joy and they were producing great results. Conversely
| some people ground too hard and still didn't have very much to
| show.
|
| If in doubt and you're freaking out do less. If you're not in
| doubt and you're getting complacent do more.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I worked a job first (2 years). This made me really appreciate
| my phd a lot more and gave me a lot of much needed time
| management and interpersonal work skills.
|
| I went back to school after a few years to get an MBA. I've
| never actually managed anyone to this day but it was sort of a
| prereq for a lot of the types of jobs I was interested in at
| the time.
|
| It helped that the coursework was easier for me than the
| engineering degrees I had. But I think there was also
| discipline and process that came from having been in the
| working world that definitely helped me do really well in the
| program.
| dmarchand90 wrote:
| Yes yes yes. Personally I don't recommend a phd without work
| experience
| ghaff wrote:
| It can probably also help with consciously deciding you
| want to spend a few more years in academia as opposed to
| just naturally sliding into spending a bunch more years in
| school as the path of least resistance.
| dmarchand90 wrote:
| Some other things:
|
| 15) I made time to do whatever impulsive thing my mind felt
| like doing in my free time. I love video games and after a
| decade avoiding them because I felt like they were a waste of
| time, I got back into them.
|
| 16) I still had total freak outs from time to time. I vividly
| remember googling plumbing classes at community College.
| (Nothing wrong with plumbing! I bet for 10% of readers the
| right answer is to drop out of your phd and go into trades)
|
| 17) try not to get drunk too often or high too often. A bit on
| Friday is ok (you need to self monitor)
| oneepic wrote:
| I understand this is a bit odd to mention, but it's kinda
| cool seeing (15) made the list. It's a love-hate thing for
| me.
| bglazer wrote:
| I'm finishing a phd now and this is very good advice,
| especially point number 1.
|
| There are a lot of good, technically fascinating ideas out
| there. Only a subset of those are interesting to other
| researchers in your field. As an early career researcher, the
| first priority is finding projects that other people will care
| about. It's very very important to find an advisor who knows
| what others care about. Science is inherently social.
| bckr wrote:
| I love this advice for activities outside academia as well. Solve
| the problems in front of you that you can make progress on. Don't
| spend time trying to weigh the value of the problem based on
| perceived prestige.
| mo_42 wrote:
| From my experience, I strongly do _not_ recommended You and Your
| Research.
|
| When I started my PhD I read this text as well. Of course I was
| very motivated of doing only important research. After some time
| I even found a nice research topic and worked on it for over two
| years. Even my advisor pointed out that it was a very novel and
| foundational idea.
|
| At the same time, a colleague published three papers in top
| conferences. Their approach was basically to look at publications
| from the previous conference, apply some delta that they had an
| advantage over other teams and publish this in the next round.
|
| Reviewers were happy because their publications already got cited
| and they understood the topic well.
|
| Whereas my topic used an algorithm from the seventies that
| reviewers had to revisit. My topic didn't fit so well into the
| overall conference trend and so I still have way less citations
| than those incremental works.
|
| When someone asks me if it's worth doing a PhD I tend to say that
| you need to like the direction in which science is going. If you
| don't like it and are rather rebellious, it's better to start a
| company.
| maayank wrote:
| Interesting take, thanks
| antegamisou wrote:
| What about pursuing a PhD if you aren't planning to stay in
| academia? Would its lack bar you from industrial R&D positions?
| Assuming we're talking about a Computer Science/Engineering
| discipline.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I would say it really depends. There are certainly
| specialized area where a PhD is important, but it's hit or
| miss.
|
| For instance, my team (in a big tech company) has people with
| very diverse backgrounds. Some tasks require more expertise,
| but most of the work will fit a generalist profile. Some
| teams who are more "researchy" have probably more PhDs. I
| feel doing a PhD gave me more time to learn things, while my
| current position is more fast paced and I can't afford to
| spend 2 weeks just learning new things.
|
| Financially, it didn't make sense to do a PhD. It's not even
| super clear what I learned is helpful now but I'm glad I've
| had this experience. It gave me a bit more perspective and
| culture of the field. I don't regret doing it. However, I
| regret going into academia. Being a professor didn't suit me
| for many reasons. I'm happier in industry.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Get into the PhD, publish a paper, get internships, and then
| once you've gotten an internship with a group you're happy
| with, ask if you can drop out and join them.
