As the age of TL rises and we progress through the various stages of our education, I thought something like this would be relevant.
Matthew Might, a computer science professor at the University of Utah, writes: “Every fall, I explain to a fresh batch of Ph.D. students what a Ph.D. is. It’s hard to describe it in words. So, I use pictures.” Here it goes. Matt’s Illustrated Guide:
We all start empty.
By the time you finish elementary school, you know a little:
By the time you finish high school, you know a bit more:
With a bachelor’s degree, you gain a specialty:
A master’s degree deepens that specialty:
Reading research papers takes you to the edge of human knowledge:
Once you’re at the boundary, you focus:
You push at the boundary for a few years:
Until one day, the boundary gives way:
And, that dent you’ve made is called a Ph.D.:
Of course, the world looks different to you now:
So, don’t forget the bigger picture:
Keep pushing.
I once asked uhjoo about his decision to take a phd. He told me it was something you have be willing to spend a little time on every day. I also talked about it with a professor of mine who said even once a week would be enough. Otherwise you will end up like the many who simply let it rot on the corner of their desks. Since then I have watched both sides of the spectrum, from the crazy motivated to the 20-year phd student who never finishes.
For those TLers pursuing higher education, do you have any thoughts on the PhD experience? Does the above ring true for you? Any advice for those looking to start? The author has a simple site here with advice to grad students: http://matt.might.net/articles/
Lol great post, really true about the PhD specialization. I got my masters about 4 years ago and after recently being laid off I am really debating going back for a PHD. Everyone I've talked to that pursued the PHD in my field (aerospace engineering) truly enjoyed their experience and pretty much took 1 class a semester and did research all day. Having extreme freedom.
I always wanted to be a professor (I've taught at community colleges but not acredited), so PHD perhaps is in my future. I'd love to hear personal PHD stories.
I don't know much about PhDing (except my older sister is working on her final thesis), but I'm sure that you shouldn't read too much PHDcomics if you wanna stay motivated!
Just looks another teacher trying to justify to themselves all of those years they spent getting a PhD. It's an interesting illustration, but it also runs off of this presumption that those with PhD's simply know more than those without PhD's. There are computer programmers I know that have far more knowledge having worked in the field for 30 years than these new young "whipper-snappers" could gain with a PhD in Comp Sci (if anyone even goes for that).
I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
I think I'm kind of like a grunt, an ogre. I don't like listening to professors, I would never in a million years want to be a teacher. I would never work towards a phd. I prefer practical things. Creating things out of nothing. Whether it be a restaurant, coal factory, or CERN. For example, physics fascinates me. so do great leaders and ancient civilizations. But i would never in a million years dedicated so much time of my life in order to obtain a title of phd. regardless of the field.
This circle diagram is excellent, really really nice visual demonstration of knowledge and education.
This is a cool way of explaining it. I've also heard that after high school you think you know a lot, after a bachelor's you think you know even more, and it isn't until you start a PhD you realise you know barely anything.
I can only talk about my wife's struggle with Ph. D. (M. D. more like it) degree right now (I'm still struggling with my Bachelor's even though I have accumulated like 6 years of study at the university in Philosophy, History and Maths, but that's a long story). I'm not really sure how this works elsewhere, but in Poland you need to have a good grade on your Master's, then if there's a spot open at the university you can apply for a Ph. D. and if you're accepted you have 4 years to accumulate enough publications and write your paper. It's my wife's 4th year now, she has a month to give the preliminary on her paper for review and she has barely started it a few days ago. But I've got good feelings about it, even though Medicine isn't really my kind of thing, I'm going to help her in any way I can, just like I helped her with her Master's (editing stuff mostly, I'm pretty good at that and it can really take up a lot of time. So I'm helping her with it while she focuses on what to actually put there).
After I get my Bachelor's (will be next year if all goes fine) it's then fairly easy to transition to Master's and if I'd have a shot at it, I'd definitely go for a Ph. D. (already got some propositions for a spot at univ, but need my Master's first...). After all, it's great to do research on stuff that's really interesting for you and being rewarded for it. Personally, I find Ph. D. more of a byproduct of your work, rather than a goal you should strive for (if you're good at your research and it's pretty innovative, Ph. D. should come without problems).
On September 14 2010 10:59 Aberu wrote: Just looks another teacher trying to justify to themselves all of those years they spent getting a PhD. It's an interesting illustration, but it also runs off of this presumption that those with PhD's simply know more than those without PhD's. There are computer programmers I know that have far more knowledge having worked in the field for 30 years than these new young "whipper-snappers" could gain with a PhD in Comp Sci (if anyone even goes for that).
You totally misunderstood it... I suggest you go over it again with a more open mind.
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
I'm not a research person, as I find it very boring reading all sorts of papers and such, so Master's is definitely the termination point for me (which I am doing right now).
I know some people do PhD because they enjoy what they are researching, but I know, at the same time, a lot of people (Chinese students from China in particular) just do it for the degree, which I think is ridiculous.
On September 14 2010 11:15 Cambium wrote: I'm not a research person, as I find it very boring reading all sorts of papers and such, so Master's is definitely the termination point for me (which I am doing right now).
I know some people do PhD because they enjoy what they are researching, but I know, at the same time, a lot of people (Chinese students from China in particular) just do it for the degree, which I think is ridiculous.
Agreed, PhD's generally don't give you a huge edge in industry as far as I know. I think that unless you really want to further your field, teach, or learn more then go for it- otherwise... it just seems like a waste of time.
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
Did you just take a dump on two entire fields of science?
You make it seem like every man and woman on physics, math, stats and computer science is a genius contributing greatly so society and a phd student in chemistry and biology could be any moron straight out of high school.
On September 14 2010 10:59 Aberu wrote: There are computer programmers I know that have far more knowledge having worked in the field for 30 years than these new young "whipper-snappers" could gain with a PhD in Comp Sci (if anyone even goes for that).
I don't know what you mean by "if anyone even goes for that", but, I'd like to inform you that CS is a very popular field for PhD studies.
When you say "more knowledge", in most cases, these are practical knowledge with regards to programming tools and languages, rarely is this actual computer science knowledge; so you are comparing apples to oranges in the first place.
Now assuming that someone with 30 years of industry experience has "more knowledge" in general than a person with a PhD degree, but the PhD will know something in much greater depth than the industry programmer. A person with a PhD is essentially an expert on one specific field. Ironically, this is exactly what Mani's article is trying to portray, so I don't know why you feel so compelled to make such an ignorant and derogatory comment.
My father who has been the key note speaker on a few seminars on this topic has always said that "being an expert means knowing more and more about less and less"
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
This makes no sense. In any field you're studying something original and novel in order to achieve a PhD - that's the whole point. Sure it's nice to think that all the math-based sciences are somehow more important than anything else if that's the field you're in, but in reality it's just the level of jargon and requisite knowledge of a bunch of theories and shit that makes it seem like you're somehow in another realm.
On September 14 2010 11:33 Eskii wrote: My father who has been the key note speaker on a few seminars on this topic has always said that "being an expert means knowing more and more about less and less"
This is very true to a point. I have a PhD in I/O Psychology and it all comes down to contributing new knowledge to your field. You start to learn more and more about less and less until you become the world's expert on one particular piece of research.
On September 14 2010 11:33 Eskii wrote: My father who has been the key note speaker on a few seminars on this topic has always said that "being an expert means knowing more and more about less and less"
This is very true to a point. I have a PhD in I/O Psychology and it all comes down to contributing new knowledge to your field. You start to learn more and more about less and less until you become the world's expert on one particular piece of research.
I'm doing a PharmD right now... I'll abbreviate it to PhD and that's good enough for me because 8 years of university is enough for me (2 years left after this one!!).
On September 14 2010 11:55 Amber[LighT] wrote: pretty good stuff here. Just got my masters and might go back for a PhD if the job market doesn't pick up in the next year or so :/
And I would say my current career path is going in the complete opposite direction of where my masters study brought me... kinda sad tbh
Have you considered teaching? You can have an additional job teaching online courses. Their popularity has grown quite a bit and you can earn some extra income for those times when things are rough. It only takes about 30-60 minutes a night (per course) and can be done while watching SC2 streams!
Unless you are seeking employment in Academia, or a research role, a PhD will not help that much. If anything, it could hinder your search because of the stereotype that some people have about someone with a PhD. Be sure it will fit with your goals before spending the next few years collecting loans!
On September 14 2010 11:12 illu wrote: PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
sounds like someone is bitter that all the money is being dumped into bio right now. if you think chem and bio phd students simply sleep in a lab and have no originality, then you are clueless
You know, I just don't know what I want to do. I was always happy with getting up to a Bachelors degree but a few years ago the system changed and that degree didn't get as much money a Masters or PhD. So then I decided to get my Masters instead of stopping at Bachelors and now I'm debating a PhD as well. It seems to me that every time I find a level of education that seems good enough I want the next one... I'll see how it goes up until the Masters, then I'll decide if it is worth it to pursue a PhD.
I have a BS, an MS, and a Ph.D: Bullshit, more shit, and piled hip deep.
...My grandfather is not a very educated man, but his perspective is pretty funny.
Anyway, in my experience in a Ph.D. program, it has to be pure intrinsic motivation. There is no way that you will survive a Ph.D. program without a simple desire to satisfy your hunger for more knowledge about the subject. Getting a Ph.D. for economic reasons, to command respect from others, or to prove a point to yourself is incredibly irresponsible. It's just terrible reasoning for going to graduate school, and leads nowhere.
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
Did you just take a dump on two entire fields of science?
You make it seem like every man and woman on physics, math, stats and computer science is a genius contributing greatly so society and a phd student in chemistry and biology could be any moron straight out of high school.
I did not take a dump at them. I think all fields of science are important. However sometimes I question the integrity of certain PhD degrees.
By all means, I think researchers in biology and medicine are contributing to humankind a million fold more than mathematicians. I just think there really isn't much to learn in certain phd programs.
Warning: Possible Bias Ahead:
One example I see is psychology. While I think psychology is interesting and it's GOOD SCIENCE, I believe any iterate person who has taken Psych101 can read and understand a cutting-edge psychology research paper. Of course, there may be gaps, but it won't take more than a couple of days of googling to learn all the fancy terminologies. On the other hand, only those who are highly specialized in the subfield (which typically takes at least 0.5 - 2 years of intense studying beyond the undergraduate level) can understand a current research paper in mathematics.
I think the difference between phd degrees in different field is huge. Frankly, I can't imagine how someone needs to spend 3-4 years to get a phd in psychology. Seriously, where is there to learn except some lab techniques? Frankly you learn to design experiences and do labs IN UNDERGRAD.
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
Did you just take a dump on two entire fields of science?
You make it seem like every man and woman on physics, math, stats and computer science is a genius contributing greatly so society and a phd student in chemistry and biology could be any moron straight out of high school.
I did not take a dump at them. I think all fields of science are important. However sometimes I question the integrity of certain PhD degrees.
Warning: Possible Bias Ahead:
One example I see is psychology. While I think psychology is interesting and it's GOOD SCIENCE, I believe any iterate person who has taken Psych101 can read and understand a cutting-edge psychology research paper. Of course, there may be gaps, but it won't take more than a couple of days of googling to learn all the fancy terminologies. On the other hand, only those who are highly specialized in the subfield (which typically takes at least 0.5 - 2 years of intense studying beyond the undergraduate level) can understand a current research paper in mathematics.
I think the difference between phd degrees in different field is huge. Frankly, I can't imagine how someone needs to spend 3-4 years to get a phd in psychology. Seriously, where is there to learn except some lab techniques? Frankly you learn to design experiences and do labs IN UNDERGRAD.
Holy hell you made me angry with this post. As a current PhD student in psychology I can tell you that you are very, very mistaken with your understanding of the field and this specific graduate program at all. But, since I don't want to turn this thread into a flame war I will bite my tongue. Just please don't go making these sort of accusations without direct experience with that specific program. For instance, I would never assume I know enough about PhD programs in math or physics to make claims about their rigor.
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
Did you just take a dump on two entire fields of science?
You make it seem like every man and woman on physics, math, stats and computer science is a genius contributing greatly so society and a phd student in chemistry and biology could be any moron straight out of high school.
I did not take a dump at them. I think all fields of science are important. However sometimes I question the integrity of certain PhD degrees.
Warning: Possible Bias Ahead:
One example I see is psychology. While I think psychology is interesting and it's GOOD SCIENCE, I believe any iterate person who has taken Psych101 can read and understand a cutting-edge psychology research paper. Of course, there may be gaps, but it won't take more than a couple of days of googling to learn all the fancy terminologies. On the other hand, only those who are highly specialized in the subfield (which typically takes at least 0.5 - 2 years of intense studying beyond the undergraduate level) can understand a current research paper in mathematics.
I think the difference between phd degrees in different field is huge. Frankly, I can't imagine how someone needs to spend 3-4 years to get a phd in psychology. Seriously, where is there to learn except some lab techniques? Frankly you learn to design experiences and do labs IN UNDERGRAD.
Holy hell you made me angry with this post. As a current PhD student in psychology I can tell you that you are very, very mistaken with your understanding of the field and this specific graduate program at all. But, since I don't want to turn this thread into a flame war I will bite my tongue. Just please don't go making these sort of accusations without direct experience with that specific program. For instance, I would never assume I know enough about PhD programs in math or physics to make claims about their rigor.
The problem is, in my university there are a lot of psychology research papers (done by tenured professors) printed on big, poster formats hanging on the wall. Sometimes I walk by the psychology department and I read some of them. Frankly it's pretty easy. They spent most of the paper illustrating their statistical methodologies, which are no more than a standard F-test.
Again, I have said, and I will repeat, that I think researches in psychology is VERY IMPORTANT. I have relatives with schizophrenia and I hope one day someone can find a GOOD cure for it (although this will border on neuroscience, I won't go into it). I just think it shouldn't take so long to complete a PhD degree in psychology.
Since you are a current student, maybe you can tell me what you learn in your program besides spending time doing experiments.
I have a Masters and considered a PhD before deciding against it. The first post is a pretty accurate description, but sometimes a Masters is all you need to generate great original research. PhDs just generate more because they're more likely to spend the rest of their life generating original research as it is the only good career path for a PhD and the whole point in getting one, while a Masters may only complete one project during their studies and could get a job that isn't generating original research, or still get a job doing original research and possibly achieve as much as a PhD does, although this is uncommon.
Sure, but research doesn't work all the time and experiments could be repeated at least 10 times until shit finally happens the way you want it.
