Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89 • Hacker News Board

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#131

Post by scyzoryk_xyz » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 7:44 AM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #110

azhenley wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professor here. You definitely aren’t too old, but I would never take on a PhD student that wants to continue working elsewhere. A PhD is a full-time job. It took me 6.5 years and was hard enough with very little outside distractions.

Interesting. My dad is an MD PhD and he got the PhD while being a full time trauma surgeon in his forties. I think perhaps this is like all the other things people have told me are impossible: if I (or all the people like me) want to, we’d find it easy.

I work with surgical MD PhD's in my work and I'm pretty sure it's different in medicine. You must constantly stay in practice to stay relevant and your research area overlaps with your practice.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#132

Post by trenchgun » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 7:48 AM UTC

bombadilo wrote: post #130

evanb wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… if you already have a master’s degree, which takes 2 years. In the US many 5-6 year PhD programs do not require—and in fact include—a master’s degree.

A masters is typically one year full time, two years part time.

Incorrect. In Europe a bachelors is either 3 or 4 years, and a masters is either 1 or 2 years. Full time. Source: https://ec.europa.eu/education/resources-and-tools/european-...

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#133

Post by batman-farts » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 7:54 AM UTC

silisili wrote: post #75

Seriously? Brown was removed from the title, because one person took it in bad faith? Would Harvard have been removed from a title?

Yeah, when I saw Brown and PhD in the same headline, I assumed Brown University.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#134

Post by trenchgun » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 7:59 AM UTC

trenchgun wrote: post #132

bombadilo wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A masters is typically one year full time, two years part time.

Incorrect. In Europe a bachelors is either 3 or 4 years, and a masters is either 1 or 2 years. Full time. Source: https://ec.europa.eu/education/resources-and-tools/european-...

Of course, it is possible to do a 90 ECTS masters (1 year full time) for two years part time.

And it's possible to do a 180 ECTS masters (2 year full time) for four years part time.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#135

Post by grayclhn » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 8:00 AM UTC

laichzeit0 wrote: post #85

grayclhn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME (US) the typical successful phd student works 60-80 hours a week, so… good luck working twice that hard for 5 years.

Let’s assume this is a CS PhD (so no “lab” work). Is this person doing 60 hours of actual research a week? If I did a PhD while working full time, I would expect to do purely research. I’m not interested in teaching or grading papers or anything non-dissertation related. Btw, this is how most people do their PhDs here. It’s a quick in and out 3 year seal-team like operation. Caveat: We see Ph.D as a degree you do aft…

When I was in grad school (Econ, not CS) teaching, etc., was less than 10h a week. The rest of the time was research. So yeah, 60+ hours of actual research a week.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#136

Post by grayclhn » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 8:01 AM UTC

p1esk wrote: post #103

grayclhn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME (US) the typical successful phd student works 60-80 hours a week, so… good luck working twice that hard for 5 years.

“Hard work” in the context of phd studies is not measured in a number of hours one works per week. It’s measured in a number of first author publications in top journals/conferences.

Which is really really correlated with the number of hours you put in. Hard work means working hard, whatever context you’re imagining.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#137

Post by barry-cotter » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 8:06 AM UTC

tombert wrote: post #44

melvinmt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, part-time PhD's are pretty common in Europe. They also commonly take 3-4 years instead of 6...

Which I find weird; are European/British PhDs generally considered less valuable than American? I didn’t think they were but there’s a lot I don’t know about this.

Only in the US/Canada. The stereotype is that they may be fine researchers but they don't have the breadth that comes of spending two years doing graduate level classes.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#138

Post by np1810 » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 8:06 AM UTC

Such a motivating life he has created... Please read the complete article and you'll find a very important advice in the end from this extraordinary human... ;)

And "knowledge hunger" is real... :)

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#139

Post by tomsmeding » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 8:11 AM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #129

azhenley wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professor here. You definitely aren’t too old, but I would never take on a PhD student that wants to continue working elsewhere. A PhD is a full-time job. It took me 6.5 years and was hard enough with very little outside distractions.

A PhD is a full-time job. That should mean it's a 40 hour a week commitment, not that it's the only thing you do for half a decade or more.

Indeed. And while I get your point that it's often more than 40 hours, the reality is also that an 80 hour work week (PhD + job) doesn't work for the vast majority of people. There are people for which it works, but chances are -- statistically -- that you, the reader, are not one of those. So a PhD being a full-time job, even if that means "just" 40 hours, is indeed a reason why full-time job + PhD does not work in practice for most people.

Re: Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89

#140

Post by volta83 » Tue, Nov 02, 2021, 8:11 AM UTC

soheil wrote: post #37

School-Cotton wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many PhD students have you known? The successful ones at least work extremely hard already; there is no such thing as working twice as hard as them.

Take the top 1% of successful phd students. Does your statement apply equally to them? What about the 0.01%?

So you take the 0.01% of all university students, that are accepted into a PhD program, and then take the 0.01% of that ?

So 0.0001% of all university students, and then... work three times as hard as them ?

Working harder gets exponentially harder the harder you work. So... 0.0000000000001% of all students then ?

And now, in your application form for a PhD program, you want to convince an employer that they should hire you because you think in you are in that bracket, without any proof that backs it up, even though if for some reason you are not, things catastrophically fail for your employer ?

Yeah good luck with that.