| drewg123 wrote:
| Industry is more than willing to look past a lack of a degree
| given a good track record. Two of the smartest people I know
| didn't have undergrad degrees. One started as a lineman for
| AT&T, and learned programming by tending a computer in a
| field office, and worked his way up to working at some of the
| biggest tech companies. Your web browser uses technology he
| wrote (being cagey, as I'm not sure its commonly know that he
| doesn't have a degree).
|
| Even academia is willing to look past a lack of a degree for
| the right person -- my ex-wife's PhD advisor's advisor didn't
| have a PhD himself (but did foundational work in the field).
| fakedang wrote:
| > Even academia is willing to look past a lack of a degree
| for the right person -- my ex-wife's PhD advisor's advisor
| didn't have a PhD himself (but did foundational work in the
| field).
|
| These seems like more than a generation ago. Things were
| very different back then. I think now attaining a PhD (or
| enrolling in one) is the first step towards even starting
| out in foundational research. Academia today seems to be
| more about restricting access to the Ivory tower, rather
| than democratizing it.
| barbarr wrote:
| Similar experience here. My PhD research was in a niche (but
| unhyped) field where it was easy to pump out low-impact papers.
| My peers who went into more hyped fields had much more
| citations and much better job outcomes, whether in academia or
| in industry.
|
| If you want to do high-impact research in the long run, you
| need to have a strong foundation, which means a solid bed of
| high-impact papers to point to when you need funding,
| opportunities, etc.
| opticfluorine wrote:
| Very similar experience here, and I ended up going directly
| into industry instead of a postdoc because I had the same
| realization. I'm glad I did it that way, though, because I'm
| very proud of my research and I think we did something very
| interesting and novel.
| lisper wrote:
| The word "science" is ambiguous. It denotes two very different
| kinds of activities.
|
| The first is the lofty intellectual ideal of solving a major
| problem, winning a Nobel, and getting your name in the history
| books. The second is the daily grind of reading other people's
| papers, providing peer review, writing grant proposals, and
| generally interfacing with other humans as a cog in a grand
| machine. The second is in some sense "easier" than the first.
| It's a lot more work, takes a lot more time, but it's a
| relatively straightforward (if often tedious) process that
| pretty much anyone can do with enough diligence. The first is a
| lot more fun, can often be done while showering, but is also
| fraught with risk and dependent on luck. You have to find just
| the right problem at just the right time under just the right
| circumstances. You can spend your time slogging, or you can
| spend your time buying intellectual lottery tickets and hope
| that lightning strikes, but you can't do both, at least not at
| at the same time.
|
| The good news is that engaging in the daily slog is often (but
| not always) good preparation for and improves the odds of
| having lightning strike. So as a practical matter, that is
| often a good place to start. You might feel as if you're
| wasting your time reading everybody else's bullshit papers
| instead of writing the next Nobel prize winner yourself, but
| you're not. You're actually an essential part of the process
| even if you don't end up with the glory. And some day you just
| might be facing a really hard problem and go, "Wait a minute,
| this seems kinda like that thing I remember Dr. Arglebargle
| talking about three years ago, except that he missed this one
| detail..." and that's when the magic happens.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > Their approach was basically to look at publications from the
| previous conference, apply some delta that they had an
| advantage over other teams and publish this in the next round.
|
| I think that's it for most PhD students. Look at recent papers
| from your advisor (or their co-authors). Once you understand
| that specialized area well-enough, you should be able to find
| an epsilon that can be added, or to apply some results to a
| different use case. A 2-3 papers in somewhat decent conferences
| should be enough to be able to graduate.
|
| Most people won't solve interesting open problems. They will
| find questions that nobody has asked before, so they can be the
| first one to answer it.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > When someone asks me if it's worth doing a PhD I tend to say
| that you need to like the direction in which science is going.
| If you don't like it and are rather rebellious, it's better to
| start a company.
|
| While this feeds into the founder kool-aid we all drank as
| founders, it also speaks volumes of truth to me to this day: I
| rejected where biology/ecology was going even when supposedly
| favourable paradigms--Al Gore's inconvenient truth and Carbon
| Credits were a thing as I was wrapping up my undergrad and I
| was appalled by both--were standing in front of progress and
| the most obvious solutions if you could take the small amount
| of time to familiarize yourself with emerging technology
| outside your gradschool bubble. Something I don't think
| academics are actually capable for fear of seeming to reveal
| themselves as hyper-specialized in one aspect only rather than
| the polymath they may seem/convinced themselves that they are.