Take Organic Chemistry, shit is not all that complicated. You need about two years of theory. Two years of lab and you could do any experiment from any procedure.
Of course, making your own experiments takes practice and synthesizing is about as much an art as is a science. The difference from a technician and a good researcher is grand though.
That's what biologists and chemists refer to as bench skills over theory skills.
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
Did you just take a dump on two entire fields of science?
You make it seem like every man and woman on physics, math, stats and computer science is a genius contributing greatly so society and a phd student in chemistry and biology could be any moron straight out of high school.
I did not take a dump at them. I think all fields of science are important. However sometimes I question the integrity of certain PhD degrees.
Warning: Possible Bias Ahead:
One example I see is psychology. While I think psychology is interesting and it's GOOD SCIENCE, I believe any iterate person who has taken Psych101 can read and understand a cutting-edge psychology research paper. Of course, there may be gaps, but it won't take more than a couple of days of googling to learn all the fancy terminologies. On the other hand, only those who are highly specialized in the subfield (which typically takes at least 0.5 - 2 years of intense studying beyond the undergraduate level) can understand a current research paper in mathematics.
I think the difference between phd degrees in different field is huge. Frankly, I can't imagine how someone needs to spend 3-4 years to get a phd in psychology. Seriously, where is there to learn except some lab techniques? Frankly you learn to design experiences and do labs IN UNDERGRAD.
Holy hell you made me angry with this post. As a current PhD student in psychology I can tell you that you are very, very mistaken with your understanding of the field and this specific graduate program at all. But, since I don't want to turn this thread into a flame war I will bite my tongue. Just please don't go making these sort of accusations without direct experience with that specific program. For instance, I would never assume I know enough about PhD programs in math or physics to make claims about their rigor.
The problem is, in my university there are a lot of psychology research papers (done by tenured professors) printed on big, poster formats hanging on the wall. Sometimes I walk by the psychology department and I read some of them. Frankly it's pretty easy. They spent most of the paper illustrating their statistical methodologies, which are no more than a standard F-test.
Again, I have said, and I will repeat, that I think researches in psychology is VERY IMPORTANT. I have relatives with schizophrenia and I hope one day someone can find a GOOD cure for it (although this will border on neuroscience, I won't go into it). I just think it shouldn't take so long to complete a PhD degree in psychology.
Since you are a current student, maybe you can tell me what you learn in your program besides spending time doing experiments.
Sure I can tell you. The majority of my time is actually reading the current research literature so that I build up a solid foundation on the theory of my particular area of interest (language processing by the way). As a member of the cognitive PhD program, I study the areas of language, memory, decision making, and creativity, just to name a few things. We do not, I repeat do not, just sit around and talk about how to run experiments. In fact, a good solid experiment can take an entire year just to prep and ultimately begin running. The posters you see are extremely diluted versions of the research that that individual did because there are professional limitations we have depending on the medium of publication. We spend the first 3 years doing classes and beginning our projects within various labs, and then spend the remainder of our time in the program working almost exclusively on our thesis. Then of course, depending on your division of psychology, there are a number of other projects and work that you do over all your years, but that is very variable based on professor and division. Hope that helps some.
And one last thing. Why in the world are we arguing over this? I don't know anything about your program, and you certainly don't know anything about mine. Let's just both be happy in the fact that we love academia and research to the extent that we do, and we are doing what makes us happy
On September 14 2010 12:00 Hidden_MotiveS wrote: I don't think most PharmD's do innovative research though do they? At least nothing on the level of one who would actually go into research.
No, it's basically a bachelor in pharmacy... IE you're a pharmacist with it. You can do a masters + PhD afterwards if you want to head into research though.
I was originally going to do a PhD in biochemistry but didn't find the job offers very interesting/stable towards the end of my bachelors so I applied for pharmacy.
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
Wow... I don't even know where to begin... First of all PHD comics is just a joke, its for laughs but its far from the reality. Biological sciences and Chemistry are very important to the field of science as well as math and physics.... you are really not a scientist yourself for making that kind of statement. A good scientist is focused on his/her goals, but respects other science. Hell the reason why some of us are alive today is because of discoveries that scientists made in biological sciences (for example genetics or informatics) and chemistry/biochemistry.
Don't even call yourself a scientist really... And if you aren't one, I hope you never become one.
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
Did you just take a dump on two entire fields of science?
You make it seem like every man and woman on physics, math, stats and computer science is a genius contributing greatly so society and a phd student in chemistry and biology could be any moron straight out of high school.
I absolutely agree. While biologists and chemists certainly deserve more respect, there is a truth however that biology and chemistry are, by the nature of those fields, more experimental, so that a student's work, which usually involves doing experiments in lab and publishing papers from the results, is perceived as more tedious than those in math, computer science, or theoretical physics. On the other hand, there is a clear distinction between a common lab technician and a PhD candidate (or a very good lab technician), and that is their experimental insight. As a professor of mine rightfully said, the best experimentalists in biology are not necessarily the most skilled with cultures or pipetting, although those are necessary skills; they must have good judgment on what experiments to do and why. I don't think "morons" qualify in this sense.
On September 14 2010 12:23 illu wrote: I just think it shouldn't take so long to complete a PhD degree in psychology.
Keep in mind that a PhD in Psychology requires research with humans and so the IRB procedures are usually far more strict than most and require much more time to go through. I would loved to have finished in 1 year instead of 3 1/2 but there is a lot to do before starting the research. Choosing a population, where to get your sample, getting the company to approve the research, getting the potential participants to agree, preparing and sending the packages, and then actually having them return data to you, took far more time than I expected.
On September 14 2010 12:25 Rev0lution wrote: Sure, but research doesn't work all the time and experiments could be repeated at least 10 times until shit finally happens the way you want it.
Take Organic Chemistry, shit is not all that complicated. You need about two years of theory. Two years of lab and you could do any experiment from any procedure.
Of course, making your own experiments takes practice and synthesizing is about as much an art as is a science. The difference from a technician and a good researcher is grand though.
That's what biologists and chemists refer to as bench skills over theory skills.
You have a good point. I have taking 3 courses in organic chemistry and I have done tons of labs as requirements for the course. There is a lecturer who serves as a TA and a supervisor for the labs. She does not have a PhD, but she is highly knowledgeable: she can discern good and bad end products just by looking at it; she can save synthesis procedures from immediate disaster. She has very strong "bench skills", as you call it.
I am sure a PhD graduate in chemistry also have this kind of skills.
However I am not certain about psychology. In psychology experiments you do not have that level of control over what you do, because psychology experiments are supposed to be double-blind. Perhaps there are certain level of expertise that will distinguish you from others, but right now I don't see it.
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
Wow... I don't even know where to begin... First of all PHD comics is just a joke, its for laughs but its far from the reality. Biological sciences and Chemistry are very important to the field of science as well as math and physics.... you are really not a scientist yourself for making that kind of statement.
Don't even call yourself a scientist really... And if you aren't one, I hope you never become one.
Sorry. I don't think I ever said those fields of science are menial. In fact I have repeatedly stressed that those are important fields.
The point of a Masters or PhD is to specialize, develop critical analysis skills, develop manuscript writing skills, learning how to conduct research at all stages (reading and critiquing scientific literature, application for funding, ethics approval, recruitment of subjects or sample collection, data collection, data organization, statistical tests, interpretation of results and their implications, manuscript preparation for peer reviewed journals, present research at conferences).
This is a lot of work that takes a lot of time to actually do. A Masters student likely won't complete every one of those steps, but what they get to do provides a solid foundation for the full experience if they pursue a PhD. A PhD will go through that whole process at least once, then again for post graduate work (in addition to experience managing a lab and student researchers). It's basically all practical work experience, and that's why you want PhDs to run research projects, they get a lot of work experience doing it.
Saying some Undergrad can do all this things well after a few minutes on Google is ridiculous. It takes real experience over time to fine tune the skills required. As for understanding a research poster, the whole point is to write up the research in a way that can be easily understood by people with a science background, usually undergrads. Writing in a way that nobody but the most nichely educated can understand is bad writing.
All research, especially in biology/chemistry is taking small steps from what has been established in past research. Some lab finds that 100um/ml of X kills cancer cells in vitro but 20um/ml does not. A new MSc student may use a range of concentrations from 20um/ml to 100um/ml to see if a different cancer cell line is also succeptible to X. A PhD student may do a project on whether X can kill cancer after being passed through key liver enzymes to determine if X can be delivered orally.
Yes it's not a huge mental leap to get from the first experiment to the next, but they are steps that have to be done to properly study chemical X.
On September 14 2010 10:53 freelander wrote: (except my older sister is working on his final thesis)
Did anyone else catch this?
Moving on (lol), it was an interesting read and definitely gives me perspective on my future. As a student in his senior year of high school (young for such a topic, i know) i've been kinda wavering in exactly how far i want to push my education. I have the brains to do studies in my intended major (computer engineering) but I'm just not sure how suited I would be for the situation. I'm definitely taking interest in the posts though (barring a series of arguments on how valid PhDs are in a variety of fields)
On September 14 2010 12:25 Rev0lution wrote: Sure, but research doesn't work all the time and experiments could be repeated at least 10 times until shit finally happens the way you want it.
Take Organic Chemistry, shit is not all that complicated. You need about two years of theory. Two years of lab and you could do any experiment from any procedure.
Of course, making your own experiments takes practice and synthesizing is about as much an art as is a science. The difference from a technician and a good researcher is grand though.
That's what biologists and chemists refer to as bench skills over theory skills.
You have a good point. I have taking 3 courses in organic chemistry and I have done tons of labs as requirements for the course. There is a lecturer who serves as a TA and a supervisor for the labs. She does not have a PhD, but she is highly knowledgeable: she can discern good and bad end products just by looking at it; she can save synthesis procedures from immediate disaster. She has very strong "bench skills", as you call it.
I am sure a PhD graduate in chemistry also have this kind of skills.
However I am not certain about psychology. In psychology experiments you do not have that level of control over what you do, because psychology experiments are supposed to be double-blind. Perhaps there are certain level of expertise that will distinguish you from others, but right now I don't see it.
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
Wow... I don't even know where to begin... First of all PHD comics is just a joke, its for laughs but its far from the reality. Biological sciences and Chemistry are very important to the field of science as well as math and physics.... you are really not a scientist yourself for making that kind of statement.
Don't even call yourself a scientist really... And if you aren't one, I hope you never become one.
Sorry. I don't think I ever said those fields of science are menial. In fact I have repeatedly stressed that those are important fields.
If anything I would say a PHD in genetics will benefit mankind more than a PHD in like wormhole quantum string theory (yeah I just made that up but you get the point).
I admire all forms of science, but personally I want to go for some more... shall I say... knowledge with more concrete application, like engineering. There's enough stuff to try to fix than try to figure out the next big wormhole theory atm.
Really I am just disgusted, you pretty much implied that biology and chemistry don't truly approach the limit of human knowledge and you are dead wrong, because I would argue that we learned more from those two in the past 10 years than we have from astrophysics.
But who cares, all of us are working together to push the boundaries farther. The only field where I am sorta even remotely meh about is PHD in History....
I think you are basing 'Psychology Research' too much on what you see at your University. Psychology experiments are not all supposed to be double-blind and you generally have a good deal of control over them (the research would probably not be approved if you didn't). There are many different methods for experiments, especially if you consider qualitative research in addition to quantitative. Everyone wants to believe their field is the most important but insulting other fields based on what you think is not the way to prove your point. Regardless, this thread is about the PhD journey and not why one may be better than the other so feel free to discuss your journey and experience and lets keep it flame free please.
On September 14 2010 12:41 AppleTart wrote: But who cares, all of us are working together to push the boundaries farther. The only field where I am sorta even remotely meh about is PHD in History....
We need historians to explain the mistakes of the past. Then we can repeat them!
So a PhD is like a soring pimple on your face wanting to break out. Duly noted. :p
Anyways, with that said, I am doing pretty well with my BA in Economics (yes, they are actually useful in this time, but I've been hired for jobs only on a seasonal basis, on a steady stream of gigs, but stable either way). I find that some acquaintances of mine are pursuing/pursued PhDs because they can't get enough of the nourishing environment that graduate schools can provide. I very nearly decided to take graduate school myself, but I really wanted to take on the world for what it is as soon as possible. And because I was offered a job before I even graduated.
chem engg grad here, but don't think I have the passion nor smarts to pursue anything post grad in this field. (right now I'm looking at the possibility of switching to... iPhone programming haha)
Grad school is awesome, seriously. Every educational environment is awesome, and the higher up the more awesome. For many people, high school is the best time of their life because they don't get more education and their jobs suck. Undergrad is way better, but grad school (or sometimes professional school) is unmatched. You get a more enriching environment than undergrads, with smaller classes than high school, it's great.
On September 14 2010 10:59 Aberu wrote: Just looks another teacher trying to justify to themselves all of those years they spent getting a PhD. It's an interesting illustration, but it also runs off of this presumption that those with PhD's simply know more than those without PhD's. There are computer programmers I know that have far more knowledge having worked in the field for 30 years than these new young "whipper-snappers" could gain with a PhD in Comp Sci (if anyone even goes for that).
wow dude, you completely missed the point of this.
if anything, this guy was illustrating the LACK of significance of a PhD.
I'm going to start applying to Grad Schools this fall for my PhD. I'm going straight from BS (well BA/BS cause my school wanted to make up a bigger degree or something.) PhD in either CS or CIS (I for information)
My motivation is that I'm not done learning yet, or more so that I'm not done learning in a colligate atmosphere. A masters doesn't really interest me except in the sense that if I need a break after this year I'll go that route.
I sort of associate all master's degrees as professional degrees, and I'm not really interested in going into the industry.
On September 14 2010 12:41 AppleTart wrote: But who cares, all of us are working together to push the boundaries farther. The only field where I am sorta even remotely meh about is PHD in History....
We need historians to explain the mistakes of the past. Then we can repeat them!
Haha, history doesn't repeat itself, but similar things do happen. I'm simply exercising my mind, doing lots of reading and writing, learning how to be ridiculously persuasive whether or not the facts support my thesis, and on the side I'm interpreting the past. Yes indeed, I am one of the "used-car salesman of academia", a historian.
As they say the higher your education the more you know about less. Im currently working towards this goal myself in Bio Anthropology. Its really a time sink but damn it is really cool and interesting. Seriously a lot of dedication though and I salute anyone who can maintain a normal social life for any extended period of time heh. PhD comics is awesome because its true (though not quite for me as im in the social sciences so its a different atmosphere at times).
