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Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

brown.edu

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Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#31

Post by School-Cotton »

soheil wrote: post #29
kortilla wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. A phd has very little overlap with learning broad topics about a field (unlike masters and bachelors/associates). Unless your job is literally to do research on the subject of your dissertation, it will not help.

What about working harder than your peers? If you're 2x harder working than the avg phd student shouldn't you be able to dedicate half or a third of that time to work and still finish the phd in 5 years?

How many PhD students have you known? The successful ones at least work extremely hard already; there is no such thing as working twice as hard as them.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#32

Post by rackjack »

soheil wrote: post #29
kortilla wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. A phd has very little overlap with learning broad topics about a field (unlike masters and bachelors/associates). Unless your job is literally to do research on the subject of your dissertation, it will not help.

What about working harder than your peers? If you're 2x harder working than the avg phd student shouldn't you be able to dedicate half or a third of that time to work and still finish the phd in 5 years?

If you were somehow twice as productive as the average PhD student you wouldn't worry about finding a professor...

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#33

Post by genocidicbunny »

silisili wrote: post #20
genocidicbunny wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but wonder if this headline was A/B tested and was found to be more 'engaging' specifically because of the same sort of reaction GP demonstrated. Edit: Interesting that the headline was changed from the original to no longer refer to Brown university at all. I genuinely wonder what prompted that.

Absolutely not. Americans don't call people 'brown.' We generally have white, black, and hispanic/latino. Anyone else we refer to by nationality, even incorrectly at times. If he were say, Indian, it would say Indian, not Brown.

If you are not familiar with Brown University, the first part of the headline is easily parsed differently. In English, adjectives tend to come in a certain order, with color generally being precedent to origin or qualifier. Therefore it would read as 'Brown' being an adjective describing Manfred Steiner, because the color 'Brown' generally comes before the qualifier 'Physics Student'.

I am not suggesting that Brown University actually A/B tested this. As a university press site, they seem less likely to pursue that. But it would be naive to think that in the current media and political climate in the US, the mistaken interpretation of the headline would not be more surprising, and therefore more likely to grab attention. That's what A/B testing the headlines is for.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#34

Post by evancharles »

boberoni wrote: post #13

As a university student in my last year of undergrad, I've been tempted to go work as a software engineer, even though I'm interested in doing research. The opportunity cost just seems too large to give up. Working as a SWE will allow me to earn a massive income in my 20s, during which I have few defendants and a lot of leisure time. While many of my peers are planning to do graduate school right away, I feel like my…

Entering the working world does not mean you have to give up diving deeply into new topics!

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#36

Post by melvinmt »

tombert wrote: post #25
azhenley wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professor here. You definitely aren’t too old, but I would never take on a PhD student that wants to continue working elsewhere. A PhD is a full-time job. It took me 6.5 years and was hard enough with very little outside distractions.

> You definitely aren’t too old By "old" I didn't mean actual biological age exactly. I guess the more appropriate word would be something more like "settled". As it stands, I have a mortgage and whatnot to take care of, it's not really realistic for me to quit my job and focus full-time on a PhD for the next 5-6 years. > but I would never take on a PhD student that wants to continue working elsewhere That seems to b…

Yes, part-time PhD's are pretty common in Europe. They also commonly take 3-4 years instead of 6...

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#37

Post by soheil »

School-Cotton wrote: post #31
soheil wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about working harder than your peers? If you're 2x harder working than the avg phd student shouldn't you be able to dedicate half or a third of that time to work and still finish the phd in 5 years?

How many PhD students have you known? The successful ones at least work extremely hard already; there is no such thing as working twice as hard as them.

Take the top 1% of successful phd students. Does your statement apply equally to them? What about the 0.01%?

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#38

Post by silisili »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #33
silisili wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. Americans don't call people 'brown.' We generally have white, black, and hispanic/latino. Anyone else we refer to by nationality, even incorrectly at times. If he were say, Indian, it would say Indian, not Brown.

If you are not familiar with Brown University, the first part of the headline is easily parsed differently. In English, adjectives tend to come in a certain order, with color generally being precedent to origin or qualifier. Therefore it would read as 'Brown' being an adjective describing Manfred Steiner, because the color 'Brown' generally comes before the qualifier 'Physics Student'. I am not suggesting that Brown…

All adjectives precede nouns in English. Brown the university is still an adjective in this sense.

There's really nothing to A/B test here. We, especially the media, don't refer to people as Brown the color.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#39

Post by ghaff »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #33
silisili wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. Americans don't call people 'brown.' We generally have white, black, and hispanic/latino. Anyone else we refer to by nationality, even incorrectly at times. If he were say, Indian, it would say Indian, not Brown.

If you are not familiar with Brown University, the first part of the headline is easily parsed differently. In English, adjectives tend to come in a certain order, with color generally being precedent to origin or qualifier. Therefore it would read as 'Brown' being an adjective describing Manfred Steiner, because the color 'Brown' generally comes before the qualifier 'Physics Student'. I am not suggesting that Brown…

Pretty much any university in the country would have written the headline in exactly the same manner substituting their institution's name. And, yes, anyone who interprets it differently is doing so in bad faith or just is pretty unaware of US university names generally.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#40

Post by selectodude »

silisili wrote: post #9

This gives me hope. I'm not even half his age, but already worry about my brain going. When I was 17 I could do basic calculus in my head. Today I struggle to carry numbers in long addition problems. It already has me thinking about my career and future - it certainly is downhill from here. Then something like this happens and just makes me feel like a big baby. Hats off Mr Steiner.

I went back to school with the same fears. It comes back to you.
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