|
| Also, it is my experience most academics are tone-deaf and
| incredibly petty individuals: a visit with the tenured faculty
| was enough for me to run for the hills of the debt-laden,
| financial crisis impacted work-force.
|
| I still visit my Biochemistry professor from time to time, who
| did well getting into Bitcoin, when I launched my startup
| working with the Hemp Industry; and I'm super proud of playing
| a part in that since we both got hit hard during the 2008
| financial crisis. But I'm glad I turned down his offer to work
| in his lab and get my Masters and went through boot-strapping
| hell to launch my startup after working in many Industries just
| to get by.
|
| It was interesting white boarding about the bio-chemistry of
| CBD (and other cannabnoids for that matter) infused drinks/food
| I could pitch to my clients as profitable avenues of growth
| after struggling to make it to class and 'only get a B-'
| because I just didn't 'fit' (read: rebellious) the school model
| at all despite having both honors and letters of recommendation
| to join two labs.
|
| I'm in Grad school now (almost 20 years since starting my
| undergrad) for CompSci now, but only because I'm working to
| transition into Big Data and I already work on the large Data
| Centers spurred on by the AI hype; luckily it's a non-thesis
| program for experienced and working professionals (I'm
| currently on assignment for a sub-contractor in WY).
| sage76 wrote:
| > most academics are tone-deaf and incredibly petty
| individuals
|
| Yep, their egos get inflated from interacting with students
| all the time.
|
| If you have been teaching the same subject for 10 or more
| years, and you are constantly interacting with people who are
| learning it for the first time and struggling, it's easy to
| become arrogant.
|
| I'll go 1 step further and say that most of the advice
| academics give out in terms of learning has been
| counterproductive for me.
|
| There have been some exceptions, but I have been disappointed
| for the most part.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| Yep. I regularly interact with a seasoned academic who is
| easily one of the top minds in his area. Having him
| understand that this doesn't mean that he is an expert in
| _all_ areas a constant uphill battle.
| xk_id wrote:
| This mentality is the reason why the ratio of funding to
| groundbreaking work is a disaster compared to the previous
| century.
| casualscience wrote:
| Much of the foundational science we learn about in the history
| books was done by bored rich people. Becoming a bored rich
| person is still a great strategy if you want to do foundational
| research. The risks you need to take in order to do that kind
| of work are too onerous for someone who needs a job to put food
| on the table.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Someone who needs a job to put food on the table is going to
| take 4-5 years off to do a PhD?
|
| That doesn't make sense. PhD salaries in most places can
| barely support one person , if that.
| NegativeK wrote:
| I think you and your parent comment are saying the same
| thing.
| mathteddybear wrote:
| Well, if it is any help, the guy who made this forum once
| published a book with a collection of his essays. Various
| topics, including how to become a rich person, in what ways
| graduate studies are helpful in creating software. Might
| make sense of putting worldly things in this perspective.
| casualscience wrote:
| I did so after college, had no money, parents were
| immigrants with no money but always told me to "follow my
| dreams". PhD payed enough to eat and live a decent life as
| a 20-something with no dependents. As I got older, I
| realized the financial burden I was taking, saw my family
| get into more and more financial trouble and I felt like a
| helpless selfish brat "chasing dreams" while my parents
| were trapped and fighting a losing battle... I finished as
| fast as I could and got a job in tech.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Those who are actually desperate to put food on the table
| are not going to spend extra years to finish as fast they
| can, they just leave. Or they don't start in the first
| place.
| newswasboring wrote:
| The only person I know who successfully employed the "Bored
| rich person" strategy is Stephan Wolfram.
| sieste wrote:
| I very much doubt that Stephen Wolfram is bored.
| lairv wrote:
| Has he done any foundational science either ?
| Animats wrote:
| Yes.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| You should watch his "live CEO'ing" videos for Mathematica.
| They're pretty good. He'll be personally testing something
| out for an upcoming release, something will break and he'll
| call up whoever was in charge of that function or module
| and start asking a bunch of questions.