I am about to finish my Master degree and I'm thinking about getting an PhD degree just for the sake of the title. I'm an computer science student so a PhD degree are not that common for graduates to pursue, but i like the fact that I will know more and be more specialized than average graduates, which makes me, well ... special :D . And as for the career a PhD degree is not that bad if you are still young.
At the moment, I don't plan on getting one. Once I'm finished my diploma I'll be off to work for a while, then I plan on going back and bachelor degree in computer information systems with a major in network and telecommunications engineering. After that I think I'll be set. You never know though, if I'm extremely fascinated with my studies at that point in time I may pursue further.
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
Wow, I'm sorry if this has been responded to already but I felt compelled to respond.
You do realize that currently Biology is probably the field making the greatest advancements? Its akin to the 1900-1970s for physics. And if you actually understood what a PhD is then you would know that a PhD is ANY field at ANY accredited University is absolutely pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.
Not to mention many PhD's are cross disciplinary and require work in fields other then the specific one you're focusing on.
If doing what's in that picture, pushing the boundaries of human knowledge, is a huge incentive/reward for you, then you might want to do a PhD. A PhD will do this, and train you to keep doing it. You must really love your field, and love studying it for its own sake. If this doesn't seem immensely rewarding to you, do something else. Other careers will reward you in other ways, and if those are more enticing rewards for you, go for it.
Also, web comics are good at making jokes, not accurately summing up graduate studies.
On September 14 2010 10:53 freelander wrote: I don't know much about PhDing (except my older sister is working on her final thesis), but I'm sure that you shouldn't read too much PHDcomics if you wanna stay motivated!
ps. thx Mani for unbanning me . lol
Everyone else I know who's been accepted into a graduate program and has plans on doing a phd is super smug and this webcomic reflects that and is really terrible as well.
Still, I'm beginning mine next year and I do really look forward to it AND I'M BETTER THAN YOU, UNDERGRADUATE PROLE.
I just started a first year program for a chemical engineering PhD four weeks ago. Hardest shit I've ever encountered! Even finishing the homework is rewarding, so no huge complaints. I'll have my research topic in about a month or so, and then it kicks into even higher gear.
Funny you should post the comic. I was feeling down about class and found it last Friday. It's a damn good illustration.
survivingtheworld.net is another good one, especially the beginning where the guy is in grad school himself and making fun of it!
As for advice, it's all up to you. As an engineer I'm studying 30-40 hours a week (only 5-6 hours a day including classes and a little less on weekends). It is a major commitment, so be prepared to give up a bit of your free time to achieve the goal. In my field, a PhD sets you up to either be a professor or a researcher in industry (mostly).
I personally chose to go this route because I hated chemical engineering in practice (system optimization to turn profit). I'm really interested in environmental chemical engineering and wanted to do more, though few companies support it and few people will hire you with anything less than a masters. So, after about a year of consideration (taking a full fifth year to finish undergrad at that) I applied and now am living comfortably on full funding having my mind blown in classes Monday through Thursday.
You also quickly realize that no one around you is the bright genius you'd assume most to be (even the international students (their better math is compensated by the language barrier)). In reality all chemical engineering PhD students are normal people of average intelligence. One of my first realizations were "Wow, everyone is just like me!".
If you decide to go this route make sure you're taking it seriously (especially engineers). You need to know how you learn, pace yourself, and maximize your free time. I think the end product is worth it, so if you're an engineer you wants something more than an industry job, go to grad school!
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
Did you just take a dump on two entire fields of science?
You make it seem like every man and woman on physics, math, stats and computer science is a genius contributing greatly so society and a phd student in chemistry and biology could be any moron straight out of high school.
I did not take a dump at them. I think all fields of science are important. However sometimes I question the integrity of certain PhD degrees.
Warning: Possible Bias Ahead:
One example I see is psychology. While I think psychology is interesting and it's GOOD SCIENCE, I believe any iterate person who has taken Psych101 can read and understand a cutting-edge psychology research paper. Of course, there may be gaps, but it won't take more than a couple of days of googling to learn all the fancy terminologies. On the other hand, only those who are highly specialized in the subfield (which typically takes at least 0.5 - 2 years of intense studying beyond the undergraduate level) can understand a current research paper in mathematics.
I think the difference between phd degrees in different field is huge. Frankly, I can't imagine how someone needs to spend 3-4 years to get a phd in psychology. Seriously, where is there to learn except some lab techniques? Frankly you learn to design experiences and do labs IN UNDERGRAD.
Holy hell you made me angry with this post. As a current PhD student in psychology I can tell you that you are very, very mistaken with your understanding of the field and this specific graduate program at all. But, since I don't want to turn this thread into a flame war I will bite my tongue. Just please don't go making these sort of accusations without direct experience with that specific program. For instance, I would never assume I know enough about PhD programs in math or physics to make claims about their rigor.
The problem is, in my university there are a lot of psychology research papers (done by tenured professors) printed on big, poster formats hanging on the wall. Sometimes I walk by the psychology department and I read some of them. Frankly it's pretty easy. They spent most of the paper illustrating their statistical methodologies, which are no more than a standard F-test.
Wait, did you really believe that research posters hung up in public areas reflect how complex these experiments and fields can be?
...you're in mathematics (where apparently theses of students require "true ingenuity") and you want to do your PhD?!?
in my understanding a PhD isn't solely about knowledge. it's about focusing on a task which is enormously exhausting and going through with it, thus attaining a higher overall control about your life and actions. so it's about learning discipline and expanding your cognitive functions. (in theory)
For some people, a PhD is proof of their intellectual prowess. People who have this mentality are typically more rigid and difficult to have open conversation with because they avoid situations that they are not prepared for and are less willing to approach things from many angles.
For others, a PhD is a constant search for knowledge. This type of mentality may have difficulty focusing on an end goal, but has a more flexible arsenal of skill sets to use for problem solving.
People who pursue a PhD as an identity tend to make significant foundational contributions to their field, while people who pursue knowledge tend to make significant contributions between different fields of research.
Of course, everyone is a mixture of these traits, but it is important to identify what motivates you early on in your PhD, and if your advisor is of a similar mindset. It is also important to try to avoid thinking about a PhD for personal monetary gain. A PhD by itself is essentially worthless. What counts is how you apply the knowledge you gained from your research, and the ability to balance your work/life schedule that necessarily develops as a result of your endeavors. If you are undisciplined during your journey, you will surely wind up miserable.
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
Did you just take a dump on two entire fields of science?
You make it seem like every man and woman on physics, math, stats and computer science is a genius contributing greatly so society and a phd student in chemistry and biology could be any moron straight out of high school.
I did not take a dump at them. I think all fields of science are important. However sometimes I question the integrity of certain PhD degrees.
Warning: Possible Bias Ahead:
One example I see is psychology. While I think psychology is interesting and it's GOOD SCIENCE, I believe any iterate person who has taken Psych101 can read and understand a cutting-edge psychology research paper. Of course, there may be gaps, but it won't take more than a couple of days of googling to learn all the fancy terminologies. On the other hand, only those who are highly specialized in the subfield (which typically takes at least 0.5 - 2 years of intense studying beyond the undergraduate level) can understand a current research paper in mathematics.
I think the difference between phd degrees in different field is huge. Frankly, I can't imagine how someone needs to spend 3-4 years to get a phd in psychology. Seriously, where is there to learn except some lab techniques? Frankly you learn to design experiences and do labs IN UNDERGRAD.
Holy hell you made me angry with this post. As a current PhD student in psychology I can tell you that you are very, very mistaken with your understanding of the field and this specific graduate program at all. But, since I don't want to turn this thread into a flame war I will bite my tongue. Just please don't go making these sort of accusations without direct experience with that specific program. For instance, I would never assume I know enough about PhD programs in math or physics to make claims about their rigor.
The problem is, in my university there are a lot of psychology research papers (done by tenured professors) printed on big, poster formats hanging on the wall. Sometimes I walk by the psychology department and I read some of them. Frankly it's pretty easy. They spent most of the paper illustrating their statistical methodologies, which are no more than a standard F-test.
Wait, did you really believe that research posters hung up in public areas reflect how complex these experiments and fields can be?
...you're in mathematics (where apparently theses of students require "true ingenuity") and you want to do your PhD?!?
If someone hangs a research poster on physics and you have only taken first year physics before, do you think you can understand it?
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
Did you just take a dump on two entire fields of science?
You make it seem like every man and woman on physics, math, stats and computer science is a genius contributing greatly so society and a phd student in chemistry and biology could be any moron straight out of high school.
I did not take a dump at them. I think all fields of science are important. However sometimes I question the integrity of certain PhD degrees.
Warning: Possible Bias Ahead:
One example I see is psychology. While I think psychology is interesting and it's GOOD SCIENCE, I believe any iterate person who has taken Psych101 can read and understand a cutting-edge psychology research paper. Of course, there may be gaps, but it won't take more than a couple of days of googling to learn all the fancy terminologies. On the other hand, only those who are highly specialized in the subfield (which typically takes at least 0.5 - 2 years of intense studying beyond the undergraduate level) can understand a current research paper in mathematics.
I think the difference between phd degrees in different field is huge. Frankly, I can't imagine how someone needs to spend 3-4 years to get a phd in psychology. Seriously, where is there to learn except some lab techniques? Frankly you learn to design experiences and do labs IN UNDERGRAD.
Holy hell you made me angry with this post. As a current PhD student in psychology I can tell you that you are very, very mistaken with your understanding of the field and this specific graduate program at all. But, since I don't want to turn this thread into a flame war I will bite my tongue. Just please don't go making these sort of accusations without direct experience with that specific program. For instance, I would never assume I know enough about PhD programs in math or physics to make claims about their rigor.
The problem is, in my university there are a lot of psychology research papers (done by tenured professors) printed on big, poster formats hanging on the wall. Sometimes I walk by the psychology department and I read some of them. Frankly it's pretty easy. They spent most of the paper illustrating their statistical methodologies, which are no more than a standard F-test.
Wait, did you really believe that research posters hung up in public areas reflect how complex these experiments and fields can be?
...you're in mathematics (where apparently theses of students require "true ingenuity") and you want to do your PhD?!?
If someone hangs a research poster on physics and you have only taken first year physics before, do you think you can understand it?
isn't not being able to understand it worse? I'd want to share my knowledge with as many people as possible instead.
Sure if you do something that requires basic understanding of english to get a handle on it it's simpler than using fancy math equations and stuff but who cares rofl. I think it's stupid that they are presented as a way that is hard to understand unless you're in a specific niche. At least the public info.
i love being able to see info from a report and being able to understand in instead of going woah that sounds smart cuz i dont understand it, i think it's quite the opposite when someone presents something they know people wont understand.
You either like it or you don't. I think you're misunderstanding the depths of other areas and are some reason on a high horse because of fancy complex numbers and representations of data, at least that's how your posts are coming across. I've ever yet to meet someone i respect and consider worth while that wasn't overwhelmingly humble.
On September 14 2010 14:27 MadVillain wrote: You do realize that currently Biology is probably the field making the greatest advancements? Its akin to the 1900-1970s for physics.
It is not at all like 1900-1970 in physics, the advancements are not really comparable. There is nothing in biology akin to theoretical physics, but they work a lot like people in applied physics. Applied physics is extremely important of course and is a foundation for most of the worlds GDP but it doesn't push the theoretical boundary in the same way even though it do indeed push the boundary of human knowledge.
Edit: And neither subject is more important than the other, it is just that they aren't comparable.
This thread reminds me of the one thing I hated most about college...There are just so many people who treat education as a pissing contest, arguing that this degree is more valuable/harder than that degree etc. If you ever find yourself thinking that your degree is better than another, then you're in the wrong field and are pursuing your education for all of the wrong reasons. You'll know you have picked the right field when you are comfortably immersed in adding to your knowledge without needing to justify your efforts or attempt to degrade others.
On September 14 2010 10:59 Rev0lution wrote: I'd have to say that, first of all a phD is not for everyone. For some, it's a way of not taking responsibility and just wanting to stay a student for many years. For others, a phD is their "now what?" moment. After you finish college, your life as a young person ends and for the majority of people it's time to get a fucking job.
And then there's those people who are just so motivated, specially in the sciences. I've met some pretty smart kids who really want to make a difference in their world and want to make their mark in their respective disciplines.
Personally, I could never complete a phD. The workload is overwhelming and the pay sucks. For some degrees like education a phD is highly recommended though and very much necessary. Additionally, the phD market is saturated with top talent from all over the world. There are better career paths out there.
EDIT: phDComics makes getting a phD look like a getting a rectal exam. It looks like a downward spiral of depression and boredom.
Funny you brought up phdcomics. I just want to say that although it's very funny, the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
Doing a PhD degree in mathematics, physics, computer science, and statistics is completely different from what phdcomic depicts. In those fields you are truly approaching the boundary of human knowledge and you really have to learn a lot in order to complete it. PhD thesis of students from those departments are highly original and they are mostly products of true ingenuity instead of sleeping in a lab for 2 years straight.
Did you just take a dump on two entire fields of science?
You make it seem like every man and woman on physics, math, stats and computer science is a genius contributing greatly so society and a phd student in chemistry and biology could be any moron straight out of high school.
I did not take a dump at them. I think all fields of science are important. However sometimes I question the integrity of certain PhD degrees.
Warning: Possible Bias Ahead:
One example I see is psychology. While I think psychology is interesting and it's GOOD SCIENCE, I believe any iterate person who has taken Psych101 can read and understand a cutting-edge psychology research paper. Of course, there may be gaps, but it won't take more than a couple of days of googling to learn all the fancy terminologies. On the other hand, only those who are highly specialized in the subfield (which typically takes at least 0.5 - 2 years of intense studying beyond the undergraduate level) can understand a current research paper in mathematics.
I think the difference between phd degrees in different field is huge. Frankly, I can't imagine how someone needs to spend 3-4 years to get a phd in psychology. Seriously, where is there to learn except some lab techniques? Frankly you learn to design experiences and do labs IN UNDERGRAD.
Holy hell you made me angry with this post. As a current PhD student in psychology I can tell you that you are very, very mistaken with your understanding of the field and this specific graduate program at all. But, since I don't want to turn this thread into a flame war I will bite my tongue. Just please don't go making these sort of accusations without direct experience with that specific program. For instance, I would never assume I know enough about PhD programs in math or physics to make claims about their rigor.
The problem is, in my university there are a lot of psychology research papers (done by tenured professors) printed on big, poster formats hanging on the wall. Sometimes I walk by the psychology department and I read some of them. Frankly it's pretty easy. They spent most of the paper illustrating their statistical methodologies, which are no more than a standard F-test.
