I'm interested in how specific this PhD experience is to the US, certain subjects or recent times. My own experience doing a maths PhD in the UK in the mid-2000s was not like this at all (but had a different set of challenges for sure).
PhD Simulator
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Re: PhD Simulator
#22This sounds less stressful than an average half a decade working at my current position. It is actually motivating. Whether or not that was the desired outcome, I don't know. At least I get to travel to half decent academic conferences and not large vendor marketing conferences.
The stress comes from constant and abject failure, not really the life style. Travelling is also like 2% of the total time.
Re: PhD Simulator
#23I'm interested in how specific this PhD experience is to the US, certain subjects or recent times. My own experience doing a maths PhD in the UK in the mid-2000s was not like this at all (but had a different set of challenges for sure).
I'm a chilean maths grad student and save for the qualifying exam, it's quite accurate. So much so that I think I made a mistake clicking on this because as it progressed I started feeling dizzy. Other commenters here also have their relatable experiences, which doesn't make me feel so bad.
Re: PhD Simulator
#24Didn't reach the roadblock I ran into:
>Professors demand you do exactly what they want for your thesis.
Also, what qualifying exam? It seems like as long as I was worker for my professors, they couldn't give a crap. (Although I was quite credentialed, so maybe they didn't care)
If I do get a PhD, it will be on a topic I want. So far, I have done that better independently and have gotten a bunch of press on the topic without needing academia.
Re: PhD Simulator
#25This is great! The ending phase really gives you the same feeling of “screw everything else, I need to finish this paper” rushing to get the final stuff out.
By that time I had already grinded so long and lost so much hope that I HAD to slack off but couldn’t because every time I tried, my advisor caught me and reminded me of my progress. Repeat until I lost all hope!
Re: PhD Simulator
#26reading papers --> idea
This is not exactly how it works in STEM, at least not around me. Ideas tend to come from working on real-world projects, which then shows the lack of understanding and need for research. The project forks to do the research and merge back to implement the findings. Thereafter, someone on the team will put it into a cohesive academic format, and use it for a PhD. Of course there is reading papers and such, but it is not the source of the idea.
edit: I am also curious, how many really stop research because a similar or tangential topic was explored? "There can be only one"?!
that said, the game is fun! Thank you.
Re: PhD Simulator
#27[deleted]
Re: PhD Simulator
#28Goat simulator is better
Re: PhD Simulator
#29reading papers --> idea This is not exactly how it works in STEM, at least not around me. Ideas tend to come from working on real-world projects, which then shows the lack of understanding and need for research. The project forks to do the research and merge back to implement the findings. Thereafter, someone on the team will put it into a cohesive academic format, and use it for a PhD. Of course there is reading pap…
I'd say this is where more engineering approachable ideas come from or ideas that might be considered translational (or near translational). If you work near the bridge of theory and application, this is probably more the case. A lot of funding agencies are pressuring even theoretical or basic research to look at translational application anymore though (capitalism is all about immediate ROI) so I'd say this is increasingly shifting towards many research domains but in the past, there were a lot of pure theoretical areas you could work on where there are plenty of unexplored ideas you could build out and get paid to do the work.
Application is certainly a great driver though because you have a demand signal to look at vs throwing darts at the board in work that may never manifest to anything solid.
Re: PhD Simulator
#30Sounds like this is how my life will be like for a couple years if I get accepted :p
I'm doing it right now and I kind of envy my colleagues that are doing normal work. There are times when I enjoy the ability to focus on things that really interest me, but the paper writing and publishing processes really suck. Also, the random stuff from the university that I have to jump over sucks fun out of the process, for no gain to anyone.