| casualscience wrote:
| hmm, I think the entire FIRE movement is basically about
| this, no? Some people want to just do gardening or
| whatever, but if your hobby is science, that's totally fine
| too. Not every kind of science can be done on the cheap,
| but basically any theoretical work can be.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| That's why I have high hopes for humanity once we get closer
| to post scarcity (if we ever get close). Sure..some people
| will just watch TV all day, but I'd expect I'd start sitting
| down with math books and eventually finally learn the stuff I
| never had the time for when trying to put food on the table.
|
| The rich person life back in the day was having personal
| tutors at a young age teaching you Latin, Greek, rhetoric,
| mathematics, music, and so on. Then if you were really good
| you'd just work on whatever problems you fancied, while the
| rest of the family probably took care of the fortune. That's
| my very limited understanding for how it worked for some
| anyway. They would correspond with other scientists, but
| mostly focus on their work. There's some advantage to the
| university system, but the administrative beauracracy is
| intense. Writing government grants or proposals and so on is
| an enormous time suck. If you didn't need money, you could
| focus 100% on whatever you want.
| hinkley wrote:
| And yet programmed love rehashing arguments from 1973.
|
| I wonder sometimes, how many of the people arguing endlessly
| and religiously about concurrency primitives realize that they
| are debating "religious" texts from the same prophet, Sir Tony
| Hoare. But as you say, the lack of immediacy does seem to mess
| with our heads.
| j2kun wrote:
| I had a different experience. I aimed for what your colleague
| did, but none of my work was good enough for top tier
| conferences, so I ended up with neither novel nor top-tier
| work.
|
| So I think both options really depend on what you can deliver
| and in what timeframe.
| userabchn wrote:
| I chose an ambitious/important topic for my PhD. Perhaps it is
| because stories usually have happy endings, causing us to be
| overly optimistic, but I imagined that if I just worked really
| hard on it then eventually I would solve it. In the end I did
| enough to get the degree, but I didn't solve the problem in any
| real way. It was five years of struggle that didn't produce any
| interesting results. The biggest learning for me from the PhD
| was that it made me more humble and caused me to doubt that
| something is possible unless a clear path to it is already
| visible.
| amatic wrote:
| That is also a difficult problem - how do you know
| beforehand, that a problem is worthwhile? That someone _else_
| thinks it is important? Or how high is "ambitious" if you
| never tried to do a thing? There is a lot of luck in that
| system.
| newswasboring wrote:
| I don't know you, neither your life, but if a university
| granted you a PhD you must have made some headway on the
| problem. It is possible that you made a bunch of progress but
| "not enough" from your perspective. We have some evidence
| that you did good work (your PhD) and no evidence (afaik)
| that your struggle didn't produce any interesting results.
|
| I think you might be being too harsh on yourself.
| hx8 wrote:
| If you work hard for five years you are going to have some
| tangible things to show for it. To me it sounds like he
| didn't accomplish as much as he originally hoped, and he
| suspects the opportunity cost of continuing with the work
| is too high.
| jimz wrote:
| Considering on how many people are routinely influenced
| by the sunk cost fallacy when making their decisions,
| perhaps even that awareness on when to fold is a part of
| the critical process a good academic goes through in the
| course their research. The economy and politics have
| forced me to pivot and without enough self-awareness to
| realize when to leverage some other skill or the ability
| to learn another set of skills based on my prior
| education, even if it meant moving or changing to a field
| that isn't immediately obvious. I think it's a useful
| sanity check at times.
|
| That is sort of the point of a liberal arts education
| broadly, no? It's not a trade school (although I did
| spend my 20s at a glorified one and worked in what really
| was a fancy service industry gig - the law - that is
| partially obstructed by the sort of things at stake that
| we deal with, but is fundamentally a service and very
| much one that is customer-facing. I was one of the first
| few to quit from those in my graduating class that I kept
| touch with as well.) Owners of sports franchises, worth
| billions of dollars, fail to understand concepts like
| this. Those in charge of large companies, with
| externalities being constraints that we might not see in
| fairness but still having control of the narrative more
| or less, fail to demonstrate this. The government and
| policymakers either ignore or are ignorant of this on
| more occasions than one can count. Although it's hard to
| say what would've happened in the alternative, the
| initiative does alter the dynamics one would eventually
| have with their new situation, speaking personally. At
| least I'm not routinely putting in 75-80 hour weeks which
| is liberating in its own way even if it was routine
| enough that few bat an eye when put in that position at
| the start, judging from what my friends mostly ended up
| doing and not doing.