Wait, did you really believe that research posters hung up in public areas reflect how complex these experiments and fields can be?
...you're in mathematics (where apparently theses of students require "true ingenuity") and you want to do your PhD?!?
If someone hangs a research poster on physics and you have only taken first year physics before, do you think you can understand it?
The purpose of a research poster is to make as much people as possible ''understand'' it.
On September 14 2010 16:51 Runnin wrote: If you ever find yourself thinking that your degree is better than another, then you're in the wrong field and are pursuing your education for all of the wrong reasons.
You clearly haven't read any psychology, inflating the value of the things you choose to do is basic human nature. There would be something wrong if they didn't think that their field were better.
On September 14 2010 16:51 Runnin wrote: If you ever find yourself thinking that your degree is better than another, then you're in the wrong field and are pursuing your education for all of the wrong reasons.
You clearly haven't read any psychology, inflating the value of the things you choose to do is basic human nature. There would be something wrong if they didn't think that their field were better.
I know many people who dont like their fields, could imagine better ones or cant study from different reasons. But I think both of you have a point there.
I will be satisfied when I will have MSc., MBA and PhD. Then I will hopefully have a lot of money and the satisfaction that I made a small contribution to human knowledge. And it looks awesome on a business card.
I know there are better reasons but this is my mindset..
On September 14 2010 11:55 Amber[LighT] wrote: pretty good stuff here. Just got my masters and might go back for a PhD if the job market doesn't pick up in the next year or so :/
And I would say my current career path is going in the complete opposite direction of where my masters study brought me... kinda sad tbh
Have you considered teaching? You can have an additional job teaching online courses. Their popularity has grown quite a bit and you can earn some extra income for those times when things are rough. It only takes about 30-60 minutes a night (per course) and can be done while watching SC2 streams!
Unless you are seeking employment in Academia, or a research role, a PhD will not help that much. If anything, it could hinder your search because of the stereotype that some people have about someone with a PhD. Be sure it will fit with your goals before spending the next few years collecting loans!
Yah that's why it's a long-term thing. I always wanted to be a teacher (ex-Math Teaching major turned Poli Sci... wtf? lol)
I don't know what the process is with regards to becoming a teacher. I always assumed you needed a certain level of education before you could become a professor or an adjunct at least. It's actually pretty funny I thought I wasn't going to have my job until the end of the year so I started applying for substitute positions at the local school districts so I could at least do something with my time
On September 14 2010 11:55 Amber[LighT] wrote: pretty good stuff here. Just got my masters and might go back for a PhD if the job market doesn't pick up in the next year or so :/
And I would say my current career path is going in the complete opposite direction of where my masters study brought me... kinda sad tbh
Have you considered teaching? You can have an additional job teaching online courses. Their popularity has grown quite a bit and you can earn some extra income for those times when things are rough. It only takes about 30-60 minutes a night (per course) and can be done while watching SC2 streams!
Unless you are seeking employment in Academia, or a research role, a PhD will not help that much. If anything, it could hinder your search because of the stereotype that some people have about someone with a PhD. Be sure it will fit with your goals before spending the next few years collecting loans!
Yah that's why it's a long-term thing. I always wanted to be a teacher (ex-Math Teaching major turned Poli Sci... wtf? lol)
I don't know what the process is with regards to becoming a teacher. I always assumed you needed a certain level of education before you could become a professor or an adjunct at least.
I think you need a B.Edu. to teach highschools. Universities don't give a damn, though.
On September 14 2010 11:55 Amber[LighT] wrote: pretty good stuff here. Just got my masters and might go back for a PhD if the job market doesn't pick up in the next year or so :/
And I would say my current career path is going in the complete opposite direction of where my masters study brought me... kinda sad tbh
Have you considered teaching? You can have an additional job teaching online courses. Their popularity has grown quite a bit and you can earn some extra income for those times when things are rough. It only takes about 30-60 minutes a night (per course) and can be done while watching SC2 streams!
Unless you are seeking employment in Academia, or a research role, a PhD will not help that much. If anything, it could hinder your search because of the stereotype that some people have about someone with a PhD. Be sure it will fit with your goals before spending the next few years collecting loans!
Yah that's why it's a long-term thing. I always wanted to be a teacher (ex-Math Teaching major turned Poli Sci... wtf? lol)
I don't know what the process is with regards to becoming a teacher. I always assumed you needed a certain level of education before you could become a professor or an adjunct at least.
I think you need a B.Edu. to teach highschools. Universities don't give a damn, though.
Well I was sure you didn't just walk into the head of the departments office and say "I want to teach so-and-so." Seems like anybody could/should do that. Might go visit some old professors now...
I'm pretty sure people with PHDs are much more knowledgeable on other subjects as well than most other people. To make the graph more realistic the circle radius should be increased. Just because you have a PHD in physics means you know a lot of math, probably chemistry, and even biology. I'm sure u know a lot about bussiness, communication, politics, and so much more just because your staying at the university for so long and meeting many different people.
On September 14 2010 12:06 RosaParksStoleMySeat wrote: Anyway, in my experience in a Ph.D. program, it has to be pure intrinsic motivation. There is no way that you will survive a Ph.D. program without a simple desire to satisfy your hunger for more knowledge about the subject. Getting a Ph.D. for economic reasons, to command respect from others, or to prove a point to yourself is incredibly irresponsible. It's just terrible reasoning for going to graduate school, and leads nowhere.
Yeah, this sounds about right. As does the OP. As a PhD student in pure math, I couldn't be happier doing what I'm doing now. I don't really care about society; I really don't care about money. I do care about knowledge and ideas. Every day, I wake up and learn as much as I can, and somebody pays me (enough to pay bills and eat and stuff) to do so. That's gorram fantastic. I pretty much just want to be the academic equivalent of George Mallory, the British guy who died on top of Everest in 1924 and is (perhaps apocryphally) quoted as saying he wanted to climb Everest "because it's there".
In regards to the miniature war going on in this thread over the relative value of PhDs in different fields -- that's silly. I get the whole "my field is better than yours" thing, but really, who cares? Let's just all be glad we're academics. To the people working in a pure field, high five, we probably see the world through similar lenses. To the people working in an applied field, high five, I'm glad someone is doing the work you do. To the people working in the humanities... enjoy, I guess? To the people working in economics, I do not understand you, you soulless husks...
On September 14 2010 12:06 RosaParksStoleMySeat wrote: Anyway, in my experience in a Ph.D. program, it has to be pure intrinsic motivation. There is no way that you will survive a Ph.D. program without a simple desire to satisfy your hunger for more knowledge about the subject. Getting a Ph.D. for economic reasons, to command respect from others, or to prove a point to yourself is incredibly irresponsible. It's just terrible reasoning for going to graduate school, and leads nowhere.
Yeah, this sounds about right. As does the OP. As a PhD student in pure math, I couldn't be happier doing what I'm doing now. I don't really care about society; I really don't care about money. I do care about knowledge and ideas. Every day, I wake up and learn as much as I can, and somebody pays me (enough to pay bills and eat and stuff) to do so. That's gorram fantastic. I pretty much just want to be the academic equivalent of George Mallory, the British guy who died on top of Everest in 1924 and is (perhaps apocryphally) quoted as saying he wanted to climb Everest "because it's there".
In regards to the miniature war going on in this thread over the relative value of PhDs in different fields -- that's silly. I get the whole "my field is better than yours" thing, but really, who cares? Let's just all be glad we're academics. To the people working in a pure field, high five, we probably see the world through similar lenses. To the people working in an applied field, high five, I'm glad someone is doing the work you do. To the people working in the humanities... enjoy, I guess?
Yeah, pretty much this. Did my phd in applied math, am currently working as an assistant prof for operations research in a business school and enjoy it very much. High five!
On September 14 2010 22:35 Iranon wrote: To the people working in economics, I do not understand you, you soulless husks...
I was always more of an engineering type of person, and not someone who enjoys gaining knowledge for the sake of gaining knowledge. My motivation wasn't that pure either, for me this was pretty much the best chance to get out of my country. I am indeed from Kyrgyz Republic, and the best thing I could hope to do there with my set of skills is to be writing some super-boring accounting software or out-sourced dating sites. I thought that a PhD from a decent English university beats a masters from an obscure Kyrgyz university any day for any job application even if I decided not to stay in academia or in the UK.
My experience turned out to be much better than I could hope for. The area in which I ended up doing my work happened to be somewhere between electronic engineering and computing science, exactly what I enjoy. I could do a lot of practical stuff as opposed to the purely theoretical research that I expected. I don't consider myself to be particularly bright, which was one of the reasons that I had doubts applying for a PhD, but in the end I feel that my work was indeed a good contribution to my field, very much like the picture in the original post.
My supervisor and my colleagues all turned out to be wonderful and exceptionally smart people, so just being around them was a great experience in itself, as was the opportunity to meet intelligent/funny/weird people from all around the world.
Of course it was hard at times, with all the writing I was expected to do and me being naturally lazy. But in the end I don't regret my decision to do a PhD in the slightest
On September 14 2010 22:52 Tinsil wrote: I know a few who have phds that are dumb as hell.
Not like the whole "they're book smart but have no common sense".. no I mean just flat dumb. Like, I have no idea how anyone like them would get a PhD
Because effort means more than anything else. I've seen incredibly untalented drawers become great concept artists and painters, myself (from pure practice). I enjoy seeing that, unless the dumb person in question is holding a career that can threaten people's lives (i.e. emergency doctor).
On September 14 2010 22:52 Tinsil wrote: I know a few who have phds that are dumb as hell.
Not like the whole "they're book smart but have no common sense".. no I mean just flat dumb. Like, I have no idea how anyone like them would get a PhD
Because effort means more than anything else. I've seen incredibly untalented drawers become great concept artists and painters, myself (from pure practice). I enjoy seeing that, unless the dumb person in question is holding a career that can threaten people's lives (i.e. emergency doctor).
This is something I learned very early on in life, intelligence without effort is a waste while mediocre intellect with tremendous effort can often lead to great results. Oftentimes uncovering whats at the bleeding edge doesn't require too much intellect but rather a focused will on completing a relatively simple task. In that sense, you don't need to be super smart to get a PhD in biology/ochem if your PI gives you a well thought out experiment to do.
BTW, EMTs and ER docs don't need to be extra smart. Stabilizing a patient in critical condition requires skills/knowledge most people don't have but as far as critical thinking goes its not that bad.
On September 14 2010 22:52 Tinsil wrote: I know a few who have phds that are dumb as hell.
Not like the whole "they're book smart but have no common sense".. no I mean just flat dumb. Like, I have no idea how anyone like them would get a PhD
I can only speak for my particular field (chem eng), but getting a PhD and doing research has less to do with how brilliant you are and more to do with how well you research. For us, that means failing. A lot. Let's say you design an experiment that is supposed to tell you something meaningful. You do the experiment and the results are not what you expected. So you go back, check all your math models and experiment equipment. You spend a few more weeks looking into it, thinking maybe you accomplished something different, and finally conclude that the particular testing method was bad. Finally, a full month later, you design the correct test.
A lot of trial and error, and a lot of "proving one more way not to do something".In hindsight, you could recreate a couple years of results in a few weeks, but that's just the nature of research.
"Dumb people", I'm guessing, are more fit to accept the constant failures that come with research.
On September 14 2010 22:35 Iranon wrote: I really don't care about money.
To the people working in economics, I do not understand you, you soulless husks...
Then who's money are you leeching off right now?
A large university's money. I realize economists and accountants and such people are necessary for society to function. That does not mean I respect what they do and think of them as anything more than mindless drones in fancy suits who decided that a few decades of 80 hour weeks of drudgery followed by a comfortably early retirement is the best they can do with their lives. They are a necessary evil.
I have considered the PhD, but here is the conclusion I came to and I why I will most likely never pursue it.
1. I don't want to be a professor. I'm cool with teaching and all, but being a professor means dealing with government (unless you are fortunate and work at a private school), dealing with administration, and dealing with students. Now talking with students is pretty cool, but from what my professors tell me is that they rarely have free time at night since they are grading homework a lot of the time.
2. I don't want to do research. I think research is great, but again, I don't want to deal with government. Also I feel like research at universities are wasted to a great extent and that those people could provide a lot more benefit if the government didn't sponser any research and instead the private industry and non-profit groups researched instead. Insurance companies, hospitals, corporations have everything to gain and nothing to lose by supporting research, but it's being paid for by tax dollars instead of corporate profits. Also, in my field (math and economics) research is very slow and the likelihood that I could provide some huge insight is low
3. Low opportunity for great wages. Most professors start off with really low wages and it doesn't increase. Also young professors have a huge chance of losing their position in public universities due to budgeting.
4. Not how I want to spend 6-8 years of my life. I already did school for 16 years, if I want to learn something I can read a book or read about it online.
I think those 4 were good enough for me to stick with my BS in computer science and math. Ironically, the smartest people in my classes are not the ones getting a PhD, mostly it's the ones who don't think they would get a job otherwise.
ppl who say they don't care about money fall into three categories. 1) they are already rich 2) they have no money and don't see themselves in a position to get any in the near future. 3) you are too young to even know what money/responsibility is.
I see people getting masters/phD degrees all the time for the wrong reasons. Mostly because they never really had a real job so they don't want to go into the workforce and they had nothing else lined up. Unless you have an urge to do research for the rest of your life, in most cases, a phD becomes irrelevant in industry. Some companies like them, most don't. So make sure you know what you want to do before you commit yourself to a 2/4 year program.
On September 14 2010 22:35 Iranon wrote: I really don't care about money.
To the people working in economics, I do not understand you, you soulless husks...
Then who's money are you leeching off right now?
A large university's money. I realize economists and accountants and such people are necessary for society to function. That does not mean I respect what they do and think of them as anything more than mindless drones in fancy suits who decided that a few decades of 80 hour weeks of drudgery followed by a comfortably early retirement is the best they can do with their lives. They are a necessary evil.
Focus doesn't require close-mindedness and being happy with your work doesn't require despising the work of others. A scholar who is satisfied with and respectful of society as a whole is definitely a better thing than a scholar lacking such sentiments. In this area you are inferior to businessmen, who generally respect academia and its place in society.
Honestly, i came into this thread thinking this was another newbie asking a yahoo-answers-ish question. But when i saw a red name on the OP, i knew it would be serious.
This is an interesting point of view on the PhD, one that i hope to experience myself one day.
On September 14 2010 22:35 Iranon wrote: I really don't care about money.
To the people working in economics, I do not understand you, you soulless husks...
Then who's money are you leeching off right now?
