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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

#121

Post by latency-guy2 »

calf wrote: post #108
latency-guy2 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing I've gathered here is that progressives are exhaustively drab and annoying to deal with. They will examine things from the point of view that is precisely aligned with only theirs, calling other people's careers useless in a rather amusing turn of events, and then say, without even slightly being self reflective, that these people they are examining are backwards and narrow minded. To me this says prof…

And the only thing I've gathered here is kneejerk reactionism against "progressives" consisting of failing to read at the university level which lets them engage in projection by accusing people of attacking other people, rather than focus intellectually on a reasoned discussion of biases and ideological worldviews, and the social structures that give rise to those ideologies.

> consisting of failing to read at the university level

I haven't felt a need to do that since my defense around 2 decades ago. I don't think I've needed to flex that muscle today either, you're welcome to prove me wrong, but I don't really trust your judgement going by your standards today, maybe you should bring along one of your peers instead.

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

#122

Post by _aavaa_ »

Kirr wrote: post #49

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 especiall…

> 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 would counter that it may go in the other direction too. The other group of people who have little interest in the topic of mental health are those who are already doing really well. It's a non-problem for them, so why would they engage?

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

#123

Post by awesomeMilou »

DoctorMckay101 wrote: post #106

Tbh, the only reason I am crawling myself through a PhD is that I want to be a professor. Maybe in the USA this is almost unachievable, not to mention you will probably have to get an academic tenure too. But where I live (northern Spain), mainly in engineering, getting a PhD almost always ensures the opportunity for an academic tenure and a professor position. We are still growing our universities' numbers and new p…

Insane. I'm a student in Germany, at a university of applied sciences. With a PhD you can become a tenured professor here after a while of being a guest lecturer, but the uni is always looking.

To me though it feels like the very large majority of professors actually loathe teaching and would much rather be elsewhere, i.e. researching independently.

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

#124

Post by twelve40 »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #119
dsgsdgsdsda wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly disagree. You can get a full masters from UT Austin with specialization in AI/ML for about $10k. Fully remote. https://cdso.utexas.edu/msai . Compared to a typical bachelors which is what, about $50k?

Bachelors degrees from selective private schools now cost $50k/year. Rather than spending an extra year getting a state school masters, you can also gain a year of ML work experience for a net positive six figures first year out of school. Which is more valuable?

I think it's 100% individual. I didn't feel like I learned enough, so I stayed in grad school. If you feel otherwise, you absolutely should follow you own path. I've interviewed and worked with hundreds, ranging from bootcamp to PhD, ivy league to city college, and i've seen so many - both - failures and successes, that reducing signals even to education in general, let alone some specific combo of it, without hearing out the person first, is a straight up bias.

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

#125

Post by tomrod »

calf wrote: post #109
tomrod wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paradoxically it is privileged to think that people who didn't get sufficient, necessary elementary education yet did bust their tushes to succeed in academia don't exist in sufficient quantity to be seen on a high traffic internet board. Rather than looking at your neighbor's privilege, it's better to introspect on our own and how we can use to for others.

> Rather than looking at your neighbor's privilege, it's better to introspect on our own and how we can use to for others. Then why don't you tell that to the other guy who openly complained about a PhD time-shifting their life plans???

Because I don't view that as privilege. I view that as goals accomplished, which _may_ have been influenced by privilege.

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

#126

Post by bshep »

dfit99 wrote: post #21
bshep wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So i did a masters in engineering(3yrs), worked for 2 years then went into med school (4yrs) and finished residency (3yrs) in the same time a friend of mine did a PHD in engineering… I was shocked when i found out he had just finished the PHD when i was graduating residency.

Just curious, what inspired you to pursue medicine. I have been a SDE at a FAANG with 7 years of experience, but I am curious in maybe pivoting into medicine or at least combining the two fields. I have been feeling extreme boredom and dissatisfaction and was hoping pursuing medicine would give me some renewed passion.

I guess the best explanation is that I liked engineering but it didnt 'fulfill' me. It's something tough to explain.

In any case make sure you know what you are getting yourself into ( speak to medical colleagues ) as medicine has changed a lot in the last 5-10 years. I suspect in 10 more years medicine will be completely corporate run, as things are going now, small practices are being absorbed and being merged into larger and larger groups.

Also I agree with the sibling comments by Arch and snakes.

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

#127

Post by pokerface_86 »

leaveitalone wrote: post #4
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…

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.

[dead]

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

#128

Post by solardev »

georgeburdell wrote: post #5
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…

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…

That sounds so exhausting. Was it all worth it? Would you do it the same way again?

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

#129

Post by solardev »

ModernMech wrote: post #26
peachypeach wrote: post #3

Honestly it really just seems like the world’s PhD programs are designed to ritually haze students and sort them into academic society based on unsustainable and barely acceptable expectations. I do not have a PhD but all my friends who do (save one) have expressed that they would rather have done something else with the time and resources it took to get theirs. Really sad. My cousin is a Psych professor at an Ivy Le…

> Chilling honestly. There are a couple ways of looking at this, yours is one take. We can look at it another way. The kind of people with the intelligence and persistence to successfully complete a Ph.D. are disproportionately neurodivergent, IME. You’ll find a lot of people on the spectrum at the upper ranks of academia. Such people lack in dopamine production, and may end up taking medication to deal with that as…

Is there evidence for this?

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

#130

Post by Balgair »

Fomite wrote: post #82
yodsanklai wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing changes except a permanent mental scar. That's a very broad generalization. Everybody has a different experience, depending on the field, their advisor, their lab, their skills, their personality and so on... To me, a PhD was pretty much like any other job. The last couple of months were bit harder because of the final deadline, but nothing drastic when you're young. My current job in industry is more stres…

Indeed. For me, my PhD was eye-opening in that it was the first opportunity to work the way I wanted to work, and realizing how much more productive I could be that way.

What field?
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