I'm from a small European country too, I work in machine learning research and I didn't complete a PhD, and had mediocre grades in uni.
Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?
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Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Dude, there’s something wrong either with your schools, or with your perception of reality. Talk to some doctors. Ask what their workload is like. It turns out that software engineers are worked way, way harder.
In school?
Maybe in the US is different but where I am the self reported preparation times for medical exams are lower than that of a Physics/Math/Engineering exam: if I recall correctly Physics was at the top, then Math, then various Engineering disciplines (but not all, maybe CE was an exception), then Medicine.
Edit: Obviously things change in the actual job.
Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?
#23I gave up on a dream about a year ago. I had been working hard, not very successfully, for several years to make a passion into my career, and it not only caused me burnout and depression, but also made me hate the thing I was meant to be passionate about in first place. Now I'm on a mediocre, safe, boring path (web dev). Of course there is still some lingering regret, but overall I feel very relieved.
My advice would be simple: Try to take a few days off if at all possible so you can go into this with a clear mind. Then for each of your possible choices think about:
* What does a successful outcome look like here?
* What does failure look like here?
* Is there an in-between outcome?
* How do you feel about ending up in each of these cases?
* What is the likelihood of each of these cases?
* If you go all in on this and fail, what realistic backups do you have? Does this change your opinion on the previous questions?
Take however long you need to choose, then act decisively and look back as little as possible.
I will also say that your expectations of a PhD in medicine being way easier seems off to me, but I am clueless about both medicine and machine learning, so what do I know. Do make sure though that you are making your decision based on good information.
Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?
#24My understanding is the growth in PhD holders far outstripped the slots they could fill in Academia in the US sometime around 1970. Why would you want to put yourself into such an oversupplied labor market?
I assume your talents can be far better used in the private or government sectors.
Fellow HN users: Am I mistaken?
Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?
#25This is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone say that medicine had a light workload, especially compared with other academics. Every person I’ve ever known who went into medicine was extraordinarily overworked for many many many years.
OP here. This is country dependent. From most I've heard medicine is one of the or the most difficult program to study in most countries workload wise. In the country I live it's quite different. From what I've gathered, the average seems to be 40h/week including lectures with only P/F. This might be due to medicine being a 6 year program as opposed to 4 years such as in the US. I'd put the difficulty to be quite comparable to a good CS or engineering program. I think the dropout-rate is ~10% which is very low.
Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?
#2680% of machine learning time is spent cleaning up bad data. Go into medicine, you’ll dodge a bullet.
I agree. If I could rewind time I would do Medicine, at least my work would have some positive value instead of being neutral at best.
Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?
#27You should take a year or two and work at a grocery store, then once you've figured out what you enjoy and don't enjoy in your work life balance you can make better decisions about professional development or education.
Also, things have a tendency to work out. When I was in college I wanted to study astrophysics because I thought space was awesome and humbling and I loved learning about it. However, as I worked through my courses I found myself doing a lot of heavy math and very little cosmic wondering. So I switched to English Literature and absolutely loved reading about philosophy and politics and the human condition. Nowadays I work on software development, which has the right balance of creativity and quantitative reasoning for me. I didn't set out on that path, or spend any of my university time studying it directly, but by being flexible and open and listening to my own needs I arrived at a great place (and I hope you do too!)
Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?
#28It sounds like you need to evaluate whether or not your dreams are a good match for your personality. If you don't have the ambition or drive to do the daily work required for either a machine learning PhD or a medical degree, then your dreams are irrelevant, since the odds are good that you won't complete either of them. Take a step back and try to really come to grips with your own limitations, and whether or not y…
This is the situation I'm in. I feel like it not be feasible for me to keep up with the very high workload for another 4-years, hence why I'm considering switching to medicine. I know realize this sounds provocative but it's not intentional, medicine is genuinely quite a bit easier here than the program I'm in. Probably quite comparable to a regular engineering degree from a good university.
Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?
#29Finish. Doing lots of math and computer science in your undergrad degree opens a lot of doors, doors you likely don't even know exist.
Re: Ask HN: When to give up on dreams?
#30If you have knowledge both in biology as a physician and can code, you can also become a bioinformatician, where you can still apply ML. Maybe the difference will be that it will be more on the application side of the ML rather than the theoretical part. Also, I will be cautious about "... landing a PhD position at a good US school", from my experience and others, I've found out that it's more important to look after…
It's sort of the problem I'm facing here. Research in machine learning is weak in my country, so I'd probably have to apply elsewhere. Medical research here is very good though, so I would have no problem just staying here as there are multiple good advisors. This is what makes A PhD in machine learning so much more difficult.