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‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

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Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#211

Post by crazygringo »

blablabla123 wrote: post #60
omk wrote: post #17

After 5 years of work, I finally decided to take the jump and live the dream of earning a Masters degree from a prestitious university in The Netherlands. Being a non-EU citizen I had shell euro 15000/year but it still seemed cheaper than US counterparts. Couple months into the semester I realized the pressure kicking in my program. The planned 40 hour load required atleast 80 hours of work. I could sense stress and…

> The only preparation I was getting was the ability to absorb stress; and I was sucking at it. That's interesting, in my second semester (Physics) a professor said to us in his introduction lecture that one of the biggest things you learn during studies is stress resilience. There's definitely a lot of truth to that. Although back at the time I didn't realize it but looking back it was the case. During studies and a…

How exactly do you define stress resilience?

Is this a healthy skill to have, e.g. not stressing about things you can't control, learning not to be perfectionist, and adopting a healthy attitude as to what is or is not realistic?

Or is this emotional repression and chemical coping? Burying feelings of being overloaded, disrespected, having your needs ignored, and turning to alcohol, cannabis, nicotine, etc. to get through it?

Because depending on what it is, I'm not sure it's a "skill" I want to have. I've gone through very stressful periods of my professional life (in all cases caused primarily by mismanagement above me), and while I got through them, they only did harm, not good. There was nothing to "learn" from them. In no way did they make me a better person. They just took unnecessary tolls on my health and happiness, and even relationships.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#212

Post by user5994461 »

zwaps wrote: post #123
roel_v wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe, a Masters is not 'graduate' level. A masters (in Europe) is just a continuation of a bachelors, and someone graduating with just a bachelors is basically someone who's only half finished their education. Consequently, the work load is nowhere near as bad as it is at the PhD level (although even there, it's not that bad either). Of course this very closely aligns the bachelors and masters level courses, mea…

There is in fact two things here. Most continental EU countries used to have a different system before the Bologna Bachelor/Master system. In the prior case, many countries simply did not have a Bachelor equivalent. In France, Spain, Netherlands and Germany, you'd by default do a Masters-level degree. As such, a Masters is more continued education - it does not imply a big cut from a "practical degree" toward researc…

Can confirm for France. Engineering degrees are 5 years. Usually 2 years studying somewhere, then 3 years somewhere else. That's a master degree at the end.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#213

Post by chrisseaton »

mistrial9 wrote: post #194
chrisseaton wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is still the case that many jobs (like nursing) are not taught at a university, simply because there is no path to academic research. You can do research as a nurse. There are nurses with PhDs even.

in the US there are practicing nurses without a college degree, right now.. also nursing is not always unionized, especially in the South..

> in the US there are practicing nurses without a college degree, right now..

Ok? So what? I was replying to 'there is no path to academic research', and there is. Saying not everyone follows it is irrelevant to whether or not it exists.

> also nursing is not always unionized, especially in the South..

What on earth does that have to do with whether you can do research or not?

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#214

Post by ehvatum »

My feelings on this couldn't be more mixed. I enjoyed many years working as a coder in the academic research setting, but I lost my best friend to suicide in the second semester of his PhD program.

It's just sort of a test to see if you're stronger than the system. If you want the strength to survive grad school, spend a few years scraping by in a third-world nation, or climb mountains, or get serious about wilderness survival. Do something aside from following the rules and getting inevitably raped by a system you have done nothing to learn to dominate.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#215

Post by mattkrause »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #209
mattkrause wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me more, please! (Especially if they’re hiring)

A common thread was that these were labs that were joint between the university and a UARC or FFRDC. Academic grant funding doesn't usually include engineers, only PI and students, but FFRDC/UARC funding is different. So look at Johns Hopkins/APL, Penn State/ARL, Georgia Tech/GTRI, then (very importantly) look for labs run by a PI with a faculty appointment at the university. A friend of mine worked at Hopkins for a…

Ah, those are a bit of a special case.

I visited APL a while back and loved it. The job didn’t work out (federal stuff has been....turbulent lately), but hopefully it’ll work out one day.

Thanks for the pointers!