A large university's money. I realize economists and accountants and such people are necessary for society to function. That does not mean I respect what they do and think of them as anything more than mindless drones in fancy suits who decided that a few decades of 80 hour weeks of drudgery followed by a comfortably early retirement is the best they can do with their lives. They are a necessary evil.
What is it that you think economists do exactly?
If 'a necessary evil' includes setting monetary policy to maintain low inflation and growth wherever you live or trying to lift millions of people out of poverty then you're right.
On September 15 2010 02:16 exeexe wrote: PhD = Slavery - forced labour
So much work, so little spare time, so little gain on the personal economical level
edit: But i agree to OP, i just thought more needed to be added.
People work for free all the time, not everything is about money. Ultimately what matters is if you are happy, of course it is a lot easier to be happy if you are living a financial secure life but above that it doesn't really matter.
Doing my master right now but I'm really hesitant for the PhD after. I guess it mostly depends on how well my master ends with the memoir and such and if job options are easy to find or not (might be in my sector though).
I'm also strongly considering PhD for teaching which I do as an auxialiary right now and enjoy for undergrade students.
The best thing for me would be a bit of both, teaching and part time job in the same domain. I'm not very interested by research which is a part of a full time university teacher...
On September 15 2010 01:47 TunaFishyMe wrote: ppl who say they don't care about money fall into three categories. 1) they are already rich 2) they have no money and don't see themselves in a position to get any in the near future. 3) you are too young to even know what money/responsibility is.
I see people getting masters/phD degrees all the time for the wrong reasons. Mostly because they never really had a real job so they don't want to go into the workforce and they had nothing else lined up. Unless you have an urge to do research for the rest of your life, in most cases, a phD becomes irrelevant in industry. Some companies like them, most don't. So make sure you know what you want to do before you commit yourself to a 2/4 year program.
If you are in a position to even consider getting PHD, you are already probably fairly intelligent and have a college degree of some sort. Even the lowest paying jobs you could strive for at this point would pay you ~$40,000 a year which is more than enough to live comfortably. When people say they don't care about money, I think that they usually mean they have enough to live the life that they want and thus don't need to worry about making any more. It doesn't mean that they don't want any money at all and want to mooch off parents/government, they just don't need a 6 figure income to be happy.
I've been thinking about this post and a phd in general recently, but I am not sure I am doing it for the right reasons. I got my masters so that I could apply for some higher end teaching jobs in Japan. However I work in a market with a shrinking population of students and a saturation of teachers. I found that even with the masters I was being out-gunned in a lot of my applications.
There are basically four ways to better my CV at this point. The first would be to improve my Japanese, the second would be to publish more, the third is to be more professionally active in organizations, and the fourth would be a doctorate.
I could do the first three things without going back to school, but I find it hard to engage academically without being in an academic setting. Right now I am focused so much on my job and family life. Going back to school would really put me in the right mindset of publishing and presenting. However, it would crush my Japanese study time, which is already not doing well.
At the end of the day I don't see myself getting a doctorate in order to advance my field or anything noble like that. I just want higher paying and more secure employment. There are a couple paths to that goal so I have to choose the best one.
Thanks for replying to the thread though, there are some good thoughts in here.
On September 14 2010 22:25 Amber[LighT] wrote: Yah that's why it's a long-term thing. I always wanted to be a teacher (ex-Math Teaching major turned Poli Sci... wtf? lol)
I don't know what the process is with regards to becoming a teacher. I always assumed you needed a certain level of education before you could become a professor or an adjunct at least. It's actually pretty funny I thought I wasn't going to have my job until the end of the year so I started applying for substitute positions at the local school districts so I could at least do something with my time
Generally you need at least a Masters in the field which you which to teach. With a Masters, you will normally only teach Associate programs though some schools may allow you to teach Bachelor programs as well. Look up job openings at some of the larger online Universities, or even local ones with an online program, and apply. It pays better than substituting at a High School and you can do it from home. If you ever decide to get your PhD and move into Academia, you will at least have those years of experience to include in your CV.
On September 14 2010 22:35 Iranon wrote: I really don't care about money.
To the people working in economics, I do not understand you, you soulless husks...
Then who's money are you leeching off right now?
A large university's money. I realize economists and accountants and such people are necessary for society to function. That does not mean I respect what they do and think of them as anything more than mindless drones in fancy suits who decided that a few decades of 80 hour weeks of drudgery followed by a comfortably early retirement is the best they can do with their lives. They are a necessary evil.
Focus doesn't require close-mindedness and being happy with your work doesn't require despising the work of others. A scholar who is satisfied with and respectful of society as a whole is definitely a better thing than a scholar lacking such sentiments. In this area you are inferior to businessmen, who generally respect academia and its place in society.
Fair enough. In hindsight that came out as needlessly harsh -- I don't really have this irrational hatred towards all things financial, I just tend towards hyperbole when writing. What I really meant is that I don't think anyone should make something they don't genuinely enjoy their career, and I find it hard to believe that any human being legitimately enjoys say, being a stock broker or an actuary. That, coupled with a small amount of having recently done my undergrad at an Ivy League college where the view "I now have enough connections to pretty easily walk out of here straight into a high-power corporate job that I really don't care about but will make me obscene amounts of money within a decade, and really what else is there to life than making more money faster" was extremely common, and I just find that repulsive. In all likelihood, the sour taste the financial industry has left in my mouth will fade away before too much later in my life, but hey, I'm still present-day me.
For those of you interested in becoming professors, please be aware that it an extremely difficult role. Tenure track positions are limited and are based on your productivity/publication record after you complete a post-doc. A PhD != tenure track.
On September 15 2010 10:23 SoySauce wrote: For those of you interested in becoming professors, please be aware that it an extremely difficult role. Tenure track positions are limited and are based on your productivity/publication record after you complete a post-doc. A PhD != tenure track.
That may be true, but you don't get started on the track without the phd.
On September 15 2010 01:47 TunaFishyMe wrote: ppl who say they don't care about money fall into three categories. 1) they are already rich 2) they have no money and don't see themselves in a position to get any in the near future. 3) you are too young to even know what money/responsibility is.
That's pretty arrogant. Either you are too unwise to want money or you know u can't get money is why you would never want it? You sir are the product of a capitalistic society, and it really does make me sad. Like a rat trying to get cheese in a maze, of course the rat is more fortunate than us considering it actually gets the cheese.
On September 15 2010 07:10 Manifesto7 wrote: I've been thinking about this post and a phd in general recently, but I am not sure I am doing it for the right reasons. I got my masters so that I could apply for some higher end teaching jobs in Japan. However I work in a market with a shrinking population of students and a saturation of teachers. I found that even with the masters I was being out-gunned in a lot of my applications.
There are basically four ways to better my CV at this point. The first would be to improve my Japanese, the second would be to publish more, the third is to be more professionally active in organizations, and the fourth would be a doctorate.
I could do the first three things without going back to school, but I find it hard to engage academically without being in an academic setting. Right now I am focused so much on my job and family life. Going back to school would really put me in the right mindset of publishing and presenting. However, it would crush my Japanese study time, which is already not doing well.
At the end of the day I don't see myself getting a doctorate in order to advance my field or anything noble like that. I just want higher paying and more secure employment. There are a couple paths to that goal so I have to choose the best one.
Thanks for replying to the thread though, there are some good thoughts in here.
If it were me, I probably work on my Japanese to improve my CV; I like the idea of assimilating to the Japanese collective culture to it's fullest extent. I think it would benefit you and the students you work with a lot more.
On September 15 2010 01:47 TunaFishyMe wrote: ppl who say they don't care about money fall into three categories. 1) they are already rich 2) they have no money and don't see themselves in a position to get any in the near future. 3) you are too young to even know what money/responsibility is.
That's pretty arrogant. Either you are too unwise to want money or you know u can't get money is why you would never want it? You sir are the product of a capitalistic society, and it really does make me sad. Like a rat trying to get cheese in a maze, of course the rat is more fortunate than us considering it actually gets the cheese.
Lol?
This entire 1st world society is the product of capitalism.
How much did you pay for your computer to play sc2? Do you think such a device would ever be invented in a non capitalistic society at a reasonable price? Heck, do you think Blizzard would ever create sc2 if it could not profit from the sales?
How about your car? Or parent's car? Do you think cars came from a non capitalistic enterprise?
And which kind of society produces the massive amounts of GDP possible to pay (in taxes) for all the free services you take for granted?
Capitalism feeds, clothes, and puts a roof over your head. Bring a productive capitalist that enjoys accumulating money is beneficial for the normal function of society.
There are hundreds of non-capitalistic societies out there. Name me which ones you would love to live in.
On September 14 2010 22:35 Iranon wrote: I really don't care about money.
To the people working in economics, I do not understand you, you soulless husks...
Then who's money are you leeching off right now?
A large university's money. I realize economists and accountants and such people are necessary for society to function. That does not mean I respect what they do and think of them as anything more than mindless drones in fancy suits who decided that a few decades of 80 hour weeks of drudgery followed by a comfortably early retirement is the best they can do with their lives. They are a necessary evil.
But you love the money the university gives you right?
You love what you do, and money allows you to fulfill that function.
Money buys you a way / standard of life that you want.
Money is merely an exchange. It has no value itself if the society it exists in does not value its exchange. Money is not even an evil.
A capitalist that has an ambition to accumulate large amounts of money so that he can enjoy a certain standard of life satisfying to himself, is not evil. He just values different things more than you do. And who is to say one is more good, or less bad?
It is extremely easy to sit on one side of the fence, collect free grants from universities, and tell everyone they need to pursue what they love in life. Most of the time, doing what you love doesn't pay.
Just finished my MS in Electrical Engineering. The thought of getting a PhD never even crossed my mind because frankly, I don't have the discipline nor the thirst for knowledge to do it. The mere thought of 4 more years of staying up cramming for exams and near-sleepless WEEKS living in a computer lab running Cadence simulations just disgusts me. I've definitely had enough of school. Expecting to learn as I go in more practical ways in the industry.
Now only if the economy can pick up again so I can land a freakin' JOB.......
But you love the money the university gives you right?
You love what you do, and money allows you to fulfill that function.
Money buys you a way / standard of life that you want.
Money is merely an exchange. It has no value itself if the society it exists in does not value its exchange. Money is not even an evil.
A capitalist that has an ambition to accumulate large amounts of money so that he can enjoy a certain standard of life satisfying to himself, is not evil. He just values different things more than you do. And who is to say one is more good, or less bad?
It is extremely easy to sit on one side of the fence, collect free grants from universities, and tell everyone they need to pursue what they love in life. Most of the time, doing what you love doesn't pay.
Ehm, I don't agree with him really, but he isn't saying wanting money is evil. He never described businessmen as "evil". He described them as "soulless", probably because he can't respect people who value material wealth above intellectual and personal fulfillment, and money is a "necessary evil", because while it is responsible for our very high class 1st world lifestyle, it also tends towards producing an overtly material set of social values.
Also, I'd like to note that this:
Bring a productive capitalist that enjoys accumulating money is beneficial for the normal function of society.
Is completely wrong. Capitalism is a market driven economy, and the only thing a capitalistic person should do is have values, and gravitate towards them, generating demand. literally anyone who isn't a vegetable. Saying "you should want money" (as opposed to say, "intellectual fulfillment"), isn't a capitalistic ideology at all (because "intellectual fulfillment" is just another form of demand). In fact, that kind of ideology is actually more associated with communism, despotism, and other command economies. Of course, people who don't want money generally don't become successful capitalists, but the success of an individual is irrelevant to how much they contribute to capitalism, and good capitalism requires as many unsuccessful people as successful people.
I'll kind of agree with you tho in the sense that Capitalism is easily the best Economic model developed by us at the moment though. But remember, he didn't argue anything contrary to that point either. All he pointed out was that he couldn't respect people who were highly motivated by material wealth, and that statement has actually nothing to do with how good of a "capitalist" he is, only perhaps, how wealthy.
It is extremely easy to sit on one side of the fence, collect free grants from universities, and tell everyone they need to pursue what they love in life. Most of the time, doing what you love doesn't pay.
Actually, by receiving money for what he is doing, he is by definition, being payed, at an exchange rate relatively equal to what his service is perceived to be worth to society. And assuming hes going for a PHD in a hard/applied science field, probably working harder then most businessmen.
Adding my little bit here. I just finished my PhD in May in Chemistry. I love that I did it, but I love that I'm still an incredibly large jackass. Letters don't change you; some of my jokes still suck, and my friends, even ones who didn't go to college, know more than me about a great many things.
The biggest change I've noticed, though, is that I feel like I can see the logic and controls behind how other people, regardless of their field, conduct their experiments and reach their conclusions.
I started off by performing experiments that my PhD adviser came up with (I was his first student, otherwise I might have worked with a post-doc). Once I knew how to use the equipment (in this case lasers and microscopes) and knew a lot of the pitfalls that come with the experiments in general, I started having some of my own ideas and wanting to test them. One of the days I will never forget is when I asked my adviser about a project idea I had which had never been tried before. I remember sitting, watching him think through what I had said, slowly start to nod his head, and say "That's actually a really good idea." It felt great. That's when I started feeling ready to move on, when I could independently conceive and test my thoughts in a highly-specified field. I saw a post saying that grad school is the best time, but from professors all I've heard is that your post-doc (if you do one) is the best time. You've finally learned the rules of the game, and you can finally start playing it for real.
As an easy analogy, think about starcraft2. People here are currently discovering and discussing the different build orders, timing attacks, strategies and whatnot that work, as well as why they work, and what they want to try. It's exciting, especially because you can see these changes in real time with different forums, day[9]s casts, etc. Now, think about starcraft. The strategies are more well-developed and you yourself are probably not going to add to the overall knowledge that the pros can add, because you're not as invested as they are. Just imagine how much we could understand SC in 100 or more years! So basically what I'm saying is that having a PhD is like sitting at the forefront of a lot of knowledge AND being able to do something interesting with it, either to gain more knowledge or to create something useful to people.
On September 15 2010 01:47 TunaFishyMe wrote: ppl who say they don't care about money fall into three categories. 1) they are already rich 2) they have no money and don't see themselves in a position to get any in the near future. 3) you are too young to even know what money/responsibility is.
I see people getting masters/phD degrees all the time for the wrong reasons. Mostly because they never really had a real job so they don't want to go into the workforce and they had nothing else lined up. Unless you have an urge to do research for the rest of your life, in most cases, a phD becomes irrelevant in industry. Some companies like them, most don't. So make sure you know what you want to do before you commit yourself to a 2/4 year program.
