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I'm quitting my PhD

blog.derhagen.eu

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Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#201

Post by derbOac »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #81
dschuetz wrote: post #25

Good for him. Because of this: "My supervisors have a rather superficial understanding of Quantum Computing, and I feel like their idea to start a project in that domain was to a not inconsiderable extent motivated by the prospect of granted research funds , not primarily by their desire to achieve a deeper understanding of quantum stuff." It's always about grant money. Especially with anything that starts with Quant…

At least in most countries in Europe, where a PhD is expected to be a paid job, and unless you are from a really rich institution, you need grant money to take PhD students. There is no other way to do it, except for taking unpaid students, which is typically not considered an ethical thing to do. And yes, sadly, being successful in asking for funding means pitching the hot topics du jour, which typically don't coinc…

> We really need funding to go to people, not projects. Having to pitch specific projects when asking for funding does more harm than good IMO.

I agree but this was the original idea behind tenure, and here we are. The question is how to return to this understanding of its meaning.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#203

Post by Beldin »

mcovalt wrote: post #60

Congrats on making a decision sooner rather than later. I also dropped out of graduate school and remembered having some similar thoughts as you. I remembered feeling a bit lonely, too. There's no one to talk to about your work since no one understands it. It's a bit obvious in hindsight. Research topics are at the fuzzy fringe of human knowledge. They exist just outside of others' research topics. Your job is to fin…

> But most likely, when you come home and a loved one asks what you did today, you won't be able to have an answer

My PhD - and subsequent research - is in security. I will happily explain my research to anyone who will listen. In case I'm not sure, I just start explaining just in case.

How privacy in voting is important. How most scraping studies have a fundamental flaw. How to catch scientific fraud.

Current WiP is on reconstructing possible histories of NTFS files. Sounds boring? We're working to catch criminals that claim "never had that file".

Maybe it's the subject, maybe it's just me, but this research stuff is friggin awesome and I'll happily shout that to the world!

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#204

Post by hnaccount_rng »

dizzant wrote: post #149
matthewdgreen wrote: post #27

I feel for the student writing this piece and I'm sad that they've developed some bitterness at their advisors and the entire field (which I read in the piece, even if it wasn't the intent.) Everyone needs to understand something important: a PhD is first and foremost an apprenticeship. It is your opportunity to study under someone who has done a specific kind of research, and learn from that person. If that relation…

Thanks for this perspective. I am one of these mismatched PhD students. When I entered 6 years ago, no professors in my department had time to advise me. The professor for whom I was a GTA took pity on me after two years of rejection, and now serves as my committee chair despite having little to no expertise in my field. I am coadvised through a different department, but again, my coadvisor has little overlap with my…

You can still quit. And, at least I would recommend you doing it. I have yet to do the jump to industry, but from what I'm hearing so far: There is little to no value assigned to the _paper_. And, at least in my view, this is exactly as it should be.

There are two and only two situations [0]: 1) The company requires your specific expertise and won't care about the title as you are the one with the knowledge 2) The company does not require your specific expertise at which point they care about the PhD as a marker of "can do stuff autonomously", which has nothing to do with the title.

On the other hand: (that is an assumption that may be wrong) You are miserable! That is time and joy that you won't get back. Academia will not be thankful for your sacrifice! And besides: I highly doubt that you would have to work for less pay if you quit.

[0] well there is a third one: Someone wants someone with a title for title slides and reports. But I _really_ don't want to work for these people, so I'm discarding it.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#205

Post by krastanov »

alkaloid wrote: post #36

Reading this, I couldn't help but recall Feynman's quote: "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." I love cussing and discussing quantum theory / physics / computing. And Feynman is 100% right. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Richard_Feynman

I would suggest Aaronsons' "Quantum Computing since Democritus" for a different (mathematically rigorous) take. There is a lot of understanding we have found out since Feynman made that statement.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#206

Post by dotnet00 »

throwaway4220 wrote: post #143
samvher wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be interesting to get some more context on - were you dishonorably discharged because you were critical of what was going on in your lab? I’m not sure what you’re saying about the masters, you had that already or your experience + discharge was turned into a masters diploma?

Basically I started a PhD, and told myself if I don't submit anything to publish anything in a year, I'm gonna quit. I found I just don't have the discipline and self-motivation for a PhD. I had already taken a year of classes so I qualified for the MS. I was only joking about the "dishonorably discharged" - that's just how I felt not being able to cut it.

As someone doing a PhD right now, I think not having something to publish within a year isn't all too unreasonable. After transferring from masters to PhD, it has still taken a little over a year for my collaboration with my advisors and other PhDs to mature enough to result in several publications happening roughly around the same time.

I did initially have someone scare me into thinking that if I didn't publish even something like a literature review within my first year, I wouldn't be taken seriously. But that turned out to not really apply.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#207

Post by enchiridion »

stanford_labrat wrote: post #78
matthewdgreen wrote: post #27

I feel for the student writing this piece and I'm sad that they've developed some bitterness at their advisors and the entire field (which I read in the piece, even if it wasn't the intent.) Everyone needs to understand something important: a PhD is first and foremost an apprenticeship. It is your opportunity to study under someone who has done a specific kind of research, and learn from that person. If that relation…

I’m starting my PhD this fall and the prospect of an advisor mismatch terrifies me (having seen this first hand). Thankfully my program has 2 or 3 faculty who align well based off of my interviews but you never know…

Don’t be terrified, just keep pushing. That’s what separates those who finish from those who don’t.

I say this as someone who nearly did not finish a PhD and had terrible mismatch with my advisor. If you have a mismatch with your advisor, I have three pieces of unsolicited advice.

1. Find the community of your research topic early and get involved. Partially due to covid there are now many ~weekly seminars that meet online and post recordings on YouTube. They tend to be welcoming, and getting to know the people drives home the idea of “if they can do it so can I”

2. Pick a problem with extremely clear benchmarks. If you exceed the benchmarks, then congrats on your state of the art work! If not, write about the good parts and explain why the bad parts exist.

3. Write about your topic early and often. You don’t have to publish it necessarily, but writing has a clarifying effect acknowledged by every PhD student I know.

Stay positive and remember to take care of yourself! Good luck!

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#208

Post by queuebert »

im3w1l wrote: post #55
chrisseaton wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PhD is an apprenticeship to do research. If we left it until later in life, we wouldn't have anyone trained to do research.

There are way more PhD's then there are research positions, so we are very far from the deficit you fear.

In my area of academia, we train about 4 mediocre PhDs for every good PhD that can do excellent, independent research. If we had more good researchers, we could create more positions for them. But right now most of our graduates don't want to do research or suck at it and go into industry. Not to mention the pay differential.

I also sit on a graduate admissions committee, and it's hard to find good students.

We have work enough for easily 10x as many STEM students in the US.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#209

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

sdfhdhjdw3 wrote: post #20

I'm someone who finished a PhD, here's my perspective. You don't believe your supervisor or your research group and so you quit, great. It's great that you have the critical thinking abilities and confidence in yourself to make such a decision. However, I think it's extremely unprofessional to write a blog post saying that your supervisor is superficial or your research group is performative art. I don't say this bec…

Do you think his chances would be better in academia if he:

1. Writes a vague blog post about his dissatisfaction with his PhD

or

2. Writes a paper attacking his supervisor explicitly

?

Obviously the 3rd option ("shut the fuck up if you don't want your overlords to hear") would be the best, but also perhaps the most boring.

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