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Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.

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Re: Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.

#61

Post by arbuge »

The reality is that alot of doing a PhD comes down to the choice of your PhD advisor. You'll be intimately apprenticed to this person and his/her whims for several years of your life, and your life for those several years could be great or miserable (or somewhere in between, as mine was) as a result. Choose wisely and listen to your gut. It's generally the best judge of character you have.

Interview former students too (not current ones - you want the ones totally free to speak their mind).

Re: Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.

#62

Post by PhilWest »

tryggvib wrote: post #52

What a refreshing article when I'm about to defend my PhD this Friday :) My experience of the PhD was that it didn't break me but I come out of my studies having completely lost all respect for academia. I finished my dissertation in about two and a half years (the main contribution and content of it) and then I waited for about three years to be able to defend it. No matter how often I pressed things and asked wheth…

I'm defending my PhD on friday too! Good luck to us.

The article strikes a chord with me and what I see around me. There are serious structural issues and being a PhD student is a surprisingly weak position. I am glad you are finally managing to finish.

Re: Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.

#63

Post by mitchi »

geophile wrote: post #17

My experience was quite different from that of OP, and I suspect most people who walk that path. I'm 56 in a few days, and got my PhD in computer science in 1983. I was lucky enough to go to a high school that had a real computer, a PDP-8M, and I was hooked five minutes after I sat down at the DecWriter. At college, I was theoretically pre-med. A month into my freshman year (1974), I went to a party at the house of a…

Great story. You didn't stay in Canada? :)

Re: Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.

#64

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ucee054 wrote: post #18

The "supervision" in a PhD can be a problem . Some Professors just keep shooting down their students' ideas, rather than actually teaching or guiding them. Some don't provide any feedback at all, like the student is supposed to pick things up by telepathic osmosis. I guess the victims are the students who take 7 years to finish. I wouldn't recommend a PhD.

> Some Professors just keep shooting down their students' ideas, rather than actually teaching or guiding them.

This is what they are supposed to do. You can't be taught or guided on how to PhD-level research; like writing, it is more about trying and being critiqued on your outputs for N years straight. If you don't like being critiqued, don't do a PhD. If you think your ideas are good, persist with them even though your adviser is saying "no," and be ready to accept when the idea really sucks and you need to switch.

I took 8 years to finish, no regrets at all.

Re: Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.

#66

Post by enjo »

geophile wrote: post #17

My experience was quite different from that of OP, and I suspect most people who walk that path. I'm 56 in a few days, and got my PhD in computer science in 1983. I was lucky enough to go to a high school that had a real computer, a PDP-8M, and I was hooked five minutes after I sat down at the DecWriter. At college, I was theoretically pre-med. A month into my freshman year (1974), I went to a party at the house of a…

Another data point: My wife is a relatively recent PhD (6 years out). Her experience has been nothing but amazing.

When it comes to academia your field of study matters. Alot. My wife is a behavioral accounting researcher, which is a high-demand field with incredibly low supply. Her experience, compared to other disciplines, just couldn't be any more different. She's highly paid and does exactly what she loves.

It helps that she's really good at it I suppose. She received early tenure and will likely be promoted to full professor early as well. She publishes routinely and is active in service even though, given her discipline, she really doesn't need to be.

tldr; If your passion is accounting I'd highly recommend pursuing that PhD.

Re: Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.

#67

Post by geophile »

mitchi wrote: post #63
geophile wrote: post #17

My experience was quite different from that of OP, and I suspect most people who walk that path. I'm 56 in a few days, and got my PhD in computer science in 1983. I was lucky enough to go to a high school that had a real computer, a PDP-8M, and I was hooked five minutes after I sat down at the DecWriter. At college, I was theoretically pre-med. A month into my freshman year (1974), I went to a party at the house of a…

Great story. You didn't stay in Canada? :)

Sometimes, mostly between 2000 and 2008, I wished I had.

Re: Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.

#68

Post by kscaldef »

jb17 wrote: post #60
ricw wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At good uk universities you get excellent guidance, with multiple intermittent milestones and ongoing scrutinisation of your progress. Unless you pick a rubbish supervisor who simply doesn't care. Though I only can speak of Oxford..

It's also important to note that the supervising culture varies a lot between subjects. Computer scientists are usually spoiled by good supervision, but in the humanities you might see your supervisor only twice a year.. (and I do know people in Oxford in that situation).

I think it's also worth saying that phrasing it as "picking a rubbish superviser" puts an unfair blame on the student. By the time you realize your advisor is neglectful, or incompetent as a teacher, or actually neglectful, you might be a year or more down a research path. There might not be another professor at your school qualified and willing to supervise your research. The choice at that point, whether to tough it out or to throw away all your progress up to that point, is an incredibly difficult one.

(FWIW, my advisor in theoretical physics was merely neglectful. Almost all of my friend in an experimental field had advisors who bordered on abusive.)

Re: Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.

#69

Post by ucee054 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #64
ucee054 wrote: post #18

The "supervision" in a PhD can be a problem . Some Professors just keep shooting down their students' ideas, rather than actually teaching or guiding them. Some don't provide any feedback at all, like the student is supposed to pick things up by telepathic osmosis. I guess the victims are the students who take 7 years to finish. I wouldn't recommend a PhD.

> Some Professors just keep shooting down their students' ideas, rather than actually teaching or guiding them. This is what they are supposed to do. You can't be taught or guided on how to PhD-level research; like writing, it is more about trying and being critiqued on your outputs for N years straight. If you don't like being critiqued, don't do a PhD. If you think your ideas are good, persist with them even though…

I hope you never have any students, because it sounds like the abused will become the abuser.

Re: Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.

#70

Post by adrianscott »

Wow, I disagree with almost everything in the article. I finished up my Ph.D. Math at age 20 in slightly more than 3 years. It was a challenge and it did take focus to finish it, but by no means was it soul-destroying. And with the fellowship (on top of the tuition coverage) I received, I felt rich... Yes, you can end up with (choose) an advisor that is not a good match for you (or for getting finished in a reasonable time), but still... It's so much easier than doing a startup, for instance...
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