Yay, I don't fit any of those categories! I've been supporting myself financially the last 5 years (paying my way through college and all), come from a family below poverty lines, and my financial responsibility the last 5 years negated number 3 entirely.
The average starting salary for bachelor chem eng's from my graduating class is over 60k a year. Most will become plant managers within the next 5-10 years, so the salary will go up to at least 120k. I interned this summer and made $2500/month. As a PhD student I get a stipend of $2000/month. I don't care about money, I care about accomplishing my academic goals and landing my dream career (which will probably never pay as much as I could make as a plant manager).
I do agree with the advice, though. Don't go to graduate school because you have no clue what you want to do. You'll wind up on a research team and hate every minute you're in grad school. Even if you endure that you'll just know that you don't want to do the work PhDs get. You could try for a job you can get with a bachelor degree, but employers will see you as overqualified and some won't hire you on the assumption you want better pay. Your best bet is to plan ahead. It takes more than a few hours of internet research to find something you want to do, so my best advice is to get involved with the professional organization in your field (virtually every field has one) and start making contacts.
He described them as "soulless", probably because he can't respect people who value material wealth above intellectual and personal fulfillment, and money is a "necessary evil", because while it is responsible for our very high class 1st world lifestyle, it also tends towards producing an overtly material set of social values.
I think you are putting words in his mouth. Define "soulless".
Define "personal fulfillment" because everybody has a different idea of what personal fulfillment is to them.
Money doesn't produce an overtly material set of social values, humans produce social values that make no sense. Money only magnifies what is already there. Doesn't actually make money the root of the evil. Or an evil at all. It is the human.
Bring a productive capitalist that enjoys accumulating money is beneficial for the normal function of society.
I'm painting broad strokes with this. The point I want to make here is that society is incapable of functioning without capitalists as its main driving force.
He described them as "soulless", probably because he can't respect people who value material wealth above intellectual and personal fulfillment, and money is a "necessary evil", because while it is responsible for our very high class 1st world lifestyle, it also tends towards producing an overtly material set of social values.
I think you are putting words in his mouth. Define "soulless".
Define "personal fulfillment" because everybody has a different idea of what personal fulfillment is to them.
Nope, he's pretty spot-on. That's exactly what I meant. Obviously money isn't intrinsically bad -- that's just naive. Money is only means to an end, and too many people in industrialized countries treat it as the ultimate end. Moreover, this kind of materialism is especially pronounced in the kinds of people who decide to go into the financial industry for their career. Hence my blanket disdain for them.
You actually know jack shit after a bachelors / masters degree.
Coursework masters are a joke, as well. There is a huge difference between academic knowledge and applied scientific knowledge. You don't get this type of experience doing a bachelors or masters. Basically a PhD is a 5 year program that lets you get your hands on any type of research that you think is interesting with little to no restriction on what you're allowed to do or touch.
I started a PhD in physical chemistry about 4 years ago (starting 4th right now), after doing a B.S. in biology and chemistry in a 4 year university. What I knew when I just graduated from a bachelors is pretty laughable compared to what I've learned in the last 3 years.
As for time spent? It's your profession, so putting in 60 hours a week isn't unreasonable. I honestly don't see how you can complete a PhD doing it once a week (or any professor that'll keep you around more than a semester if that is all you do). I started off doing around 60 hour weeks but I've gotten lazy since SC2 came out.
On September 15 2010 13:43 TallMax wrote: Adding my little bit here. I just finished my PhD in May in Chemistry. I love that I did it, but I love that I'm still an incredibly large jackass. Letters don't change you; some of my jokes still suck, and my friends, even ones who didn't go to college, know more than me about a great many things.
The biggest change I've noticed, though, is that I feel like I can see the logic and controls behind how other people, regardless of their field, conduct their experiments and reach their conclusions.
I started off by performing experiments that my PhD adviser came up with (I was his first student, otherwise I might have worked with a post-doc). Once I knew how to use the equipment (in this case lasers and microscopes) and knew a lot of the pitfalls that come with the experiments in general, I started having some of my own ideas and wanting to test them. One of the days I will never forget is when I asked my adviser about a project idea I had which had never been tried before. I remember sitting, watching him think through what I had said, slowly start to nod his head, and say "That's actually a really good idea." It felt great. That's when I started feeling ready to move on, when I could independently conceive and test my thoughts in a highly-specified field. I saw a post saying that grad school is the best time, but from professors all I've heard is that your post-doc (if you do one) is the best time. You've finally learned the rules of the game, and you can finally start playing it for real.
As an easy analogy, think about starcraft2. People here are currently discovering and discussing the different build orders, timing attacks, strategies and whatnot that work, as well as why they work, and what they want to try. It's exciting, especially because you can see these changes in real time with different forums, day[9]s casts, etc. Now, think about starcraft. The strategies are more well-developed and you yourself are probably not going to add to the overall knowledge that the pros can add, because you're not as invested as they are. Just imagine how much we could understand SC in 100 or more years! So basically what I'm saying is that having a PhD is like sitting at the forefront of a lot of knowledge AND being able to do something interesting with it, either to gain more knowledge or to create something useful to people.
I love that feeling as well. My professor has pretty much left me alone the entire time I have been here. I was his first student and he spent about a week with me so that I didn't blow up the lab. After that, I give him maybe monthly / bi-monthly updates on what I've done. I've conceived all my projects thus far. Out of the five or so projects, one utterly failed. Tragically, I spent about 5 months trying to do a synthesis and ultimately said fuck it since it was wasting my time. I hope I get an undergraduate student this year so I can send him back to that project.
As for time spent? It's your profession, so putting in 60 hours a week isn't unreasonable. I honestly don't see how you can complete a PhD doing it once a week (or any professor that'll keep you around more than a semester if that is all you do). I started off doing around 60 hour weeks but I've gotten lazy since SC2 came out.
I should clarify that I was not referring to coursework with the once a week comment. In the program I am looking at the coursework runs for three years and the dissertation process runs for another two. It is designed for people who are working full time and is not a full time university. The professor was simply making the point that once people finish the coursework many students just stop progressing on their dissertation and the successful people are the ones that find a regular time, even once a week, to keep going on it.
I think you are putting words in his mouth. Define "soulless".
Look your going to have to ask him. But its clear this opinion's core idea isn't "OMG CAPITALISTS R EVUL AND DO ALL DIS EVUL THINGS". Its clearly expressing one that is making a dig at the character traits of businessmen, and his lack of respect for their values.
A large university's money. I realize economists and accountants and such people are necessary for society to function. That does not mean I respect what they do and think of them as anything more than mindless drones in fancy suits who decided that a few decades of 80 hour weeks of drudgery followed by a comfortably early retirement is the best they can do with their lives. They are a necessary evil.
Really, you'd be making quite the case that he was arguing that they are intrinsically morally unethical. I doubt he was.
Define "personal fulfillment" because everybody has a different idea of what personal fulfillment is to them.
By personal fulfillment I meant fulfillment achieved through other persons. Yeah, that makes no sense really semantically for someone else, sorry. "Interpersonal fulfillment"? idk sounds pretentious xD
Money doesn't produce an overtly material set of social values, humans produce social values that make no sense. Money only magnifies what is already there. Doesn't actually make money the root of the evil. Or an evil at all. It is the human.
This is kind of a silly answer. I mean, its logically sound, one I was actually going to add at the end of my post as a disclaimer, but it means absolutely nothing.
Yes, we created money. Money is not some evil demon from a shadowy underworld. It simply is a more efficient evolution of a barter system. Money is simply a manifestation of Scarcity and Trade. Duh.
I don't think he was, and I know I am certainly not, saying that money is redundant, or that we don't need money. We're not making objective criticisms that "money is responsible for all evul in dis world". That doesn't even make sense as a statement, let alone could you compile enough evidence for a case.
Its just a simple matter of "I can't really respect people who are driven solely by material wealth". Not "These people shouldn't exist", or "these people are all evul"
I'm painting broad strokes with this. The point I want to make here is that society is incapable of functioning without capitalists as its main driving force.
And neither of us were making the case that capitalists were unnecessary...and nowhere did either of us say we hated capitalists, because all be are kind of capitalistic to some degree, we all pursue material goods to some extent, whether for sustenance, luxury, or power.
Eh, personally, I don't really have any issue with "business drones", but I can see where hes coming from.
Disregarding the nonsense about capitalism, I think a problem with this graph (in the OP) is that it portrays "knowledge" as something that is purely incremental, monolithic and always constructive. It might be besides the point but I'm doing philosophy work and my sense of knowledge is nothing like that. In my experience of knowledge, I found that it is chaotic. Some of it is revolutionary, some of it is misleading, some of it is plain false, some of it is a waste of time, some of it is just fun to know but useless. Science work is not immune to that either.
When someone asks me what I know I get very perplexed. I hate to think that I merely study in order to retain information. That's awfully boring. When I try to think about what knowledge is important to me I think about my current world-view or Weltanschauung. But then I think about how fragile it is when I challenge myself with the world's greatest thinkers.
Then there is the science work I'm getting into. It doesn't make me wiser. It doesn't make me smarter. It just makes me utilitarian (hopefully). When I'm at ease with myself is when I think about what I'll be able to create. (Ruminating philosophical ideas endlessly is not my ideal of creativity.) Making a game that people will compete in, making an interactive world that people will get immersed in, that's something that can make me get out of bed in the morning. That's an artful way to live.
I just came at you all with a lot to think about. I hope you think about those things instead of the strange conceptions of knowledge you offered me on the first page. (in high-school you know X, in college you know Y, etc. You know what I'm talking about. Like knowledge fits neatly into our little socio-cultural forms.)
One more thing, if you are doing a PhD as a noble enterprise to widen our collective knowledge, please choke on a fat one you self-important, fame-hungry p***k. It's as noble to me as gangsta rap.
On September 16 2010 16:11 jp_zer0 wrote: One more thing, if you are doing a PhD as a noble enterprise to widen our collective knowledge, please choke on a fat one you self-important, fame-hungry p***k. It's as noble to me as gangsta rap.
User was banned for this post.
loooool I found the rest of the post insightful though.
Disregarding the nonsense about capitalism, I think a problem with this graph (in the OP) is that it portrays "knowledge" as something that is purely incremental, monolithic and always constructive. It might be besides the point but I'm doing philosophy work and my sense of knowledge is nothing like that. In my experience of knowledge, I found that it is chaotic. Some of it is revolutionary, some of it is misleading, some of it is plain false, some of it is a waste of time, some of it is just fun to know but useless. Science work is not immune to that either.
When someone asks me what I know I get very perplexed. I hate to think that I merely study in order to retain information. That's awfully boring. When I try to think about what knowledge is important to me I think about my current world-view or Weltanschauung. But then I think about how fragile it is when I challenge myself with the world's greatest thinkers.
Then there is the science work I'm getting into. It doesn't make me wiser. It doesn't make me smarter. It just makes me utilitarian (hopefully). When I'm at ease with myself is when I think about what I'll be able to create. (Ruminating philosophical ideas endlessly is not my ideal of creativity.) Making a game that people will compete in, making an interactive world that people will get immersed in, that's something that can make me get out of bed in the morning. That's an artful way to live.
I just came at you all with a lot to think about. I hope you think about those things instead of the strange conceptions of knowledge you offered me on the first page. (in high-school you know X, in college you know Y, etc. You know what I'm talking about. Like knowledge fits neatly into our little socio-cultural forms.)
One more thing, if you are doing a PhD as a noble enterprise to widen our collective knowledge, please choke on a fat one you self-important, fame-hungry p***k. It's as noble to me as gangsta rap.
User was banned for this post.
You could have gotten all of those points across without at the same time declaring everyone else in this thread as stupid morons.
Also you are completely wrong on this point, and I think that you did it intentionally just so you could flame people:
On September 16 2010 16:11 jp_zer0 wrote: Disregarding the nonsense about capitalism, I think a problem with this graph (in the OP) is that it portrays "knowledge" as something that is purely incremental, monolithic and always constructive.
Since, in an academic setting the knowledge is constructive in most subjects due to it being exactly mapped out for you until at the later stages of your phd, there are a few anomalies in history when this wasn't the case but those are so rare that they are not worth being brought up. You learn arithmetics to learn algebra to learn about equations to learn about calculus etc, nothing of that is even close to chaotic. Academia is not about altering your world view or anything like that, it is about teaching useful structures, you even said so yourself!
On September 16 2010 16:11 jp_zer0 wrote:Then there is the science work I'm getting into. It doesn't make me wiser. It doesn't make me smarter. It just makes me utilitarian (hopefully).
So basically you just went into this topic so that you could drop some philosophy crap on everyone, not to make any valid points.
I havent really considered continuing my degree after working for a while now, this is quite an interesting perspective on things though, to say the least if for nothing else but for the sake of continuously learning & pursuing that one calling beats grinding 9 to 5 with only weekends to look forward to, thats for sure
On September 15 2010 13:01 Otakusan wrote: Sharing my story too...
Just finished my MS in Electrical Engineering. The thought of getting a PhD never even crossed my mind because frankly, I don't have the discipline nor the thirst for knowledge to do it. The mere thought of 4 more years of staying up cramming for exams and near-sleepless WEEKS living in a computer lab running Cadence simulations just disgusts me. I've definitely had enough of school. Expecting to learn as I go in more practical ways in the industry.
Now only if the economy can pick up again so I can land a freakin' JOB.......
Seriously... I'm still in my 3rd year of undergrad and I'm already mortal enemies with Cadence -_-
I don't think engineers really need PhD's in the same way that other professions do. There doesn't seem to be a big industry push for them, though they certainly don't hurt. I've definitely thought about getting one but I think I'll feel just like you. With a master's in EE you can make easy 6 figures and do just about anything you want. I just don't think it'd be worth the suffering.
Also, where did you goto school that a master's in EE isn't landing you a job? I can't imagine there isn't a place who'd hire you. It's a pretty great degree to have right now.
Not sure whether it's worth bumping, but a friend of mine actually sent me the article (he was given this by his postdoc academic program mentor this summer) upon which Mani's post is based, and I actually remembered this thread from a long time ago...small world, huh?
On September 16 2010 16:11 jp_zer0 wrote: Disregarding the nonsense about capitalism, I think a problem with this graph (in the OP) is that it portrays "knowledge" as something that is purely incremental, monolithic and always constructive. It might be besides the point but I'm doing philosophy work and my sense of knowledge is nothing like that. In my experience of knowledge, I found that it is chaotic. Some of it is revolutionary, some of it is misleading, some of it is plain false, some of it is a waste of time, some of it is just fun to know but useless. Science work is not immune to that either.
