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Party Boat posted:At least all of that work translates to improved career opportunities! Right? Right?? twoday posted:haha
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Apr 9, 2020 23:13
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Bedshaped posted:I was planning to do a PhD before I got a desk in a PhD student office for my final year of undergrad. Eye-opening to hear each of them describe the different stages of their individual mental-breakdowns. i started reading the grad school threads here on SA my last year of undergrad to start getting prepped for it the sheer misery exuding from those poor folks convinced me to avoid phd programs like the plague and i have never regretted it
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Apr 9, 2020 23:13
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Sekenr posted:Honest question, why is doctorate so stressful? For me it was the knowledge that like 90% of phd theses are never read after completion. I didn't feel like my topic would be one of the lucky ones so I was being asked to work on a document for 5 years which I might as well have instead thrown away. I did not finish it.
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Apr 9, 2020 23:33
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Sekenr posted:Honest question, why is doctorate so stressful? I can't speak for everyone but the usual story is that you're under a lot of pressure to produce original work, in generally a poorly structured or unstructured environment, with very little oversight, and often zero team support. Most of the time you're also straight out of undergrad and have only ever done lovely service sector work, and have no idea how to perform doing a theoretical 8 hours a day reading/researching/benchwork/whatever, so you sort of have to invent standard work practises de novo. Even if your supervisor is a decent person with good intentions you'll probably only see them for an hour every couple of weeks, from what I can tell most supervisors are bastards and will use this time to gently caress you around and drive you insane. So it's sort of like having this giant mountain in front of you that you're expected to climb, only you don't know how any of the equipment works and you've only ever had theoretical training in mountaineering. Everyone around you seems to know what they're doing, but the climb is also kind of a race where everyone is expected to find their own way to the top, so they're under no encouragement to help you or talk to you, and if you fail they can plunder your supplies. The guy leading the expedition shows up once to point the way and then disappears for weeks at a time. The window to climb the mountain is short, the schedule is tight, and every day a giant blizzard labelled DEBT gets closer to base camp. You spend days fumbling with the equipment, trying to learn basic knots and hitches, you work up the courage to try to string a rope and get climbing and it snaps instantly. Other climbers look on briefly at your scattered junk and broken ropes, then pass you by, more and more of them pulling ahead of you every day. Once you start falling behind (and you will fall behind), the lack of structure, or support, and the knowledge of how far behind you're falling quickly puts a lot of people into a state of panicked helplessness. How this emerges varies a lot, but plain old staring-at-the-wall depression and alcoholism is the vanilla setting. A lot (A LOT) of people just walk away. Some brave souls pick themselves up, pull themselves together, and power through their PhD to the reward of a life in academia. The ones who walk away are the lucky ones. (I walked away)
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Apr 9, 2020 23:48
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And don't forget on the mountain next door (real grad jobs) everybody is getting an escalator to the top and getting paid a shitload to do so. At least that's how it was in compsci.
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Apr 10, 2020 00:05
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Apparently Trump is busy praying for BoJo, hence the swift and full recovery. Praise be!
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Apr 10, 2020 00:05
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also virtually all academic avenues lead to the same inevitable truth: tenured boomers have all the best jobs and absolutely refuse to die (and can’t afford to retire) and give them up, and the number of people graduating into a completely inundated academic job market is growing exponentially at approximately the same rate as health care, so the tenured boomers will hold down of these precious positions for like 30-40 YEARS, meanwhile every one of those years generates 5-10 people who are only really qualified for that job.
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Apr 10, 2020 00:08
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https://twitter.com/DawnHFoster/status/1248359716591468544
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Apr 10, 2020 00:31
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Often Abbreviated posted:Was disturbed from my posting stupor by someone performatively clapping out their window across the street. Considered turning out the lights and pretending I wasn't home but then remembered right now that's a crime. You're not allowed to turn out the lights and pretend you're not home? 