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#216

Post by ambicapter »

cortesoft wrote: post #183
ambicapter wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Too many people think of grad school as sort of a vague "next step" that will "open doors" or else a way of "leveling up" as though life is an RPG and a grad degree is a special badge or skin you can get. I have a Masters, and all the interesting jobs I want to do are held by PhDs (sometimes with a couple years of postdocs). And everyone who's on that team has a PhD and they're definitely not going to let anyone le…

Can I ask what field you are in? I work in software, and many of my colleagues have PhDs... and many of my colleagues never went to college. They all seem to get along fine, and the ones who have PhDs are usually playing down their credentials.

In software, not at a FAANG, but in ecommerce.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#217

Post by i_am_proteus »

mattkrause wrote: post #215
i_am_proteus wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common thread was that these were labs that were joint between the university and a UARC or FFRDC. Academic grant funding doesn't usually include engineers, only PI and students, but FFRDC/UARC funding is different. So look at Johns Hopkins/APL, Penn State/ARL, Georgia Tech/GTRI, then (very importantly) look for labs run by a PI with a faculty appointment at the university. A friend of mine worked at Hopkins for a…

Ah, those are a bit of a special case. I visited APL a while back and loved it. The job didn’t work out (federal stuff has been....turbulent lately), but hopefully it’ll work out one day. Thanks for the pointers!

I really do think lab composition's tie to grant wording (if the grant says support for three grad students, you get three grad students, not two grad students and an engineer) has a huge influence on how labs are structured, including why grad students end up doing jobs engineers "should" be doing.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#218

Post by matthewdgreen »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #129
lewis500 wrote: post #120

I’m a professor. I have a few thoughts about this. First, the grad student/professor relationship is inherently asymmetrical, much more so than most employer/employee relationships. The degree has to last years or else you get nothing, and there are no hard and fast terms of the relationship like there is in many jobs. The professors recommendation might be the most important thing you get, and that is always running…

>> Third, the professors themselves are under extreme pressure. Everybody knows this. I dont' think everyone appreciates this, actually. But, if it's bad for your mental health to go through the pressure of a PhD for three or four years- how much worse can it be to keep this up for the next 40 years or so, as a professor? And now you are under even more pressure because you're responsible for your students' careers a…

It’s hard. During the pre-tenure time it’s hard not to burn out as a professor. I almost did. With that said, I’ve had all three careers: being a software developer (at a research lab, but building products), running a security evaluation company, and being a tenured professor. Being a professor has some downsides, but the redeeming element for me is that I love being my own boss and being able to pick the problems I work on — those that also interest me. I didn’t have that luxury in industry. Aside from the low pay, grad school was even better because I could spend a week thinking about a problem and make no progress, and I didn’t feel bad about it.

I imagine that the experience of being a grad student is much worse when you have a terrible slavedriver advisor. I was fortunate to avoid that. Even so, the key to grad school (and academia) is to know when you’re having a bad experience and when to get out. In CS (in the US at least) you can leave with a terminal MS relatively easy and have no debt. Go into the program with your eyes open and an exit to industry as a fallback and you’ll be much happier.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#219

Post by Volt »

kodz4 wrote: post #2

Meanwhile in China we have 9-9-6. The US needs to wake up to whether it wants to stay in the game.

That China needs to put in that much effort to be competitive with the US isn't a particularly good sign.

Work smarter, not harder.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#220

Post by stefco_ »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #218
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Third, the professors themselves are under extreme pressure. Everybody knows this. I dont' think everyone appreciates this, actually. But, if it's bad for your mental health to go through the pressure of a PhD for three or four years- how much worse can it be to keep this up for the next 40 years or so, as a professor? And now you are under even more pressure because you're responsible for your students' careers a…

It’s hard. During the pre-tenure time it’s hard not to burn out as a professor. I almost did. With that said, I’ve had all three careers: being a software developer (at a research lab, but building products), running a security evaluation company, and being a tenured professor. Being a professor has some downsides, but the redeeming element for me is that I love being my own boss and being able to pick the problems I…

Totally agree with the second paragraph (I'm a current grad student). My advisor is excellent, and while I've often had to push myself to the limit of what I can get done, I've also had a tremendous amount of freedom on how to get things done. And when things aren't as busy, I have more time to explore things in a self-motivated way. If I didn't have such a great PI and team, I would have strongly considered dropping out with the masters.

What concerns me most about continuing in academia is the extreme uncertainty in living situation and funding. That seems draining both emotionally and professionally.

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