When someone asks me what I know I get very perplexed. I hate to think that I merely study in order to retain information. That's awfully boring. When I try to think about what knowledge is important to me I think about my current world-view or Weltanschauung. But then I think about how fragile it is when I challenge myself with the world's greatest thinkers.
Then there is the science work I'm getting into. It doesn't make me wiser. It doesn't make me smarter. It just makes me utilitarian (hopefully). When I'm at ease with myself is when I think about what I'll be able to create. (Ruminating philosophical ideas endlessly is not my ideal of creativity.) Making a game that people will compete in, making an interactive world that people will get immersed in, that's something that can make me get out of bed in the morning. That's an artful way to live.
I just came at you all with a lot to think about. I hope you think about those things instead of the strange conceptions of knowledge you offered me on the first page. (in high-school you know X, in college you know Y, etc. You know what I'm talking about. Like knowledge fits neatly into our little socio-cultural forms.) P One more thing, if you are doing a PhD as a noble enterprise to widen our collective knowledge, please choke on a fat one you self-important, fame-hungry p***k. It's as noble to me as gangsta rap.
User was banned for this post.
When I began to read this post I was like 'This was pretty insightful'
I know this girl who has a PhD from Harvard after 7 years, now she's hopelessly overqualified for any job and she realised she isn't that into academia, the job she'll most likely be doing.
That picture is highly inaccurate. The "specialization spear" needs to be way narrower
At least it's that way in physics. We have guys here where not even their professor gets what exactly they are doing, they're that specialized. Some of them do stuff that only 3 other people on the whole planet understand, sometimes they're the only one doing research in that field.
On the other hand, it's nice to be able to call yourself the 3rd best *insert ridiculously narrow field of research here* researcher if the competition is that fierce.
On August 04 2011 15:44 taldarimAltar wrote: I know this girl who has a PhD from Harvard after 7 years, now she's hopelessly overqualified for any job and she realised she isn't that into academia, the job she'll most likely be doing.
depending on her specialty, she can do A TON of things with a phd from harvard that isn't related to her field.
I started my PhD about 8 months ago and recently made my first dent (paper) and am proud of it. :D
Personally I find the idea that you can add to the knowledge of all of mankind pretty awesome. No matter how little or insignificant it is / or might seem at the time.
As far as this goes,
On August 04 2011 15:44 taldarimAltar wrote: I know this girl who has a PhD from Harvard after 7 years, now she's hopelessly overqualified for any job and she realised she isn't that into academia, the job she'll most likely be doing.
It all depends on what kind of PhD you are doing as well as how much time you spend on your PhD. I myself am doing a PhD in mathematics and finding a job after I complete it isn't all to hard. Especially not if you only take 3 to 4 years to get your PhD, rather than 7.
I enjoy the research part of school, I plan on taking a laid back journey towards my PhD whilst I support myself with a part time job, and have as much fun as I can researching and developing in the growing field of parallel processing. I enjoying playing with the fancy new chips Nvidia and Intel have been releasing almost as much as I enjoy cookies and milk, and I like cookies more than cookie monster himself
On August 04 2011 15:44 taldarimAltar wrote: I know this girl who has a PhD from Harvard after 7 years, now she's hopelessly overqualified for any job and she realised she isn't that into academia, the job she'll most likely be doing.
I always wonder how often that happens. In some fields you can just go into industry and make good money but there are others where your experience is useless outside academia. Shitty scenario to be in.
On August 04 2011 18:17 anycolourfloyd wrote: i've gotta apply for phd scholarships for next year now, contemplating doing one in the biomechanics field (from a mech eng background)
it really appeals to me that i could do research that improves quality of life of the human race..
DO IT
i'm doing biomechanics research right now with a grad student who is a mech eng phd student.
i have finished my phd math / climate modelling in february and the pictures fit it perfectly, especially the one about "remember the bigger picture", it is so easy to forget that people do not really care about " predicting goal error evolution from initial information"
but I still think it was a good time, you just do not know how science works until you experience it the hard way.
On August 04 2011 18:17 anycolourfloyd wrote: i've gotta apply for phd scholarships for next year now, contemplating doing one in the biomechanics field (from a mech eng background)
it really appeals to me that i could do research that improves quality of life of the human race..
Where in aus? I started off doing mech engineering too, but switched over to exercise science and now doing postgrad physiotherapy. Dabbled in a bit of biomechanics research at the end of my undergrad degree using a program called OpenSim
On August 04 2011 15:44 taldarimAltar wrote: I know this girl who has a PhD from Harvard after 7 years, now she's hopelessly overqualified for any job and she realised she isn't that into academia, the job she'll most likely be doing.
When I did staffing for high end positions for Fortune 500 companies a few years back, I ran into people with Ivy League Masters and Doctorates. The issue was usually not them being overqualified (very rare in fact, especially if they are fresh out of school with little experience) but rather the expectations that they had. They believed their degree made them far more valuable than the market was willing to pay for them.
While there are some companies out there willing to pay top dollar for them, unless you had that connection while you were attending the school, it will be more challenging to find the position after graduation. Some of them accepted that an MBA or PHD did not mean an instant high paying JOB and finally got hired but I was never able to place someone right out of Ivy League into a job over someone with far more experience.
YMMV, but that has been my experience. Tell them to swallow their pride, prepare for the loan repayment, and be realistic. It is a similar situation where home sellers believe their home to be worth the same as when they got it years ago at triple the current prices. You are only as valuable as the market allows, no matter what the qualifications. Also, academia is not too bad; tell her to try online schools. You can take 2-4 courses per school, across several schools, and make 6 figures working from home in your PJs most of the time.
this might not be related to the topic, but i thought of a growing penis when you drew the diagrams. i guess most PhDs have huge "epeens" which would make sense with the diagram.
Wierd how everybody is talking about a PhD as if you learn it for personal worth, as if the extra knowledge will improve their quality of life. My dad came to england as a student and he got a PhD in statistics so he could get a british passport. Funny really.
I like the distribution. Haven't thought about it to much myself but i feel that a PhD on top of a medicine degree is beneficial to me to specialize and "get ahead" in the field ive specialized in. It gives me the knowledge and possibility to help develop that area of medicine which can lead to new medicine/new methods etc.
Only advice ive heard from others (since im not there yet) is to know what and why. Know what you want from it and why you want it. A PhD can give TONS and teach you a lot but it can also end up giving you no more than a new title.
3.5 years into my PhD this is a nice little bit of perspective. Back to pushing!
Editted for more insight: My experience of a PhD is mostly a pleasant one. I have however not finished...yet. When people ask me what is the hardest thing about a PhD, my answer, always and without hesitation, is the motivation. For a few years of your life, you have to do your own work...for you. And it is not necessarily easy work. Most often, even if you are not pushing at the edge of the human sphere of knowledge, you are pushing at the limits of your personal sphere, and that is never easy, though usually rewarding in the end. But you have to do it for 3-5 years. And finding the motivation to do that is very hard, at least for me.
However, you also have an almost unparalleled amount of freedom in what you do, the only constraints usually are ones negotiated between you, your supervisor, and perhaps other relevant people.
Two pieces of advice I hold close to my heart about the process of doing a PhD are these:
1) "If it was easy, everyone would do it" (From my dad, who did a PhD some 30 odd years ago).
2) "When you absolutely hate everything about your life - you are 6 weeks away from finishing" (From a post-doc in my department)
On August 04 2011 19:36 Geordie wrote: Wierd how everybody is talking about a PhD as if you learn it for personal worth, as if the extra knowledge will improve their quality of life. My dad came to england as a student and he got a PhD in statistics so he could get a british passport. Funny really.
I know someone who did a PhD to avoid getting conscripted and sent to fight in Vietnam, so yeah, the reasons for doing them can often be other than you might think.
On August 04 2011 19:38 Jt4096 wrote: 3.5 years into my PhD this is a nice little bit of perspective. Back to pushing!
Editted for more insight: My experience of a PhD is mostly a pleasant one. I have however not finished...yet. When people ask me what is the hardest thing about a PhD, my answer, always and without hesitation, is the motivation. For a few years of your life, you have to do your own work...for you. And it is not necessarily easy work. Most often, even if you are not pushing at the edge of the human sphere of knowledge, you are pushing at the limits of your personal sphere, and that is never easy, though usually rewarding in the end. But you have to do it for 3-5 years. And finding the motivation to do that is very hard, at least for me.
However, you also have an almost unparalleled amount of freedom in what you do, the only constraints usually are ones negotiated between you, your supervisor, and perhaps other relevant people.
Two pieces of advice I hold close to my heart about the process of doing a PhD are these:
1) "If it was easy, everyone would do it" (From my dad, who did a PhD some 30 odd years ago).
2) "When you absolutely hate everything about your life - you are 6 weeks away from finishing" (From a post-doc in my department)
This holds with my two year experience so far, and is great advice
At the bar I work at, one of the team leaders has been doing his PhD for about 7 years now, as soon as he stopped working at the bar, he ended up doing the most work on his PhD that he's ever done!
I personally have been considering doing a PhD after my MEng, however, not for any real reason other than wanting to be Dr. *. As such, I'll probably just go into work after uni and if I get wealthy and motivated enough, I may do one then. :3
On August 04 2011 18:17 anycolourfloyd wrote: i've gotta apply for phd scholarships for next year now, contemplating doing one in the biomechanics field (from a mech eng background)
it really appeals to me that i could do research that improves quality of life of the human race..
Where in aus? I started off doing mech engineering too, but switched over to exercise science and now doing postgrad physiotherapy. Dabbled in a bit of biomechanics research at the end of my undergrad degree using a program called OpenSim
i'm at adelaide uni.
opensim is an ergonomics program yeah? there's a guy in SA who does a lot of ergonomics research for holden and other car manufacturers.. lot of money there i imagine.
On August 04 2011 20:33 Caloooomi wrote: At the bar I work at, one of the team leaders has been doing his PhD for about 7 years now, as soon as he stopped working at the bar, he ended up doing the most work on his PhD that he's ever done!
I personally have been considering doing a PhD after my MEng, however, not for any real reason other than wanting to be Dr. *. As such, I'll probably just go into work after uni and if I get wealthy and motivated enough, I may do one then. :3
Lol, that's about my only motivation after college to consider higher education.
I'll be happy enough with a steady-paying CSCI job with just a bachelor's. There may come a day when a masters would be a nice addition for a nice promotion. Beyond that, it will have to be purely from desire of being Dr. Whatever and a true desire to push my knowledge in my specialty.
On August 04 2011 18:17 anycolourfloyd wrote: i've gotta apply for phd scholarships for next year now, contemplating doing one in the biomechanics field (from a mech eng background)
it really appeals to me that i could do research that improves quality of life of the human race..
Where in aus? I started off doing mech engineering too, but switched over to exercise science and now doing postgrad physiotherapy. Dabbled in a bit of biomechanics research at the end of my undergrad degree using a program called OpenSim
i'm at adelaide uni.
opensim is an ergonomics program yeah? there's a guy in SA who does a lot of ergonomics research for holden and other car manufacturers.. lot of money there i imagine.
Whoa shit dude. I am doing my Physio masters through UniSA at city east. What do you know. Opensim is for musculoskeletal modelling, it's more aimed at simulating movement and internal forces on the musculoskeletal system from motion/force capture data.
On August 06 2011 18:14 Ashes wrote: this is gr8 stuff. I am a yr and half away from my phd (tentatively)..in syst engg and operations research. And that is very encouraging!
Since you're actually involved with a PHD, I have to ask:
What do you even do in getting your PHD? Is it research? What exactly does it entail(can be specifically for you)?
On August 04 2011 15:44 taldarimAltar wrote: I know this girl who has a PhD from Harvard after 7 years, now she's hopelessly overqualified for any job and she realised she isn't that into academia, the job she'll most likely be doing.
depending on her specialty, she can do A TON of things with a phd from harvard that isn't related to her field.
On August 04 2011 18:17 anycolourfloyd wrote: i've gotta apply for phd scholarships for next year now, contemplating doing one in the biomechanics field (from a mech eng background)
it really appeals to me that i could do research that improves quality of life of the human race..
Where in aus? I started off doing mech engineering too, but switched over to exercise science and now doing postgrad physiotherapy. Dabbled in a bit of biomechanics research at the end of my undergrad degree using a program called OpenSim
i'm at adelaide uni.
opensim is an ergonomics program yeah? there's a guy in SA who does a lot of ergonomics research for holden and other car manufacturers.. lot of money there i imagine.
Whoa shit dude. I am doing my Physio masters through UniSA at city east. What do you know. Opensim is for musculoskeletal modelling, it's more aimed at simulating movement and internal forces on the musculoskeletal system from motion/force capture data.
haha, cool, you might actually know one of my honours supervisors. dominic?
yeah i think the ergonomics guy, gunther, from unisa mawson lakes campus, uses opensim.
If you're in America, I would highly advise against doing a PhD especially one in the sciences. I recently left my PhD program (PhD in Microbiology/Immunology) because it's literally a dead-end career now and instead, going to med school in 2012. There's a MASSIVE glut of biosciences PhDs nowadays. There's something like 15,000 Bio-PhDs graduated each year and the infrastructure to give them all decent paying jobs is simply not there. After you complete your PhD, you are pretty much required to do a post-doc for 2-4+ years. It's simply not an option anymore because you need that time to write a ton of papers. So while you slave away at literallly less-than-minimum wages, because you work 60-80 hours a week doing experiments to generate data, a janitor or bus driver is making twice as much money as you while enjoying things like paid vacation, holidays off, decent health insurance, etc etc. As a post-doc, you can expect to pulldown 37,000 a year. That's peanuts really. You really don't have the option of working less because your principal investigator is pushing you for data to renew his grant (otherwise everyone is out of a job). If you don't put in the work, you'll be passed on by all the Chinese and Indian post-docs who do put in the hours and get the papers. It's absolutely ruthless in the job market now too. We recently had a recruiter (this is what precipitated me to drop out of the PhD program) who worked at Abbott Labs, one of the biggest pharma companys in the area and basically where 40-60% of all our department wants to graduate to. He said that he gets between 100 and 200 applicants for every research position. They throw out all applicants who don't have at least 15 first author papers (which is amazing by the way). Then, it's narrowed down to 15 or so applicants and they choose 3-5 interviews based on how many citations each person accrues. And at the end? You get a decent, middle-class paying job (eg 60-75k/year). This is when you're like 40-45.