|
| But the imposter syndrome thing does haunt as well. It
| takes a while to realize that one hears about plane
| crashes because planes not crashing do not make the news,
| after all, and the actual rate of crashes, incidents, and
| near-misses can be and usually ends up haphazardly
| reported at best if one doesn't dig into the official
| quotidian, and jargon-filled language of official
| reports, and I don't think that it's part of society's
| expectation for the average person even if it's both an
| apt analogy and something to look up if one has the time.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| It is well-known that PhD theses are made out of the
| fragments of broken life dreams.
| tuatoru wrote:
| Just like undergraduate work, your PhD thesis is practise. For
| the PhD, in the mechanics of doing large scale research and
| participating in the community. Save the novel and profound
| stuff for post-doctoral work.
| jenny91 wrote:
| So who enjoyed and got more out of their research, you or the
| one doing trivial twists in the latest saturated field?
| Animats wrote:
| > When someone asks me if it's worth doing a PhD I tend to say
| that you need to like the direction in which science is going.
| If you don't like it and are rather rebellious, it's better to
| start a company.
|
| Right. I got an MSCS from Stanford in 1985. That was about when
| it was becoming clear that expert systems were a dead end. The
| Stanford faculty was heavily invested in expert systems at the
| time, and were in serious denial. This was the beginning of the
| "AI Winter". I could see this, because I'd been doing proof of
| correctness work, where machine-powered predicate calculus
| could deliver results. It was clear to me that those methods
| were too brittle for the real world, although they worked fine
| on the rigid world of computer programs. Hammering the real
| world into predicate calculus only works if you already almost
| know the answer. (Drew McDermott's essay, "Artificial
| Intelligence meets Natural Stupidity" is the classic commentary
| on that.)
|
| There were some neural net people around, but they were stuck,
| too, partly because they needed a few more orders of magnitude
| more compute power before that approach started working. Neural
| nets had been around for decades, and on a good day in 1970 you
| could recognize handwritten numerals, slowly. Computer power
| wasn't increasing that fast in those days. In 1970, there were
| 1 MIPS mainframes, and in the early 1980s, there were 1 MIPS
| VAXes. Success with neural nets lay many orders of magnitude in
| compute and several decades ahead.
|
| So, instead of academia, I did some stuff for a little company
| called Autodesk.
|
| I never expected computer science to be captured by the ad
| industry.
| bsdpufferfish wrote:
| "have no hope" actually means someone at the department refuses
| to sign your papers. I have never been treated with so little
| respect in industry.
| quantum_state wrote:
| Like everything else, it's a journey of exploration combining
| idealism and pragmatism with curiosity at the core. As some of
| the humble examples Feynman provided, when one digs into them,
| one would see the connection, intrigued and enlightened ... and
| it would become an enjoyable and fruitful journey ...
| bradrn wrote:
| Key sentence (quoted from a letter of Feynman's):
|
| > The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or
| help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. A
| problem is grand in science if it lies before us unsolved and we
| see some way for us to make some headway into it.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| A problem with marriage during the Phd is the inevitable two body
| problem. Academia privileges being itinerant. One reason I quit
| my PhD program for industry was because I saw how those ahead of
| me who wanted to stay in the same region were seen as failures or
| not serious.
|
| I was excited for my friend who got a postdoc in another prof's
| lab in the same department, who didn't have to move across the
| country with his wife and newborn child. And my advisor taught me
| to pity him instead, "he could have gone to MIT if he applied,
| but now everyone will assume he couldn't get a postdoc anywhere
| else". If you "win" then you have to move for a postdoc, then to
| "win" again means moving again for a faculty position.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| That kind of thinking is such self-defeating misery. If you
| have something to contribute, it doesn't matter where you go.
| You go to the University of Nowhere In Particular and make it a
| center of the new hot subject in research. If you can't do
| that, then it doesn't matter if you go to MIT or TIM or
| whatever, because that's just a way to earn renown from the
| work of others, rather than your own.
| lostdog wrote:
| Most people become closer to the average of their colleagues.
