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Why do older grad students become bitter?

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Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#41

Post by lapcat »

DeathArrow wrote: post #30
VLM wrote: post #18

I think the psychological aspect of first failure and injustice is rough on grad students. Hypercompetitive to get into a good enough BS program to get into a MS program yet unlike post-BS tracks like med school, 98% aren't getting that job in academia and will fail out. Its a pyramid with a very pointy top, much like college football usually doesn't lead to a NFL career. Meanwhile the "failures" who were not smart e…

You can do a BS and work in the industry. Nobody forces you to get a job in the academia.

> You can do a BS and work in the industry.

There's no philosophy industry.

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#42

Post by pclmulqdq »

glass3 wrote: post #14

>Only 15% of postdocs end up being tenure-track faculty. It's strange that the most intelligent people don't overcome that limit. There are billions of people on earth who could benefit from education to become more productive. A share of that gain could pay for many more 'tenure-tracks', they just wouldn't be called like that.

It's just purely about the numbers. A professor, in a 50-year career, can produce 100 PhDs from a large research group. At steady state, those 100 PhDs are competing for one professorship slot. Even "unproductive" professors can produce 20 PhDs.

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#43

Post by martopix »

bowsamic wrote: post #16
afr0ck wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I'm sorry to break it to you in this way, but it's up to you to make your life and research interesting. Don't waste time with the bullshit. Try to solve real problems and work towards concretising them.

I’m simply not interested anymore

I feel you. And you know what, it's really ok. It's difficult to accept because sometimes our disciplines have become parts of our identity. But the moment I accepted that I didn't need to love it, and I could move on and do many exciting things with my good education, life became so much better.

Enjoy the rest of your postdoc. Do what you need to do without stressing too much. Also look at the other things in it that you may like: perhaps working with students, perhaps writing an open source software, perhaps volunteering for some extra teaching duty if you hate research, etc. A postdoc can be many things. This is what I'm doing now.

And if you can't wait, start looking for jobs and then quit. Looking for jobs can in itself be uplifting.

Sorry for the preachy tone -- I don't know your situation and I'm more telling you about mine. In the end that's how I managed and it went ok.

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#44

Post by AstixAndBelix »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #27
afr0ck wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I'm sorry to break it to you in this way, but it's up to you to make your life and research interesting. Don't waste time with the bullshit. Try to solve real problems and work towards concretising them.

> Try to solve real problems All the engineers working on AdTech and surveillance capitalism solving real problems with billion dollar budgets All the PhDs researching new physics and fighting for scraps of funding be losers /s

Because when you find a new law of physics you can't patent it.

But if you make a newfangled device thanks to that new physics law you can put a nice patent on it and earn millions

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#45

Post by lapcat »

mkl95 wrote: post #40

> When I entered grad school, I noticed that the older grad students just seemed... oddly bitter? The 6th years were living in a different world from us 1st years > You may need to move on for the sake of your life, but your experiments aren't working and the committee says you need one more paper to graduate. It's really hard to balance this, especially combined with the lack of money. > Only 15% of postdocs end up…

> Downvote me as much as you want

Protip: This kind of comment almost always becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

"Please don't comment about the voting on comments." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#47

Post by wongarsu »

glass3 wrote: post #14

>Only 15% of postdocs end up being tenure-track faculty. It's strange that the most intelligent people don't overcome that limit. There are billions of people on earth who could benefit from education to become more productive. A share of that gain could pay for many more 'tenure-tracks', they just wouldn't be called like that.

I know this heavily depends on the location, but at our university most professors weren't there to teach students. Giving lectures was more like the price of entry, something that has to be done to keep the machine alive. Their actual job and passion was doing research, publishing highly-cited papers, going to conferences, and furthering their and by extension their university's reputation.

It might be different if being a grad student was about giving awesome lectures, but usually it's about doing awesome research; and those that are best at doing and publishing research then get tenure-track.

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#48

Post by goethes_kind »

bowsamic wrote: post #24
orff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

let me guess - it's in Germany.

Correct

Isolation is a real problem in this country. Did you also make the mistake of moving to a small city? I spent my last four years at a TU in a small city and it was horrible here. Just one more general problem with this country.

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#49

Post by mecsred »

lapcat wrote: post #41
DeathArrow wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do a BS and work in the industry. Nobody forces you to get a job in the academia.

> You can do a BS and work in the industry. There's no philosophy industry.

Which is one of the reasons sane people suggest not getting a philosophy degree.

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#50

Post by colonelpopcorn »

MereInterest wrote: post #32
shadowgovt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you don't take out loans, you almost certainly guarantee failure to reach the top of the pyramid. So we're stuck with two bad choices. Either people take a risk on loans, or the academic pyramid becomes populated with only those with burnable wealth.

As a society, we have a third option: fund education as a public good.

I feel like the third option should be: not conflating credentials with education or ability.

Education is a funded public good, I won't say well funded, but funded nonetheless. Credentials are not a well funded public good, and shouldn't be in my opinion.

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