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‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

stanforddaily.com

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Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#31

Post by watwut »

kodz4 wrote: post #24
jacobolus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, successful professional athletes tend to train very hard during dedicated practice hours (something like 30 hours per week), but then have rich lives outside their training, get enough sleep every night, etc. Trying to do more than 30 hours of intense creative work per week yields diminishing returns, while leading to worse and worse negative health effects as you increase hours. People workin…

I agree. But when you are talking about Stanford you are really talking about the best of the best. Their performance curves don't match the rest of the population to start with. For example, I am just watching highlights of the Indian Wells Tennis Tourney thats going on, and a 38 year old Roger Federer has managed to get to the finals. And in every interview with the rest of the competition, they all say he is just…

Nah, they are human too, they get overworked like everyone else with same consequences.

And like with everyone else, they are not at their best when overworked and depressed, but it does not matter for institution because there areally many students eager to apply so it does not matter how many if them pay the cost.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#32

Post by icelancer »

jacobolus wrote: post #26
icelancer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From what I understand, successful professional athletes tend to train very hard during dedicated practice hours (something like 30 hours per week), but then have rich lives outside their training, get enough sleep every night, etc. I train hundreds of professional athletes. The majority of them do not have rich lives outside of their training. Most of them have very unbalanced lives that center around their sport,…

Thanks for the reply. How much do the athletes you train practice? Do you think the exclusive focus helps their performance at their sport? Do you think competition selects for people with mental health problems, or causes mental health problems? Is there a noticeable difference between athletes who burn out in a few years vs. the ones who have long careers?

> Thanks for the reply. How much do the athletes you train practice?

Some 30 hours a week in the off-season. Additionally, many have off-season jobs to make ends meet. Pro sports isn't all what it's cracked up to be. Not all of them play on TV.

> Do you think the exclusive focus helps their performance at their sport?

Likely.

> Do you think competition selects for people with mental health problems, or causes mental health problems?

Yes.

> Is there a noticeable difference between athletes who burn out in a few years vs. the ones who have long careers?

Genetic ability first, preparation second. If you are an extremist, you might get preparation to exceed your genetic lottery ticket. But I've only seen that happen once.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#33

Post by skrebbel »

omk wrote: post #17

After 5 years of work, I finally decided to take the jump and live the dream of earning a Masters degree from a prestitious university in The Netherlands. Being a non-EU citizen I had shell euro 15000/year but it still seemed cheaper than US counterparts. Couple months into the semester I realized the pressure kicking in my program. The planned 40 hour load required atleast 80 hours of work. I could sense stress and…

My I ask what you studied and where?

I'm curious because I did a Master's (CS) at a Dutch university (Eindhoven) and my experience was the total opposite. Lots of students were involved in extracurricular activities, there was time for study and time for fun, people generally seemed mostly relaxed.

I'll concur that the program was a bit of an industry mismatch in that they don't teach software engineering but academic theoretical computer science, which has at most 10% overlap with what programmers in industry do. But I suspect that holds for most Master's programs out there (doesn't make it less ridiculous of course).

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#34

Post by ivalm »

kodz4 wrote: post #24
jacobolus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, successful professional athletes tend to train very hard during dedicated practice hours (something like 30 hours per week), but then have rich lives outside their training, get enough sleep every night, etc. Trying to do more than 30 hours of intense creative work per week yields diminishing returns, while leading to worse and worse negative health effects as you increase hours. People workin…

I agree. But when you are talking about Stanford you are really talking about the best of the best. Their performance curves don't match the rest of the population to start with. For example, I am just watching highlights of the Indian Wells Tennis Tourney thats going on, and a 38 year old Roger Federer has managed to get to the finals. And in every interview with the rest of the competition, they all say he is just…

Especially for creative work, work time doesn't correlate with output. Being a top physicist/mathematician/whatever is pretty unrelated with "working harder." It's related with having a somehow "better" connected brain. You can't work your way into being very smart.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#35

Post by ivalm »

icelancer wrote: post #22
fiblye wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hours worked is inversely correlated with GDP per capita. China needs to step down if they want to try to be competitive.

This implies that "GDP per capita" is something to optimize for. My guess is that China doesn't see it that way.

I mean, pick your favorite financial metric, they are behind.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#36

Post by raverbashing »

I wonder how much of this is attributable to advisor and university "entrance/belonging rituals" (meaning "only the tough survive" mentality)

There seems to be a lot of psychological abuse in graduate circles, even if it is not explicit.

I am glad I dropped out early

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#37

Post by icelancer »

ivalm wrote: post #35
icelancer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This implies that "GDP per capita" is something to optimize for. My guess is that China doesn't see it that way.

I mean, pick your favorite financial metric, they are behind.

This is trivially false. Here's a relevant one: Rate of positive change of GDP (absolute or per capita) over the last 20 years, by country.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#39

Post by omk »

skrebbel wrote: post #33
omk wrote: post #17

After 5 years of work, I finally decided to take the jump and live the dream of earning a Masters degree from a prestitious university in The Netherlands. Being a non-EU citizen I had shell euro 15000/year but it still seemed cheaper than US counterparts. Couple months into the semester I realized the pressure kicking in my program. The planned 40 hour load required atleast 80 hours of work. I could sense stress and…

My I ask what you studied and where? I'm curious because I did a Master's (CS) at a Dutch university (Eindhoven) and my experience was the total opposite. Lots of students were involved in extracurricular activities, there was time for study and time for fun, people generally seemed mostly relaxed. I'll concur that the program was a bit of an industry mismatch in that they don't teach software engineering but academi…

This was a Data Science program by TU/e and Tilburg hosted in Den Bosch. To be very honest I saw friends at TU/e relating well with their program and even manging trips to Spain while the folks in my program very occupied with mostly procedural assignments and struggled to find time to go out for drinks. This could very well be a one off thing because my program had a huge number of drop-outs through the first and second semester.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#40

Post by ascar »

skrebbel wrote: post #33
omk wrote: post #17

After 5 years of work, I finally decided to take the jump and live the dream of earning a Masters degree from a prestitious university in The Netherlands. Being a non-EU citizen I had shell euro 15000/year but it still seemed cheaper than US counterparts. Couple months into the semester I realized the pressure kicking in my program. The planned 40 hour load required atleast 80 hours of work. I could sense stress and…

My I ask what you studied and where? I'm curious because I did a Master's (CS) at a Dutch university (Eindhoven) and my experience was the total opposite. Lots of students were involved in extracurricular activities, there was time for study and time for fun, people generally seemed mostly relaxed. I'll concur that the program was a bit of an industry mismatch in that they don't teach software engineering but academi…

> the program was a bit of an industry mismatch in that they don't teach software engineering but academic theoretical computer science, which has at most 10% overlap with what programmers in industry do

The important thing to remember is that the goal of an university is not to prepare you for what you do in industry, but to teach you fundamental knowledge about a topic that helps you adapt to new challenges (also in industry) and even more important university should teach you how to approach and understand new complex concepts by yourself.

If you want job preparation the best thing is an apprenticeship program (i.e. learning on the job) or maybe a specialiced practice focused college/trade school.

Granted, I think most day to day programmers don't need a CS degree.

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