| Very very few people are so strong by themselves that they
| can raise the level of a place just by being there
| individually.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Very very few people are so strong by themselves that
| they can raise the level of a place just by being there
| individually.
|
| If you are not at least a person who _might_ have this
| property, you likely aren 't PhD material.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Everybody at the target institution also has a PhD;
| that's the minimum bar to cross.
| javajosh wrote:
| I've often felt that there is something inherently unwholesome
| about PhDs and the modern academic effort. As if we could create
| research factories, and that the quality and quantity of
| discoveries would scale with input (money). I'm not a historian
| of science, but I do know that many of our greatest scientists
| were not professional researchers, doing the work essentially in
| their spare time on the side (Einstein, Newton) or more
| typically, because of the support of a wealthy patron.
| Contributors self-selected for passion and talent mixed with a
| juicy problem. It makes sense to park people with passion and
| talent but NOT a juicy problem into a teaching position until
| that problem ripens. But instead you get careerist, low-impact
| papers - even negative-impact papers if you taken into account
| the impact on signal-to-noise ratio such papers have.
|
| Consider that one of the more important papers in CS in the last
| 20 years was "Attention is all you need", which was a side-effect
| of the authors day jobs. Or the many contributions of open-source
| which are 99% hobbyists. There is some sort of perversion that
| happens when you "fund research" - it removes the spontaneity and
| changes the selection criteria from something "natural" (passion
| and time and results) to something "synthetic" (grant
| application). It would seem to me a more sensible approach to
| become a car mechanic or programmer and do your original science
| on the side.
| bglazer wrote:
| It's telling that your examples are theoretical physics, math,
| and computer science.
|
| You should visit a lab that does actual experiments. I don't
| think anyone is doing cryo electron microscopy in their spare
| time. Most science just takes a lot of time and money. No way
| around it.
|
| Also, most research is incremental, and thats's totally fine.
| People lionize the "great men" like Einstein who have these
| earth-shattering discoveries, but those aren't really worth
| anything without the decades of exploration and hundreds of
| scientists testing theories and figuring out their consequences
| and implications.
| dmarchand90 wrote:
| I mean option one is always going to be there. I'm sure there
| are plenty of neo-aristocrats who can do science if they want.
|
| The problem, honestly, is an ancient one. In plato's republic
| he complains about a lack of state funding for geometry :
|
| " Then take a step backward, for we are out of order, and
| insert the third dimension which is of solids, after the second
| which is of planes, and then you may proceed to solids in
| motion. But solid geometry is not popular and has not the
| patronage of the State, nor is the use of it fully recognized;
| the difficulty is great, and the votaries of the study are
| conceited and impatient. Still the charm of the pursuit wins
| upon men, and, if government would lend a little assistance,
| there might be great progress made. "
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Einstein had a PhD...
| eslaught wrote:
| I had my own "oh shit" moment in my PhD, which I wrote about
| among other things, here:
|
| https://elliottslaughter.com/2024/02/legion-paper-history
|
| I'll just add one more comment: it's entirely possible to feel
| like everything you're doing is worthless, when in fact you are
| on the brink of accomplishing something worthwhile. That's not to
| say that every research project is worthwhile, but "how I feel
| right now" is maybe not the best indicator of how you are
| actually doing.
| gtmitchell wrote:
| As a counter example, I will offer my own experience in graduate
| school. I was one of the few married students and observed that
| nearly all the successful graduates students had the following in
| common:
|
| 1. They had competent PhD advisors 2. The advisors had stable
| funding sources 3. They were single
|
| Of those three, #1 and #2 were by far the most important. Certain
| professors just knew how to run a good lab and were able to
| shepherd their students through the program efficiently.
|
| As for the impact of #3, I found as a married student I had to
| balance my research and teaching responsibilities with the needs
| of my spouse. It added a level of mental and emotional stress my
| single colleagues didn't have to deal with.
|
| Ultimately, my balancing act was unsuccessful. I eventually
| dropped out of my PhD program and ended up divorced.
|
| So yeah, based on my anecdotal (N=1) experience, being married
| doesn't not help you to be successful in graduate school.
| gogobio wrote:
| To be honest, I found the exact opposite to be true. I agree
| with the author regarding the happiness during grad school
| being directly related to being married.
