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“How is your thesis going?” Students’ perspectives on mental health and stress

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Re: “How is your thesis going?” Students’ perspectives on mental health and stress

#41

Post by totoglazer »

twelve40 wrote: post #36
tomohelix wrote: post #2

I think the only reason I was able to get through my PhD was because I am used to the work culture and expectations. After going into the industry in a relatively healthy and good company, I realized just how much stress I had and how bad it was in academia. In a way, the grinder serves as a test of willpower and discipline and those who could persevere through it can say they have the mental fortitude to handle stre…

Several startups back, I worked for a pompous boss, ex-Goldman-VP, who told me that people who get masters are worse programmers, especially if it's from a better school than their bachelor's. You'll be surprised how many nutty biases people have out there.

Isn’t this a pretty universally held opinion?

Re: “How is your thesis going?” Students’ perspectives on mental health and stress

#42

Post by 082349872349872 »

throwaway9870 wrote: post #40
082349872349872 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make the company sponsor that master degree Just a note that I jumped from academia to industry last century, and even then although my advisor and department (science) were horrified at the thought of aiming for anything less than a doctorate (masters? that's a consolation degree!), when I went to talk with the Dean (engineering) he gave me exactly the same advice: if you want a degree, get your company to pay for…

What is your degree in? Because when I got a PhD in EE it was covered by either being a Research or Teaching Assistant. What school/dept would suggest aiming for anything less than a PhD as horrifying? Most students go that path.

Planetary science.

Re: “How is your thesis going?” Students’ perspectives on mental health and stress

#43

Post by calf »

lumiukko wrote: post #9
georgeburdell wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the biggest drawback was doing all of the life things later. I graduated at 27, which is on the earlier end, then met my partner a year later, got married 2 years after that, bought a house 2 years after that, and then 2 years after that finally felt settled enough to have our first child (second was born 3 years later). Money was usually gating each step. We’re going to be pushing 70 before our children have…

Are you aware of how privileged you are?

Not only privileged (in terms of outcome and socioeconomic status of a post-PhD career and family), but also rather ideological. The person you asked the question to casually equates "life things" with family, house, career. It's surprisingly a conservative worldview, and IMO a PhD should expand a person's thinking more deeply than to accept ideology that way. To me this says a modern PhD education is too careerist and subverts the purpose of it, and some professors have pointed this out as well.

Re: “How is your thesis going?” Students’ perspectives on mental health and stress

#44

Post by Hydraulix989 »

twelve40 wrote: post #36
tomohelix wrote: post #2

I think the only reason I was able to get through my PhD was because I am used to the work culture and expectations. After going into the industry in a relatively healthy and good company, I realized just how much stress I had and how bad it was in academia. In a way, the grinder serves as a test of willpower and discipline and those who could persevere through it can say they have the mental fortitude to handle stre…

Several startups back, I worked for a pompous boss, ex-Goldman-VP, who told me that people who get masters are worse programmers, especially if it's from a better school than their bachelor's. You'll be surprised how many nutty biases people have out there.

As strange as it is, I think there's validity to it. Master's degrees filter more on having the money to cover tuition than test scores, and it's easier to just buy your way into a good school than with undergraduate.

I remember taking courses alongside Master's students who were anecdotally less impressive than my fellow undergraduates. This experience (along with my dwindling pocketbook) helped dissuade me from staying the extra year or so, rather than immediately starting work.

Re: “How is your thesis going?” Students’ perspectives on mental health and stress

#45

Post by varelse »

Brybry wrote: post #37
HDMI_Cable wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to look at it is that with increasing life expectanties, 70 will be the new 60 (or even 50). The probability that you'll see your kids have kids is going to get higher and higher. Also, it may be better that you had kids later because they'll grow up in a more financially comfortable situation with more aged and experienced parents. Think of age as a fine wine, not milk :)

In the US, life expectancy isn't really increasing. It's been fairly flat for the last 10 years or so. [1][2] [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?location... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Li...

[dead]

Re: “How is your thesis going?” Students’ perspectives on mental health and stress

#46

Post by nradov »

marcodiego wrote: post #20

My father died (heart attack) while writing his master thesis, 2001. In the closer family we all attribute this to stress during the period. He was a professor at a university, maintained a farm and often traveled to São Paulo for meetings with his advisor and classes. It was a common sight for me to go sleep while he was still writing, wake up and see him still writing. He had a coffee, went to the farm, come back h…

I'm sorry that you lost your father. But stress alone doesn't cause heart attacks. Most likely there was some other medical issue.

https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/risk-factors/stres...

Re: “How is your thesis going?” Students’ perspectives on mental health and stress

#47

Post by nradov »

shoo wrote: post #35

see also: Jeff Schmidt's book Disciplined Minds > In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideolog…

And yet the majority of people with real political power in business and government have some sort of advanced degree. There's no guarantee that completing professional education will allow you to contribute to society and add meaning to your life but it surely increases the odds. The rest is up to you.

Re: “How is your thesis going?” Students’ perspectives on mental health and stress

#48

Post by theGnuMe »

shoo wrote: post #35

see also: Jeff Schmidt's book Disciplined Minds > In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideolog…

Sure is a good reason to start a startup!

Re: “How is your thesis going?” Students’ perspectives on mental health and stress

#49

Post by Kirr »

The study is based on a web questionnaire, answered by 589 out of 2552 Ph.D. students. The mental health of the remaining 1963 students who did not take the survey is very likely to be in worse shape than of those who did.

In discussion the authors say "Moreover, we want to emphasize the likely sample bias in our data. We recruited participants mainly via mailing lists and our project therefore probably has especially appealed to people who are already interested in health or aware of mental health issues."

I guess this bias could be significant. I can't imagine that someone who is particularly stressed, depressed and sleep-deprived will pay attention to a mailing list message that has anything to do with mental health, or aks "How's your PhD going?". Personally, if I saw such email, I would close it and forget it as fast as I possibly could.

Another problem is that people tend to lie to themselves about their mental health issues, telling themselves that it's not too bad. They would answer the survey more optimistically, as if this makes the issues go away. It takes a good capacity of self reflection to see the problems clearly, and the loss of such capacity often accompanies other mental health problems.

Additionally, it takes a particularly trusing personality to discuss your health issues in a web survey. You never know how anonymous it all really is and where the collected data may end up eventually. I'm not sure how this correlates with mental health. The paranoid types will obviously be less trusting, but I guess a certain level of care when sharing your personal health data should be normal. In any case, this is another inevitable source of bias in survey-based data.

These points don't invalidate the study, just suggest that it probably underestimates the real prevalence of mental health issues.

Re: “How is your thesis going?” Students’ perspectives on mental health and stress

#50

Post by TotalCrackpot »

shikshake wrote: post #27
TotalCrackpot wrote: post #6

Imagine that students used to be very active in various grassroot political movements, and these days they cannot organize themselves to do some huge protest, stall every university lesson, not grade papers and finally get some huge reforms that would help them and the rest of the faculty. Unfortunate, this probably happens because people who do PhD are not actually very assertive on their own and they have very impa…

> people who do PhD are not actually very assertive on their own and they have very impaired cooperation skills Where exactly are you pulling this from? That has not been my experience, both from my research lab and from other students I've met at a variety of conferences.

Why they don't organize, do a mass protest and get better treatment from the system?
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