231–240 of 285 posts
For some reason I found the font really hard to read. My brain has the impression that the text is vertically compressed, squished even. Just that no amount of resizing the window changed the strange effect. Is that only me?
That was...a lot more straightforward than I thought. First try: Year 4 Month 5 Second try: a lot more things went wrong. Year 5 Month 11. Third try: Year 5 Month 11. I just followed these rules: - Study for the qualifying exam until I'm "very confident" - If I have no ideas, read papers - If I have an idea, work on developing it. If I have a preliminary result, work on developing it. If I have a major result, conduc…
> Whenever I get the "ask my advisor for a break?" say yes. I thought that was a trap, and I was surprised my initial strategy of "say no but then slack off" didn't work
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I have never heard of a "happy PhD"
It's interesting because I know maybe two dozen people with PhDs and every single one of them has a story about a moment of hitting rock bottom during the process and losing all hope. Obviously they all pulled through and make it out to the other side but it really doesn't sound like a pleasant experience.
document.getElementById('message_window').style.fontFamily = 'Times New Roman'
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One dynamic I experienced that also isn't in the simulation: if you focus too much on classwork early on in order to pass your RPE, it can actually be hard to find an advisor. Classwork is basically dead-end work and the more you focus on it the less you have to show for yourself when trying to convince an advisor to work with you. Your goal should be to optimize for doing just well enough to pass your classwork. Als…
This would be incredibly bad advice in half of Physics and most of Math. An adviser would simply not trust a graduate student with middling grades to be competent enough to work with.
Not sure I want that much stress in my life anymore!
This is great and exactly captures the PhD experience. Both in the simulator and in real life, I mostly survived until the end by slacking off frequently, and needed around 5 years. Some highlights: > INBOX: Based on the reviewers' comments, we regret to inform you that your manuscript has been REJECTED for publication. One of the reviewers pointed out that there is no comparison with a state-of-art method. > You cam…
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Math is pointless from start to finish, but that doesn't stop them. PhD is granted for novelty, not practicality.
> Math is pointless from start to finish And this attitude, my friends, is the reason why so much software out there is so bad. We need more of a math mindset when developing software. What can we be sure about, what are the invariants, what can we prove? There is so much crap out there that somebody lacking understanding just tried to wing, and I'm constantly ashamed of it. Computer science is applied math.
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I have never heard of a "happy PhD"
It's interesting because I know maybe two dozen people with PhDs and every single one of them has a story about a moment of hitting rock bottom during the process and losing all hope. Obviously they all pulled through and make it out to the other side but it really doesn't sound like a pleasant experience.
I've seen people attempt suicide and had to drop out of their programs.
Doctoral programs are a vicious and cruel system to exploit high-achieving young adults.
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It's interesting because I know maybe two dozen people with PhDs and every single one of them has a story about a moment of hitting rock bottom during the process and losing all hope. Obviously they all pulled through and make it out to the other side but it really doesn't sound like a pleasant experience.
I mean the bad part comes after you get the PhD. The lucky ones it got bad during their study and they moved on.