|
| As a matter of fact, I don't think I would have finished my PhD
| had my wife not supported me mentally, economically, and in
| spirit. I've observed our single students struggle, complaining
| about having to do chores after classes, clean, cook, look
| after themselves. Whereas my spouse was supportive and
| understanding, she took a colossal load off my shoulders - I
| could concentrate on my studies and had little to no worries
| outside of school. We both worked, but she worked full time to
| support us and got a master's degree, so she knew all too well
| that grad school isn't peanuts.
|
| I think it's more so about having a good spouse who is
| understanding and supportive, who can meet you halfway.
| bachmeier wrote:
| I wrote my response while you posted, but it basically
| supports what I was saying.
|
| > I think it's more so about having a good spouse
|
| I wouldn't say it's about a "good" spouse. It's tough, and if
| it's too much for the spouse, maybe the grad student should
| consider dropping out. Nobody knows how it's going to work
| until they do it. This is especially true if they moved far
| from home for grad school.
| hilux wrote:
| This brought a smile to my face - so happy for both of you.
| bachmeier wrote:
| Likely a different field, but
|
| > 1. They had competent PhD advisors
|
| I'd say fit is very important. Some advisors will provide
| students with feedback, give them direction, and wait for the
| students to come back with output. Other advisors will
| micromanage students, give them tight deadlines, get upset if
| they don't strictly follow everything they say and every
| deadline, and generally give the student no freedom to do
| anything on their own.
|
| The thing to keep in mind is that grad students usually work
| well in one of those environments, but few students will thrive
| in both.
|
| > as a married student I had to balance my research and
| teaching responsibilities with the needs of my spouse. It added
| a level of mental and emotional stress my single colleagues
| didn't have to deal with.
|
| This can go in several directions. Your experience is obviously
| the most common. In some cases the spouse is counting on the
| grad student to finish and get a high-paying job. They take
| care of everything like paying bills, shopping, cooking, etc.
| I've also seen cases where the spouse sacrificed so the grad
| student could finish (so they could have a higher income and
| start a family) and it put so much pressure on the grad student
| that they were breaking down.
| xqcgrek2 wrote:
| Unfortunately, these days science (to get jobs and research
| money) is all about hype, networking, or big collaborations.
|
| Very few people are trying to do work that is not incremental or
| something without hype potential in the next 3 years.
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| This was a pretty wise article from a young person. The PhD path
| can be tough, and there are always low points, even for people
| who are doing well.
|
| The one thing I always thought about was the old joke about
| medical school.
|
| Q: "What do they call the person who graduates medical school
| with the lowest GPA in the class?
|
| A: "A doctor"
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Same in the military. "What do the sergeants call the last-
| place graduate of West Point? Sir."
| chriskanan wrote:
| I read the book "Getting what you came for" before starting my
| PhD and took that to heart for graduating. It basically argued
| one does not need to do their best work during their PhD as
| that's the start of one's career. What made me sad was after I
| realized my area wasn't one anyone was hiring for faculty for
| (deep learning and AI by around 2011), and that the people who
| did get interviews had an astronomical number of papers (in AI
| generally but nobody cared about neural networks). I fortunately
| got a faculty job after applying to 30 universities in 2013 where
| I got one offer and was their third choice. I got lucky, deep
| learning exploded, and my career took off. Many people tried to
| steer me away from AI and especially neural nets, including some
| of my committee members for the latter.
|
| Regardless, another factor in my success was having a somewhat
| crazy officemate who would work 30 hours straight and then sleep
| 13 hours, 7 days per week (we are still good friends and he is
| now a well known deep learning theory professor). I couldn't do
| that, but the zeal with which he pushed himself motivated me a
| lot (although he also gave me imposter syndrome since we took
| some proof heavy courses where he would be done in a couple hours
| what would take me days to do the same assignments).
|
| I definitely don't recommend having kids during a PhD, as I've
| seen many students and peers struggle tremendously. A partner is
| great, especially if they are equally busy (mine was in medical
| school across the country), because one isn't going to really get
| a lot of nights and weekends if you are really pushing yourself.
| My advisor never pushed me, but I pushed myself very hard.
|
| Still, if one just wants a PhD, what one needs is a good advisor
| who can steer one towards problems that are tractable given the
| student's abilities, stable funding (most programs worth doing
| are reasonably stable), and not trying to think one must do the
| most amazing work of their lives during their PhDs. It is a lot
| of work, but a career in research and the privilege of
| cultivating the next generation is really what makes me feel
| self-actualized.
