Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

PhD Simulator

research.wmz.ninja

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–285 of 285 posts

Re: PhD Simulator

#281

Post by sebmellen »

morriswmz wrote: post #280

Hi everyone, I wrote this game 5 years ago when I was going to graduate from my PhD program. I did not expect to suddenly become popular in the middle of this week. Hope you enjoyed it (and thank you for stress testing my personal website)! I wrote it to look back my PhD experience in a humorous way. However, each person may have a different experience and the game cannot simply capture all the scenarios. The road to…

Welcome to Hacker News! Forwarding this game to some people who probably need the humor… Thank you for making it!

Re: PhD Simulator

#282

Post by cyrillite »

This, and subsequent comments, are all experiences I’ve seen happen to my partner and three very close friends. I decided to pivot academic path ways and pursue a masters, so they all wound up ahead of me by a year. Watching their experiences, I decided I’d rather pursue financial security and independence before pursuing a PhD. I think I’ve made the right call. It may be harder to get into a programme this way, I’m not sure, but I fundamentally do not want the worst case scenarios of a PhD combined with needing it as a next step in my career or a source of income.

Re: PhD Simulator

#283

Post by vibrio »

cycomanic wrote: post #180
lqet wrote: post #5

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…

I would also add that the hope trajectory is quite right in the simulation. You really should start quite high and it starts dropping until your first conference, but then towards the middle of the PhD it gets very low. It only really goes up again when the end is in sight. In the game it pretty much continously went up.

The hope level can be lowest (and cynicism maximal) late and at then end when one is the senior student and the major (only?) contributor in the lab or key project with no one coming up behind. A weak thesis committee won’t stand up to the PI to drop the cycle of “just address this loose end” tasks. Meanwhile relatively non- or lowly- productive fellow grad students in the program are given quick PhDs in other labs because the labs are underfunded and those PIs don’t want the burden of retaining or the stigma of failing those students, and … Wow—-pardon the rant I’m having a flashback. I’m going to go exercise my anxiety away,

Re: PhD Simulator

#284

Post by ke88y »

krastanov wrote: post #262
ke88y wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME it's more that the advisor doesn't trust the student to make it through the annual layoffs (quals culling), and only wants to invest in people who they know will be around long-term. At least in the poor (and honestly mostly useless) parts of Mathematics. Maybe Physics is less poor. (Fortunately I was in CS, where the research output is actually needed by society and usually not pure masturbation, so the attitude…

Most universities do not have "quals culling" and most universities that have "quals" (not that common anymore) do not use them for culling. There are a few notorious exceptions though.

Most departments at most universities do not have it. But a huge number of departments in certain fields do.
Post reply on HN