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Apr 10, 2020 00:35
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it's illegal to not clap for the nhs
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Apr 10, 2020 00:42
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prefect posted:You're not allowed to turn out the lights and pretend you're not home? Not being home is illegal, is what I interpreted that as
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Apr 10, 2020 00:43
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Often Abbreviated posted:I can't speak for everyone but the usual story is that you're under a lot of pressure to produce original work, in generally a poorly structured or unstructured environment, with very little oversight, and often zero team support. Most of the time you're also straight out of undergrad and have only ever done lovely service sector work, and have no idea how to perform doing a theoretical 8 hours a day reading/researching/benchwork/whatever, so you sort of have to invent standard work practises de novo. Even if your supervisor is a decent person with good intentions you'll probably only see them for an hour every couple of weeks, from what I can tell most supervisors are bastards and will use this time to gently caress you around and drive you insane. It's this and also a lot (not everyone) of people who go into PhD programmes have their intellectual ability as a major component of their self worth, sometimes the only component. Doing original research is about failing constantly for six-eighteen months straight and then producing a result no one cares about and also someone else did it already. People are encouraged to view doing research as a referendum on their entire worth as a human being, unsurprising that it leads to brain problems when your project isn't succeeding and all the people with secure positions are snidely going on about their nameless former students who "sold out to industry" because they "couldn't hack it" in academia.
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Apr 10, 2020 00:46
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did boris die yet?
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Apr 10, 2020 01:02
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Call Your Grandma posted:did boris die yet? he's going to survive, return to power, complete brexit, and win 3 more elections
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Apr 10, 2020 05:36
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"non essential aisles" https://twitter.com/CambridgeCops/status/1248527425379713025?s=20
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Apr 10, 2020 09:59
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TeenageArchipelago posted:Not being home is illegal, is what I interpreted that as This was the intended joke, thank you.
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Apr 10, 2020 10:07
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it's 2020. the police have taken it upon themselves to put you in a hammerlock and expose you to a deadly contaigon, if they have judged that you do not need the penguin biscuits you have purchased
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Apr 10, 2020 10:09
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VAT rules apply. Penguin biscuits are covered in chocolate and thus a luxury whilst Mr Kipling Manor House Cake is a necessity and may be purchased freely. Woe betide any good that purchases biscuits other than Jaffa Cakes.
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Apr 10, 2020 10:12
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But are they biscuit or a caaaaa * is yanked off stage by cane *
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Apr 10, 2020 10:52
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Sekenr posted:Honest question, why is doctorate so stressful? the very short version: almost no research track jobs available, so you're in constant competition with a bunch of similarly crazy people over scraps 95% of research is necessarily going to result in either "failure or mediocrity" based on current standards less that half of that has anything to due with effort, intelligence or creativity of the researchers, but the entire randian individual exceptionalism great man mythos academic cultures makes you and everyone else judge you based solely on things outside your control even if your roulette spin is successful and you publish something good, you have almost no chance of ending up in a career actually getting to do research and use the skills you just developed most of your contributions will not be acknowledged, and the ones that are will have most of the credit and reward going to the top of the pyramid that had the least to do with creating the results unlike in industry where there are at least token avenues to reorganize people and teams (even if theres the entire bs middle management culture around it), science is still cosplaying 16th century relationships so if you're in a toxic or non-functional social dynamic you're locked into being around the same dozen or so people through your phd, and the same few dozen people for the rest of your career if you don't change fields
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Apr 10, 2020 12:30
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PM 'must rest up', says dad Stanley How is this even a headline? gonadic io has issued a correction as of 12:47 on Apr 10, 2020 |
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Apr 10, 2020 12:45
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Been too busy to lol about dead Boris yet. loving lol
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Apr 10, 2020 12:47
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They can have my Penguins when they pry them from my cold, dead virusy hands!