|
| I try to find low-hanging fruit research projects for my PhD
| students in their first few years to build up their confidence
| and then have them pursue harder problems, where if the harder
| ones don't work out they still hopefully have enough stuff to
| form a dissertation. I often find myself needing to be more of a
| cheerleader for my students nowadays, though, since my field
| exploded and reviewers seem much less competent. Rejected papers
| for good work hurts mental health.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| A PhD program is an investment of years of your life with an
| uncertain outcome - and as with other investments, due diligence
| matters. Researching the program you're entering and the PI
| you'll be working for (not 'with', for) are critically important
| steps. When interviewing for a lab, pay particular attention to
| their anti-fraud procedures (data retention, lab notebook policy,
| etc.). Read everything they've published - is it coherent, or
| obfuscated?
|
| Secondly, you have to have an income, meaning a stipend that
| allows you to lead a normal-ish life, and if the only way you can
| get paid is to teach classes, then your time for doing research
| will be cut in half. Likewise a decent PI will be looking for
| certain characteristics that make investing in you a good idea -
| intelligence, diligence, tenacity, etc.
|
| The vast majority of grad students won't publish anything very
| significant as a grad student, so don't worry about that so much.
| Something like 75% of published papers don't get a citation count
| > 10, and that's often just the PI citing their own umbrella of
| work. This may appear like wasteful use of resources, but the
| significant research can be so valuable to society and industry
| that even a 5% success rate is worth the societal investment.
|
| As far as careers, social networking is the academic game, but
| skill development is what counts more in industry, and most grad
| students don't go into academic research careers (as production
| of PhDs >> open academic positions). Teaching skills are
| undervalued in the USA, incidentally.
|
| P.S. being happy half the time is good enough; trying to be happy
| all the time tends towards manic behavior, and often eventual
| nervous breakdown.
| epstein wrote:
| Easy. Just redefine hope. Problem solved.
| pbj1968 wrote:
| Go get a PhD and then spend your prime years of family making as
| a post doc with a $60k salary. It's ludicrous and the system only
| works if your family is wealthy or your spouse has a better
| paying job.
| sieste wrote:
| phd and academia is a terrible career choice of you want to be
| wealthy. even most "rich professors" could make much more in
| industry. this career only makes sense once you factor in the
| value of working on your own interesting and diverse problems,
| being surrounded by curious and intelligent people, while
| enjoying the freedom of developing your research into whatever
| direction you please. and this starts as a phd student. if, as
| an academic, you ever feel like you don't have most of these
| benefits, while not making enough money to get by, you should
| leave.
| runeblaze wrote:
| Just want to put out here that being neurodivergent is an easy
| route to lose hope. Most people / professors are neurotypical and
| they guide you through their neurotypical lens, as they have
| previously found success doing.
| Two4 wrote:
| I have a friend who coaches all kinds of postgrads through their
| theses/treatises (masters all the way to postdoc) - the number
| one thing that keeps her in business is shitty supervisors and
| the soul crushing grind of academia. PhDs (and masters theses)
| are primarily about project management, with time, money and
| morale being the primary resources dealt with. Almost invariably,
| morale runs out first, and then time, because the work isn't
| being done. Managing morale is as important as managing your time
| and money, and supervisors almost never impart that skill.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Depends on the faculty, but in most cases you are still
| indentured unless fully sponsored with a grant or bursary. Most
| people project their own esoteric interests on what they think
| the world should care about, but almost all are wrong most of the
| time.
|
| Research institutions are like hermit-crab populations, and
| "science advances one funeral at a time" as some observed... One
| finds competitive sociopaths tend to do very well in such
| political climates.
|
| Ones instincts likely tell you my opinions must be ill informed,
| but that was also predictable given the decades of training. ;-)
| lsuresh wrote:
| Most researchers do not do their best work during their PhD, but
| after it. The PhD is simply the training you need for a research
| career. It's an easy path to disillusionment when PhD students
| don't realize this (often because advisors don't do a good job
| helping the students set reasonable expectations and goals).
|
| It's good to be ambitious in problem selection. But a huge part
| of the training is to learn how to break down hard problems into
| reasonable increments that you can attempt to solve, one at a
| time.
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