Thinking of Doing a PhD? Take this simple test
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Thinking of Doing a PhD? Take this simple test
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Re: Thinking of Doing a PhD? Take this simple test
#2Funny, but not to be taken too seriously!
Re: Thinking of Doing a PhD? Take this simple test
#3If you're able to make a living doing a PhD (from your stipend and being a teaching assistant), it might help to tide you over till the economy improves. But obviously, this article is just for fun!
If you're looking for a more serious analysis about whether you should do a PhD, see here: http://careers.guardian.co.uk/phd-right-career-option
Re: Thinking of Doing a PhD? Take this simple test
#4I wish someone would post an article that actually provided a serious, levelheaded view of the ups and downs of a PhD as well as what it's actually like instead of the overly negative articles? I understand that it might not be what it seems, but it's hard to figure out what's for real and what's just somber humor for the uninitiated.
Re: Thinking of Doing a PhD? Take this simple test
#5I actually looked at this from a different perspective: the workplace. I was only in a PhD program for one year (left to work on Wall Street) but have 7 years in the industry.
A is the disengaged MacLeod Loser, slightly motivated by social acceptability but averse to hard work and risk.
B is the slimy and superficially impressive but unoriginal executive (MacLeod Sociopath) alpha male.
C is the true Technocrat, the problem-solver who's an ideal student but generally "difficult to manage" in the workplace and usually gets fired a couple times before finding the right niche.
D is the terminal middle manager (MacLeod Clueless) whose self-deception prevents him from accepting the fact that he's actually checked-out (in practice, if not in mindset).
Re: Thinking of Doing a PhD? Take this simple test
#6I wish someone would post an article that actually provided a serious, levelheaded view of the ups and downs of a PhD as well as what it's actually like instead of the overly negative articles? I understand that it might not be what it seems, but it's hard to figure out what's for real and what's just somber humor for the uninitiated.
Have a look at http://marcua.net/writing/gradschool-guide/
Re: Thinking of Doing a PhD? Take this simple test
#7I wish someone would post an article that actually provided a serious, levelheaded view of the ups and downs of a PhD as well as what it's actually like instead of the overly negative articles? I understand that it might not be what it seems, but it's hard to figure out what's for real and what's just somber humor for the uninitiated.
I would recommend reading "The Phd. Grind" by Philip Guo [1].
Re: Thinking of Doing a PhD? Take this simple test
#8I wish someone would post an article that actually provided a serious, levelheaded view of the ups and downs of a PhD as well as what it's actually like instead of the overly negative articles? I understand that it might not be what it seems, but it's hard to figure out what's for real and what's just somber humor for the uninitiated.
There are plenty of those. Here's one: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html
There's also, I believe, a CMU computer science "guide to graduate school survival" out there.
I don't think that this (somewhat self-deprecating) graduate school literature is unrealistically negative. Academia is pretty awful.
Life-wise, graduate school is a pretty negative experience. If you enjoy the subject matter and have an almost obsessive need to dive into it, it's a great time in that regard (and you will be spending 60+ hours per week on your work) because you can really study without having to deal with the bullshit that professors have to fend off (committees, tenure politics, grant-writing). The rest of your life will be somewhere from mediocre (if you don't care about the academic game, already dead-set on leaving post-PhD) to awful (if you try to play for keeps); even successful and happy graduate students experience this.
The upshot of graduate school is that, except for the money and low status-- and those aren't issues for everyone-- it's actually better than being a professor. You don't have to serve on committees or sweat tenure decisions or disciplinary hearings for cheating undergraduates, and you have a 5- to 7-year period where geographic moves under adverse circumstances won't happen.
Re: Thinking of Doing a PhD? Take this simple test
#9I wish someone would post an article that actually provided a serious, levelheaded view of the ups and downs of a PhD as well as what it's actually like instead of the overly negative articles? I understand that it might not be what it seems, but it's hard to figure out what's for real and what's just somber humor for the uninitiated.
There are plenty of those. Here's one: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html There's also, I believe, a CMU computer science "guide to graduate school survival" out there. I don't think that this (somewhat self-deprecating) graduate school literature is unrealistically negative. Academia is pretty awful. Life-wise, graduate school is a pretty negative experience. If you enjoy the subject matter and have an almost…
> Life-wise, graduate school is a pretty negative experience.
I don't think grad school is like that for everyone. My undergrad had such a huge workload that I rarely had time for any kind of fun. Grad school so far is like the college that I didn't have, except I also get to work on research that's really exciting to me. I'm also kind of young for a grad student so I can hang out with undergrads just fine. It's a win-win.
Re: Thinking of Doing a PhD? Take this simple test
#10I wish someone would post an article that actually provided a serious, levelheaded view of the ups and downs of a PhD as well as what it's actually like instead of the overly negative articles? I understand that it might not be what it seems, but it's hard to figure out what's for real and what's just somber humor for the uninitiated.
The experience of doing a PhD varies wildly - between countries, between schools, between departments, between professors, and as time passes.
Even at the same school, one person reported to me that while he was in his second year his supervisor told him he probably had enough material to pass if he wrote it all up - while another person worked long hours and reported to me that his supervisor had shouted at him for not coming in to monitor his experiments on christmas day. One person went on to a research position in the private sector and feel it set them up for a good career; another hoped to enter humanities academia, but wasn't able to find any jobs and ended up doing office admin work that barely needed an undergraduate degree.
Even for the same student, some parts of the process will be enjoyable and fascinating, other parts will be frustrating and tiresome. If you had asked me two years in I'd have told you doing a PhD is pretty great - by the end, having gone through the process of writing up, my opinion pretty inverted. I decided a career in academia wouldn't suit me at all.
If you boil the experience of doing a PhD down to the essentials of the experience, there's very little left because the experience varies so much.