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Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)

franceshocutt.com

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Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)

#101

Post by lucraft »

bumby wrote: post #87
lucraft wrote: post #53

> "You are formally invited to A WAKE for THE RESEARCH SCIENCE CAREER of FRANCES HOCUTT FRIDAY from 7 PM to MIDNIGHT" When I quit my PhD I had an Ungraduation Party! My wife made a cake and everyone sang Happy Ungraduation To You! It was sad and happy but overwhelmingly such a relief to get out

What went into your decision to drop out? Good on you too not wrap your identity too much in a credential to allow yourself that decision and also having unconditional support from those close to you.

Thanks... I haven't thought about it in a long time, as it was difficult, but looking back it seems quite positive.

Three things:

1. Full disclosure at that time in my life I was rather bad at motivating myself to work independently for long periods. In hindsight starting a PhD was a bad idea for this reason alone.

2. The university closed the department I was in. I was transferred to another supervisor in another department, who was nice but saw his role as more administrative. After a while he then announced he was retiring so I was looking at moving to another supervisor again.

3. I turned out to be far, far more interested in writing software than doing research. E.g I wrote an open source unit testing library in Prolog to support my research tooling. I was learning Rails on the side. I went to the Hacker News meet-up in London, and the startup that was running them offered me a job, and the rest is history!

I had sunk multiple years into it so it wasn't easy. But in hindsight it was not even a close decision.

Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)

#102

Post by grogenaut »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #69
ryukoposting wrote: post #58

> We create meaning around the stress and soften transitions with rituals and rites of passage. I graduated into the height of the pandemic, so I never had a graduation ceremony. Instead, they played a shitty video presentation over Zoom and my parents cracked open a beer and watched it on TV. By the time I got invited back for a ceremony, I had already moved hundreds of miles away from my university. Obviously, I tu…

I don't regret skipping college graduation and I barely remember high school graduation I do regret that I didn't join any clubs in college until my last semester, and that I didn't make the kind of friendships I wanted

I played college football which for the purposes of this conversation isn't a brag but call it a club. A big club. This was at a D3 non scholarship for the love of the game school.

Two weeks before school started I knew 110 students, 15 adult employees, and about 10 recent alums. It was great. I had easy access to people who could answer all my questions. What classes, what professors, what forms, what majors, what restaurants, how to move exams, parties, of age people, cars, parking, tutors etc. Can't recommend it enough.

My daughter is very indoors and "nerdy" for shorthand (So am I I just also do everything and played football). She loved DND. We lived about 12 miles from campus so as soon as she got in I found that they had DND club. I got her to ask to play in the discord early summer. She had a pack of friends by the time school started. A few freshmen and plenty of older classmates.

Can't recommend it enough. Also it generally accelerated me more than the time it took up

Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)

#103

Post by anal_reactor »

pradn wrote: post #89
ryukoposting wrote: post #58

> We create meaning around the stress and soften transitions with rituals and rites of passage. I graduated into the height of the pandemic, so I never had a graduation ceremony. Instead, they played a shitty video presentation over Zoom and my parents cracked open a beer and watched it on TV. By the time I got invited back for a ceremony, I had already moved hundreds of miles away from my university. Obviously, I tu…

These ceremonies are meaningful if you invest meaning into them. For my college graduation, the dean did something small to make the ceremony more meaningful. He asked us all to stand up, look back to our family, and applaud them for supporting us all these years. For me, looking back at my parents and thanking them for all they've done for me was a beautiful moment. And it was a full-circle moment for our family, th…

> He asked us all to stand up, look back to our family, and applaud them for supporting us all these years.

God I have such a difficult relationship with my parents. Yes, their methods worked, but damn, I'll need years of therapy.

Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)

#104

Post by HarryHirsch »

AlanYx wrote: post #94
nonrandomstring wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just how serious should she... be taken? Very seriously indeed if you value higher education and research. Lot's of people do. Over a decade ago now, Ben Ginsberg wrote "Fall of the Faculty". Political scientists like Wendy Brown have picked apart not only the evidence, but done deep analytical work on the reasons for the disintegration of academia in the West. Even Peter Thiel (who I profoundly disagree with on al…

Has Peter Thiel ever put his thoughts on higher education down in long-form writing? I've seen him speak about it, but I'd be interested in a deep dive.

There was a lengthy interview with Peter Thiel a few years back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM9f0W2KD5s

It's interesting and worth watching, but it becomes apparent that Thiel is a financier, and science takes place on a different timescale. Better seek advice from someone who was active when US science was still functional, let's say Roy Vagelos.

Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)

#105

Post by gosub100 »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #69
ryukoposting wrote: post #58

> We create meaning around the stress and soften transitions with rituals and rites of passage. I graduated into the height of the pandemic, so I never had a graduation ceremony. Instead, they played a shitty video presentation over Zoom and my parents cracked open a beer and watched it on TV. By the time I got invited back for a ceremony, I had already moved hundreds of miles away from my university. Obviously, I tu…

I don't regret skipping college graduation and I barely remember high school graduation I do regret that I didn't join any clubs in college until my last semester, and that I didn't make the kind of friendships I wanted

For me the graduation was significant because of how miserable the previous 4 years were, largely for the reason that you mentioned.

Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)

#106

Post by gosub100 »

roel_v wrote: post #16
emmelaich wrote: post #9

Reminds me of Sabine Hossenfelder's "My dream died, and now I'm here" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiBlGDfRU8

Not to highjack this topic, but she was recommended (like to many others of you no doubt) quite a bit in my Youtube feeds over the last few months; and the first few videos I watched seemed to be solid enough. Yet as I watched a few more, I couldn't shake the feeling that she's so out of left field that she's not just a 'quirky renegade' anymore, but rather a quack who dresses up her quackery with just enough 'real'…

Can you give any examples of her promoting "quackery"? I don't know how you can admit you are weak in physics but nevertheless sense she is phony.

My biggest criticism of hers is that she is cynical and spends too much time tearing down other ideas rather than promoting anything.

But overall she does great things with showcasing the more ridiculous side of academia. She is adept at taking published research and showing that it is quackery. She shows how they manipulate data and mislead the media, often for more research money. I also applaud her counterpoint in particle physics regarding the waste involved in building yet another gigantic particle accelerator. It's a POV I wouldn't have considered, but I agree that the money could be better spent in other areas.

Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)

#107

Post by hnthrow10282910 »

anal_reactor wrote: post #103
pradn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These ceremonies are meaningful if you invest meaning into them. For my college graduation, the dean did something small to make the ceremony more meaningful. He asked us all to stand up, look back to our family, and applaud them for supporting us all these years. For me, looking back at my parents and thanking them for all they've done for me was a beautiful moment. And it was a full-circle moment for our family, th…

> He asked us all to stand up, look back to our family, and applaud them for supporting us all these years. God I have such a difficult relationship with my parents. Yes, their methods worked, but damn, I'll need years of therapy.

Same here. Lots of stress and work for a career that causes me stress only to retire and die.

Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)

#108

Post by blueyes »

I think this is true for most careers and prominent roles:

"When I first came to The Times in 2006, a reporter warned me not to identify myself too heavily with my work. “Any job at The Times is a rented tux,” she said."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/16/dining/pete-wells-steps-d...

Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)

#109

Post by mynameisash »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #69
ryukoposting wrote: post #58

> We create meaning around the stress and soften transitions with rituals and rites of passage. I graduated into the height of the pandemic, so I never had a graduation ceremony. Instead, they played a shitty video presentation over Zoom and my parents cracked open a beer and watched it on TV. By the time I got invited back for a ceremony, I had already moved hundreds of miles away from my university. Obviously, I tu…

I don't regret skipping college graduation and I barely remember high school graduation I do regret that I didn't join any clubs in college until my last semester, and that I didn't make the kind of friendships I wanted

> I do regret that I didn't join any clubs in college until my last semester, and that I didn't make the kind of friendships I wanted

As a parent of teenagers, I struggle with how the hell to convey this to my kids. They are so engrossed in YouTube, stupid memes, and games that they don't join any clubs or sports at school; they don't seek out IRL activities; and my 17 year old has no interest in getting his driver's license. I have tried limiting screen time (and I took a lot of good lessons from Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation[0]). They've both got ample opportunities for therapy (depression runs in the family, the eldest has various diagnoses, etc.) and for engagement with peers.

They simply don't make and develop friendships. I have no doubt whatsoever that this will be a huge regret of theirs because they've already said that they wished they had more friends. It's infuriating and deeply saddening to see my kids want to be connected, to have everything they need to be connected, but to still not connect.

[0] https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/book

Re: Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)

#110

Post by gowld »

blueyes wrote: post #108

I think this is true for most careers and prominent roles: "When I first came to The Times in 2006, a reporter warned me not to identify myself too heavily with my work. “Any job at The Times is a rented tux,” she said." https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/16/dining/pete-wells-steps-d...

Identifying with your work is different from identifying with your employer.
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