Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

acoup.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 74 posts

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#41

Post by hkthrowaway88 »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #40
hkthrowaway88 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so you know, most of that “nazi dog whistle” stuff (like the ok sign) was fabricated by trolls on 4chan. So maybe think for yourself a little before you go accusing people of things based on Internet hearsay.

Wait, how is it possible that you stated you don’t know what the person was talking about and then turn around and tell me the precise origins of the thing? Did you Google it?

I never heard of 88, but the ok symbol was definitely a 4chan creation:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_gesture

So, I’m very skeptical of “secret Nazi dog whistle” nonsense.

If something is incorrect, it sufficient to say that it’s incorrect, and explain why. Claiming something is a secret dog whistle for Nazis just means that you don’t have any credible refutation about its correctness.

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#42

Post by detaro »

hkthrowaway88 wrote: post #39
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for your knowledge (I’m Asian too so I had to learn this) 88 is a nazi dog whistle in America. Specifically, h is the eighth letter of the alphabet and 88 -> hh -> heil hitler. I don’t know how common it is among actual nazi circles to use that phrasing, honestly, because I don’t know any nazi communities, but that’s the common online belief.

Just so you know, most of that “nazi dog whistle” stuff (like the ok sign) was fabricated by trolls on 4chan. So maybe think for yourself a little before you go accusing people of things based on Internet hearsay.

88 being used by nazis predates 4chan, it's not a recent invention.

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#43

Post by jccalhoun »

dsr_ wrote: post #28
hkthrowaway88 wrote: post #20

Not mentioned here, but if you want an academic job in the humanities, in the US, don't be white. Universities have adopted explicitly racist hiring policies for the time being.

Just so you know, I read your comment about racism and your choice of a throwaway name ending in 88 as a statement that you are a nazi or nazi-adjacent.

In addition, what the person is saying is just wrong. Source? Me. I'm a straight white male in the humanities. I can point to at least a dozen straight white people I went to grad school with that teach at various levels of college from community college to R1. I don't think I know a single straight white male that got his phd and doesn't have some job in academia. (it is possible that there are some I went to school with that got their phd and left academia but I have not stayed in contact with them.)

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#44

Post by jccalhoun »

Another thing to keep in mind: you probably aren't going to get a job at an R1 school even if you got your phd from one. I went to an R1 school in the Big Ten conference and while everyone that I know that graduated eventually got jobs, only one of us has one in an R1 and she worked her way up. I'm at a community college and I like it but it isn't where I expected I would be when I entered grad school.

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#45

Post by hkthrowaway88 »

detaro wrote: post #42
hkthrowaway88 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so you know, most of that “nazi dog whistle” stuff (like the ok sign) was fabricated by trolls on 4chan. So maybe think for yourself a little before you go accusing people of things based on Internet hearsay.

88 being used by nazis predates 4chan, it's not a recent invention.

And 8 being an indication of good fortune predates Nazism.

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#46

Post by UncleMeat »

zhdc1 wrote: post #16
lordnacho wrote: post #6

What a great essay, I'm going to show this to my kids. As someone who didn't do a PhD I always wonder what it would be like. I could never have done it in Humanities but I reckon a fair few of his observations are the same. At the time my main concern was the self-starter aspect of it: if I'm not given a specific task to do like I have been since the age of 6, how will I get anything done? I was also eager to go make…

> At the time my main concern was the self-starter aspect of it: if I'm not given a specific task to do like I have been since the age of 6, how will I get anything done? A good program will treat the PhD process like an apprenticeship. You owe your supervisor support and/or a small number of papers in exchange for a salary and training. While there is some leeway for independent research, you use existing work as a…

This is less true in the humanities where labs, funding from advisors, and coauthored papers with advisors are more rare.

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#47

Post by tuzed »

ramraj07 wrote: post #13

Some more nuggets of advice about grad school that I heard or came up with grad school friends over my decade (this mainly applying to engineering programs): 1. It’s almost always okay to quit. Quitting grad school is probably the smarter decision to make for the majority of grad students even if it’s two years before graduation. Your sanity and self worth are more important and surprisingly your career success follo…

Unfortunately, I have to confirm #7. One of the students that started their program with me has gone through exactly this. It was especially jarring when a neurodegenerative disease researcher reacted with hostility to a student’s diagnosis of MS.

Unfortunately, even though academics are smart, highly educated people, this does not guarantee interpersonal and management skills, or empathy. Equally frustrating is that even with the support of your department and institution, a soured relationship with your academic advisor can still ruin your time in graduate school.

I think most students pick their supervisor using the heuristics of prestige or academic “productivity”, but a bigger contributor to a students grad school success is probably the soft skills which get often overlooked in academics.

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#48

Post by UncleMeat »

aestetix wrote: post #10

> I had one course where the reading assignment for the first meeting (as in the first time we’d met as a class; we hadn’t even gone over the syllabus yet) was an 30-page article, and the entire text of Thucydides (which to be clear, is 548 pages in the Landmark translation. Aside from the Herculanean task of so much reading, Thucydides is one of the most difficult books I have ever read. The Landmark Translation too…

My wife has a history PhD. For her quals, her reading list was over 300 books (okay, some of these were just scholarly articles but the bulk were books). To prep, she read about 2 a day with one day off per week for six months.

I just laugh when I compare my quals in CS, which was two tests each covering one textbook and a discussion of about 10 papers.

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#49

Post by hkthrowaway88 »

jccalhoun wrote: post #43
dsr_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so you know, I read your comment about racism and your choice of a throwaway name ending in 88 as a statement that you are a nazi or nazi-adjacent.

In addition, what the person is saying is just wrong. Source? Me. I'm a straight white male in the humanities. I can point to at least a dozen straight white people I went to grad school with that teach at various levels of college from community college to R1. I don't think I know a single straight white male that got his phd and doesn't have some job in academia. (it is possible that there are some I went to school…

Community college? Come on, be serious. I mean jobs in which people can have an actual academic career, i.e. be published and have an impact on their discipline.

Re: So you want to go to grad school (in the academic humanities)?

#50

Post by UncleMeat »

patrick451 wrote: post #3

> First, let us dispense with the first lie you will hear: ‘this doctoral program is a five year program.’ What that actually means is that the program has five years of ‘guaranteed’ funding. I am sure that somewhere there is a student who went from having a BA to a PhD in five years. I have not yet met them. I guess engineering must be a lot easier. I started my PhD program with only a BA from a different field and…

Yes, engineering is a lot easier. You can look at published statistics on average graduation times and you'll find that engineering PhDs graduate people on time very often while humanities PhDs can struggle.
Post reply on HN