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Apr 10, 2020 13:02
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Call Your Grandma posted:did boris die yet? yes
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Apr 10, 2020 13:18
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what is dead may never die
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Apr 10, 2020 13:24
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hate to disappoint you guys, but boris, like our great, orange counterpart in the states, will live to be a thousand
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Apr 10, 2020 13:29
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gonadic io posted:For me it was the knowledge that like 90% of phd theses are never read after completion. I didn't feel like my topic would be one of the lucky ones so I was being asked to work on a document for 5 years which I might as well have instead thrown away. My partner has said that 3 people have done dissertations on his music and he hasn't read any of them but has pretended to when he met one of them lol
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Apr 10, 2020 13:47
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Often Abbreviated posted:I can't speak for everyone but the usual story is that you're under a lot of pressure to produce original work, in generally a poorly structured or unstructured environment, with very little oversight, and often zero team support. Most of the time you're also straight out of undergrad and have only ever done lovely service sector work, and have no idea how to perform doing a theoretical 8 hours a day reading/researching/benchwork/whatever, so you sort of have to invent standard work practises de novo. Even if your supervisor is a decent person with good intentions you'll probably only see them for an hour every couple of weeks, from what I can tell most supervisors are bastards and will use this time to gently caress you around and drive you insane. Bust Rodd posted:also virtually all academic avenues lead to the same inevitable truth: tenured boomers have all the best jobs and absolutely refuse to die (and can’t afford to retire) and give them up, and the number of people graduating into a completely inundated academic job market is growing exponentially at approximately the same rate as health care, so the tenured boomers will hold down of these precious positions for like 30-40 YEARS, meanwhile every one of those years generates 5-10 people who are only really qualified for that job. Yeah these. I'll add that if you do pick yourself up and power through (I did) the fact that the academic job market is tiny and loving vicious, and only serial overachievers and sociopaths have the drive and ruthlessness required to get one of those jobs, means that you wasted your money, time and sanity for nothing. I've been essentially unemployed ever since, only occasionally getting pitifully renumerated, over-worked hourly-paid teaching jobs, and then they dried up too. It was the biggest mistake of my life by far. I honestly think I'd have been better off getting into heroin or something instead. sat on my keys! posted:People are encouraged to view doing research as a referendum on their entire worth as a human being One of my supervisors was one of the above mentioned overachieving, insanely driven, vaguely sociopathic types and she drummed this into me. Which lead to my actual mental breakdown in year three
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Apr 10, 2020 14:15
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bvj191jgl7bBsqF5m posted:My partner has said that 3 people have done dissertations on his music and he hasn't read any of them but has pretended to when he met one of them lol Lol
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Apr 10, 2020 14:45
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Sekenr posted:Honest question, why is doctorate so stressful? Interestingly, when I did my masters, (philosophy) it was the masters that was regarded as the real killer. Lots of work, very little structure or support, poverty, not much in job prospects unless you complete the Phd. On the Phd level, that changes: you are usually teaching a bit and earning a real salary, and by that time I think most people know where they want to go. But even there poo poo can get real dark. A good friend of mine went on to do her Phd at the University of Toronto. U of T has a very good rep for philosophy, is fairly prestigious, and also rich. At the time it was also unique in its support for doctoral candidates: every department has a office full of people who just work on placing graduates. So she was attending when the 2008 economic catasterfuck started. Previously, there was a 'bottom' in the Doctor of philosophy market in north america: American state schools were numerous enough that you could get a job there. Post 2008, state budgets declined dramatically, and funding for education was cut. My friend told me while doing the Phd, (this would have been around 2011) that year I think 16 or so newly minded Phds were created, and half of them found no positions. This included a Rhodes scholar. And this was casting a sufficiently wide net that nobody had any hopes on staying on the continent. My friend graduated and managed to get 2 now tenure-track positions, but that's the sort of stress she'd have to deal with
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Apr 10, 2020 17:27
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Place your bets on whether Ed is Red after all, or just too dumb to understand this isn't a compliment https://twitter.com/memereference/status/1248529958332481537?s=19
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Apr 10, 2020 18:19
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https://twitter.com/Mondoweiss/status/1248702324396232710
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Apr 10, 2020 21:20
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I'm so glad Zionism could stop being a slur again just in time for Kier to come out for it!!
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Apr 10, 2020 21:27
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keir cringing desperately as the newspapers make a vague motion with their hands NO I'LL BE GOOD DON'T
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Apr 10, 2020 21:32
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LOL, drat.
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Apr 10, 2020 22:18
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that face is the perfect accompaniment for the article the rosy cheeks, the fearful gaze, the half open mouth that is preparing to apologize to the daily mail or some other rag for an imagined slight or outright fabrication...
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Apr 11, 2020 01:30
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lol
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Apr 11, 2020 01:34
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I wonder if these people actually think most Jews believe being anti-Zionist is harmful to Jewish culture and identity. Then again, I wonder if these people actually care... As a Jew I feel like it is less for us and more red meat for the evangelical Christians pining for the end times.
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Apr 11, 2020 02:31
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cyka blyat posted:I wonder if these people actually think most Jews believe being anti-Zionist is harmful to Jewish culture and identity. Then again, I wonder if these people actually care...
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Apr 11, 2020 02:54
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I have a fair amount of friends with doctorates, and they’re all fairly well-adjusted people. Granted, they’re all from Copenhagen, which offers about a fifth of the amount of PhD positions per student, in exchange for getting an actual paycheck and a support network. I know one guy who’s wrapping up his dissertation at Oxford, and he’s real excited to never look back.
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Apr 11, 2020 05:10
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