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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

#61

Post by runeblaze »

beoberha wrote: post #34

I only have a Bachelor’s but work at a large tech company where a good portion of the technical leadership have PhDs. I can’t imagine deciding to just go for a PhD right out of undergrad. In the grand scheme of things, you know nothing after a 4 year degree. I could not fathom finding a topic on which you are truly passionate and decide to dedicate the next 5-7 years of your life studying it. After 6 years in industr…

People straight out of a 4-year degree into PhD usually gets a year to decide what they want to work on in their PhD program. So it can be like: (1) One year trying out projects and topics (2) Four year doing a PhD on the topic (3) One year postdoc potentially on a different topic (4) Tenure-track faculty on likely somewhat a different topic

Passion helps, but people's passion does change over time.

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

#62

Post by calf »

lumost wrote: post #57
calf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

It’s arguably an artifact of an increasingly competitive society. The base “cost” of existing keeps rising, its simply becoming impractical to not be career focused. While I’m sure it benefits professors to have an idealistic employe who will work for peanuts… it’s not sustainable. While a grad student is expected to be paid - they would need a 1 hour commute to afford the housing options around my rural alma matter.

That cynicism is the basis of every form of conservative argument, of the form: "It is not practical/sustainable/expedient/pragmatic/realistic...(insert any other uncritical value judgment)... and the problem is because of hypercompetitive capitalism out there, not the agency of particular individuals (some who succeed and many who shall fail under said system that is source of unsustainability) who are speaking and acting right here." It is a clever, cynical argument that reinforces status-quo thinking about the social order, and is therefore a conservative response.

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

#63

Post by leaveitalone »

maxmalkav wrote: post #11
leaveitalone wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a solid B student denied access to a PhD, folks that get PhDs for business reasons really bug me. Especially if they then go on to complain that it was hard. You don't realise how much some of us want to do research but can't get into academia because other, smarter people take the spots for prestige or money. Like, go away and just work on wall street if you're not interested in doing actual science.

The main complain in my environment (composed by both doctors and dropouts) is not about "it being hard" but "it being disappointing", specially when you are interested in doing actual science but you find that will be a small part of the process and many times not as rewarding as expected. You add department politics, personal differences with supervisors or the whole publishing business to the mix and it can get re…

Yeah, but I do wonder how much of the reason you're experiencing that is because a lot of the people who make it miserable are there for the wrong reasons?

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

#64

Post by barry-cotter »

totallywrong wrote: post #60
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…

The timeline you described is the new normal. I'd say you're even slightly ahead.

Normal for the kind of people who get postgraduate degrees, a small minority of the population.

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

#65

Post by leaveitalone »

ray__ wrote: post #15
leaveitalone wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a solid B student denied access to a PhD, folks that get PhDs for business reasons really bug me. Especially if they then go on to complain that it was hard. You don't realise how much some of us want to do research but can't get into academia because other, smarter people take the spots for prestige or money. Like, go away and just work on wall street if you're not interested in doing actual science.

Not criticizing your take, just curious–grades and GPA have never been a primary factor for any of the PhD admissions committees that I've been on or exposed to. Usually other factors like research experience, letters of rec, and other personal experiences easily outweigh grades, especially if they're just Bs (very low grades would be an issue). Where are your B grades affecting your grad school applications?

It was 20 years ago now, and you couldn't get into grad school with less than an A average. This was in Ontario, Canada.

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

#66

Post by killjoywashere »

I'm starting to think that there's an intrinsic challenge with young people being vulnerable to depression. They are thinking hard, trying to figure out what they're going to do, having all sorts of "firsts". Oppenheimer was apparently quite moody, more so when he was younger. There's an especially stark moment in American Prometheus where he unintelligbly screams, seemingly out of nowhere, and throws his luggage down a staircase, putting a woman on the stairs at mortal risk. His parents traveled to Europe to attend to him.

His daughter committed suicide. As did a lover of his.

I certainly have dark spells. When I was younger, I coped by withdrawing. Now, in my 40s, leading teams executing missions, I can't withdraw, it's very much "Hello darkness, my old friend".

Charles Bukowski has become a favorite author. Typing question stems into Google is far more therapeutic than browsing social media. Talking with a friend is more helpful than a therapist. Exercise, similarly. Talking with a friend while riding a bike is positively curative.

Life sucks, then you die. Stop and smell the roses. Shadenfreude isn't all bad. Etc.

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

#67

Post by davidgay »

mshockwave wrote: post #16
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…

getting phd at 27 is suuuper early. Granted, friends might start to work at 23 or 25-ish but we're talking about a doctoral degree, which makes a visible difference on job hunting in the field of computer science I'm in.

No it isn't. For instance, in the US one starts a BS at 17-18, finishes at 21-22. Median CS PhD is in the 5-6 year range (this site, based on actual data, says 5.7: https://gradschool.duke.edu/about/statistics/computer-scienc...). So if you go straight to the PhD program (common) that puts the median finisher at 27-28.

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

#68

Post by lumost »

calf wrote: post #62
lumost wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s arguably an artifact of an increasingly competitive society. The base “cost” of existing keeps rising, its simply becoming impractical to not be career focused. While I’m sure it benefits professors to have an idealistic employe who will work for peanuts… it’s not sustainable. While a grad student is expected to be paid - they would need a 1 hour commute to afford the housing options around my rural alma matter.

That cynicism is the basis of every form of conservative argument, of the form: "It is not practical/sustainable/expedient/pragmatic/realistic...(insert any other uncritical value judgment)... and the problem is because of hypercompetitive capitalism out there , not the agency of particular individuals (some who succeed and many who shall fail under said system that is source of unsustainability) who are speaking and…

Hmm I wouldn’t associate this with a conservative argument. The argument provides a claim that we are building an unsustainable system which is not producing the outcomes that we want.

Encouraging competition and unrestrained capitalism is typically considered a defacto conservative argument in the US. However the lines are blurry in different decades and in different countries.

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

#69

Post by leaveitalone »

vector_spaces wrote: post #12
leaveitalone wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a solid B student denied access to a PhD, folks that get PhDs for business reasons really bug me. Especially if they then go on to complain that it was hard. You don't realise how much some of us want to do research but can't get into academia because other, smarter people take the spots for prestige or money. Like, go away and just work on wall street if you're not interested in doing actual science.

I'm sorry that you were denied access, gatekeeping is real, especially in STEM fields. I just want to offer that not everyone doing a PhD is doing so for reasons of money or prestige, and not all of them are coming from money or prestige. And the gatekeeping doesn't end once you get in, either. If anything it intensifies the further along you get, and by orders of magnitude the more your circumstances don't parse to…

I'm not sure it was gate keeping, I think there just weren't enough spots and my grades weren't as good as my competitors. Just wish the ones who didn't want to do it didn't bother so that more spots for us lesser graded people could have got in.

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

#70

Post by tomrod »

akomtu wrote: post #32
lumiukko wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware of how privileged you are?

Unless the law grants him special permissions that others dont have, he is not privileged.

I called out the prior comment already, but this also needs to be called out. There are more channels for privilege than special permission in the law. Social mores, law, and luck in birth are the three channels from which privilege can elevate someone's starting point over someone else. I think limiting the source of privilege to only legal permissions misses the discussion, either disingenuously or naively.
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