Whenever anyone wants to go into research science, I tell them to do the research carefully. If you like science, go into pharmacy or medicine, as in PharmD or MD/DO. You'll end up working the same amount of hours, but at least at the end you have a stable, well-paying job. For example, a typical MD has 4 years of med school, 3 years of residency and then has the option to practice medicine or go for a fellowship for another 2 years. The total training time is 7-9 years at the most. However, when you go this route, you are guaranteed a well-paying job in the neighborhood of 150 - 250K. A PhD takes 5-6 year to complete, then 2-4+ years of post-doc, which is 7-10+ years. But there's a huge amount of uncertainty because of how the grant system works, how funding works, whether or not your project works, etc etc. If everything goes absolutely perfect, you can secure yourself a tenure-track position where you have to work 60-80 hours a week to earn enough grants to get tenure, if not, it's back to the job search. At the best, you can earn 70k if everything goes smoothly. If there's any hiccups along the way (grant funding runs out, project goes no where, don't get high-quality papers, etc etc), you are going to spend even more time trying to get back on the treadmill.
Bottom line, research science in America is an absolute mess. If you like science, go into pharmacy or medicine as a practitioner. It's honestly as simple as that.
Also, if you say money doesn't matter, you are retarded. Maybe when your 22 and getting 2k a month is amazing. Then 6 years later, you're still making 2k a month while the stupidest idiots (mentally, not career-wise, because they are 10x smarter than you) from college are making 10k a month because they had the foresight to go into medicine, pharmacy or business. And if you want to actually get independent, good fucking luck doing that on a post-doc's salary. After taxes + student loan repayments (you can't defer while a post-doc, but you can as a grad student), you pull in only 2.5k a month. Forget about kids, that new car, or even a comfortable living space. Saying that money doesn't matter shows how immature you are because money is extremely important. Maybe not right after you graduate, when you're all idealistic and doe-eyed, but 5 years or 10 years down the line, when you are still living in a dingy apartment, driving that same old car, and wearing the same clothes, then money will matter a whole fucking lot. Why do you think the competition to get into pharmacy or into med school is so tough? It's because the pay is so good. The prestige doesn't hurt either.
On August 04 2011 16:54 Cpt Obvious wrote: That picture is highly inaccurate. The "specialization spear" needs to be way narrower
At least it's that way in physics. We have guys here where not even their professor gets what exactly they are doing, they're that specialized. Some of them do stuff that only 3 other people on the whole planet understand, sometimes they're the only one doing research in that field.
On the other hand, it's nice to be able to call yourself the 3rd best *insert ridiculously narrow field of research here* researcher if the competition is that fierce.
I agree that this picture is highly inaccurate. Specializations are super narrow. There is nobody at my university who does research in my topic. There are probably around 20 people who did at some point research in this topic.
And the hardest thing about PhD? There are many: 1. Accumulating insane amount of knowledge in short time - and it is never ending story; you are learning all the time - non-stop. 2. Insane amount of hours you have to put in both learning and then doing your research. Most people work 50 hours per week by which I mean proper work (reading, learning, writing); this amounts easily to around 70 hours a week. It's not uncommon to put more hours. At one point I was at the uni around 90 hours a week. Now I'm down to 60-70. 3. Difficulty - the stuff is so damn hard - progress is super slow. It's so easy to get super frustrated. I wanted to quit so many time. But I endured and currently have 3 almost finished papers and started working on my 4th one.
Yea I agree with this economy PhD has become insanely competitive...Its even worse in my field (social sciences-Bio Anthropology) because social sciences often get less funding then hard sciences and they are among the first to get the axe. I am just finishing my Masters degree currently and one of the programs that I want to apply to got over 800 apps for 3 PhD slots. :\
On August 07 2011 12:29 Slaughter wrote: Yea I agree with this economy PhD has become insanely competitive...Its even worse in my field (social sciences-Bio Anthropology) because social sciences often get less funding then hard sciences and they are among the first to get the axe. I am just finishing my Masters degree currently and one of the programs that I want to apply to got over 800 apps for 3 PhD slots. :\
Ugh. agreed. PhD in December in Natural Resources. What's bad is that while I can't find anything for my field (as I'm looking hard right now.. 4 months until my diploma), I'm also overqualified for many jobs I've been steadily applying to. I've been told by 3 employers that I'm over qualified for the position and they were looking in another direction. It's quite discouraging. Hopefully I'll find a post-doc. =[
I think it's the same when starting learning starcraft (of course, anything). The exception is that you have to start over again when a new patch comes
Thanks for pictures once again bro, gave me something to think about
On August 06 2011 18:14 Ashes wrote: this is gr8 stuff. I am a yr and half away from my phd (tentatively)..in syst engg and operations research. And that is very encouraging!
Since you're actually involved with a PHD, I have to ask:
What do you even do in getting your PHD? Is it research? What exactly does it entail(can be specifically for you)?
The PhD degree at George Mason University (Systems Engg and Operations research) is a 72 credit course program (after your bachelors). Out of these 24 credits are purely dedicated to research in the form of project dissertation (similar to thesis only more complex and time consuming).
a PhD degree is something which you should design for yourself as as medium of focusing your career in a particular direction (sort of a subject matter expert). So in my case, I am into Civil Aviation and my area of focus is Airport Surveillance Operations and Management.
On September 15 2010 13:43 TallMax wrote: So basically what I'm saying is that having a PhD is like sitting at the forefront of a lot of knowledge AND being able to do something interesting with it, either to gain more knowledge or to create something useful to people.
Speaking from experience in a master's degree in history and currently writing a thesis, this is pretty spot on. Higher education is completely different from most student's experience with a B.A. The guidelines given to you by your instructors are minimal and it's really up to you to make the lessons what they are. Instructors simply guide the discussion if it goes off course, correct mistakes with the material being studied, and ask questions that need to be asked. This is what graduate level courses are like.
On top of that, you have to write and research. A lot! The problem is at my institution the effort required of you varies. I would say 75% of my colleagues in my MA program (I finished my coursework last year) didn't belong there. They either didn't understand historiography or would not put in the effort.
If ur thinking about a PhD, whatever field that may be, make sure you are passionate about it. PhDs can lead to many jobs, but the most often is professor. If you love the field, it's the best job you can have. You can write whatever you want to write about, teach classes you like, and gain access to the best of research materials. PhDs are expensive, they usually require lots of funding, and the pay afterwards is mediocre. But, the rewards are incalcuable.
On August 07 2011 12:33 DueSs wrote: Ugh. agreed. PhD in December in Natural Resources. What's bad is that while I can't find anything for my field (as I'm looking hard right now.. 4 months until my diploma), I'm also overqualified for many jobs I've been steadily applying to. I've been told by 3 employers that I'm over qualified for the position and they were looking in another direction. It's quite discouraging. Hopefully I'll find a post-doc. =[
I've had the same issue. I recently got fired from a job I was qualified for and haven't been able to find work in my area. I've applied for so many places but after talking with a friend of mine who has been told stright up he was overqulaified for several jobs, I'm starting think I'm getting turned down for the same reasons. Damnit this economy.
Wow...0mar dropping a bomb on my mind I figured it was a tough route to take but never thought it was so one sided. Still though you gotta respect those that take the tough route, thanks for all that information though, very well written informative post.
Psh. All the engineers I know with PhDs are complete morons. I'd take some engineer with a bachelors or masters over some PhD idiot.
In my company, all the PhD engineers are put on the architecture team, where they aren't allowed to do any real engineering, because they have no real experience engineering anything relevant. And because they have a PhD they won't take a real engineering job.
I could see how PhDs in Science would be more relevant though.
On August 07 2011 13:19 aurum510 wrote: Psh. All the engineers I know with PhDs are complete morons. I'd take some engineer with a bachelors or masters over some PhD idiot.
In my company, all the PhD engineers are put on the architecture team, where they aren't allowed to do any real engineering, because they have no real experience engineering anything relevant. And because they have a PhD they won't take a real engineering job.
I could see how PhDs in Science would be more relevant though.
Define Real Engineering?? and Please do not Google! If you mean engineering is sitting from 9-5 and developing applications by writing tons and tons of code. then I am sorry you DO NOT know what engineering means.
And ohh when a PhD is placed into an architecture team, that means they have the skills (which bachelors might not possess).
Now I have done my bachelors and my masters and after having an industry experience of about 2 years decided to pursue my PhD because, sitting like a MORON and coding whole day is pretty useless. But being a software or a system architect, Man its challenging!
I want a PhD in philosophy, focusing on either epistemology or ethics, really, really bad. I also want a JD. What I was told by one of my professors is that if I want the PhD: I either get concurrently with the JD, or get it first, because once I'm a lawyer, I'll be too busy making money (or trying to) to worry about philosophy. TBH I'm not sure what to think about a PhD in the sciences.
My dad has a PhD in biochemistry and most of his research and published texts are about oranges. I'm not sure how interesting that is, or who cares about oranges, but it landed him a job; he worked as a professor at a university as well as overseeing a lab that focused on nutritional development (Fancy wording for a 'University-sponsored bakery'). Mind you, this is in Peru, and I wouldn't think they have an overwhelming number of PhD's around.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: Are PhD's in Science really more relevant? I agree with some of the people in this thread. MD is the way to go. There's something really wrong with healthcare and doctors earning the ridiculous amounts they do; the thing is: not everyone might care about the development of knowledge in particular areas, but no one wants to die.
On August 07 2011 13:43 Cr4zyH0r5e wrote: I want a PhD in philosophy, focusing on either epistemology or ethics, really, really bad. I also want a JD. What I was told by one of my professors is that if I want the PhD: I either get concurrently with the JD, or get it first, because once I'm a lawyer, I'll be too busy making money (or trying to) to worry about philosophy. TBH I'm not sure what to think about a PhD in the sciences.
My dad has a PhD in biochemistry and most of his research and published texts are about oranges. I'm not sure how interesting that is, or who cares about oranges, but it landed him a job; he worked as a professor at a university as well as overseeing a lab that focused on nutritional development (Fancy wording for a 'University-sponsored bakery'). Mind you, this is in Peru, and I wouldn't think they have an overwhelming number of PhD's around.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: Are PhD's in Science really more relevant? I agree with some of the people in this thread. MD is the way to go. There's something really wrong with healthcare and doctors earning the ridiculous amounts they do; the thing is: not everyone might care about the development of knowledge in particular areas, but no one wants to die.
In terms of opening up career opportunities, Philosophy seems to be one of the most useless PhD's from what I've seen... I would probably have to agree with your professors that if you ever do become a lawyer, you're most likely going to realize your time is much better spent making money on that end than going through the effort to pursue something with so little reward (other than perhaps self satisfaction which isn't necessarily a bad thing).
I suppose there's something to be said about higher education, but practically speaking, most people are much more satisfied with being able to buy more stuff.
On August 07 2011 13:43 Cr4zyH0r5e wrote: I want a PhD in philosophy, focusing on either epistemology or ethics, really, really bad. I also want a JD. What I was told by one of my professors is that if I want the PhD: I either get concurrently with the JD, or get it first, because once I'm a lawyer, I'll be too busy making money (or trying to) to worry about philosophy. TBH I'm not sure what to think about a PhD in the sciences.
My dad has a PhD in biochemistry and most of his research and published texts are about oranges. I'm not sure how interesting that is, or who cares about oranges, but it landed him a job; he worked as a professor at a university as well as overseeing a lab that focused on nutritional development (Fancy wording for a 'University-sponsored bakery'). Mind you, this is in Peru, and I wouldn't think they have an overwhelming number of PhD's around.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: Are PhD's in Science really more relevant? I agree with some of the people in this thread. MD is the way to go. There's something really wrong with healthcare and doctors earning the ridiculous amounts they do; the thing is: not everyone might care about the development of knowledge in particular areas, but no one wants to die.
you're not supposed to get a phd thinking you're gonna make money. most people (at least ppl around me) are smart enough now to know that. people i know going to grad school do it cuz they are genuinely interested in what they do, not cuz they think getting a phd will make them millions. those people go into medicine, or try to make it big with a business/economics degree.
medicine is the more "practical" choice. (real life stable job)
if you wanna get into the corporate world of science, such as biotech and pharmaceutical companies, then you definitely need a phd to get anywhere up the ladder. everyone on the management team of such companies have phds (if the job is science related).
doing corporate is hard though. my dad always told me it's like trying to catch 10 birds in a tree, while being in medicine is having 2 birds in your hands.
I'm going to start my Ph.D. in Chemistry this Fall, at Texas A&M University. Don't know if there is anyone here at TAMU or going to join TAMU soon, lol.
Anyway, one of the professor here game me a really insightful thought of what is PhD He said that undergraduate study and below is a teaching to a group of people, but a PhD is about teaching a person as an individual, tailoring him/her in a way that would fit his/her characters. He also said that you need to be able to learn by yourself, not relying on other people to give you knowledge. I will bear those words in my mind when I start my study soon.
@0mar
I think people value different things. Many people value knowledge more than monetary gain, and they are already happy to do a hard work and push that boundary out a little bit more. Driving the same old car is not that bad, if you don't think it is bad in the first place (and if you really take a good care of your car).
This is my opinion from what I've experienced, seen, and talk to other grad students about.
I would say the OP is a common misconception for PhD's. Depending on WHAT you are going for a PhD in it varies GREATLY and the value of the PhD varies just as greatly. Some PhD are worthless as a Bachelors/Masters is just as good in that field. Other PhD's are well worth the 4-5 years spent as its so much better then the bachelors and masters.
For some its all about classes and learning...that's it. Others(namely engineering) are based on research and not on classes.
I'm currently working on my PhD in Materials Science and Engineering and based on what I've seen it can be quite different for every person. Some people ARE super insanely focused like in the OP, but most are much much less focused. I am probably one of the least focused as my PhD is extremely broad working on biomedical, electronic, and aerospace devices using steel, zirconia, titanium, nitinol, and diamond powder processing/cvd/mechanical testing, etc.
The reason for this broadening is due to the research(cheap labor) focus. You are an employee working cheap instead of a student(even though you are technically a student). Due to this your entire time getting a PhD is based on the funding you have for projects and most people will work on 2-4 differently funded projects during their PhD career and they are almost never similar.
^I wholeheartedly agree with the 2 posts above LegendaryZ & akalarry's posts. Of course I wouldn't get a PhD thinking I'll make tons of money. That's why I'm focusing on politics and international law (being a lawyer); the double major in philosophy is because I'm fascinated by it.
Why do I want to get the PhD? Self-realization, being able to say that, besides "selling my soul as a lawyer/politician", I achieved something in the field I'm most passionate about. Why, then, do I study law? Because I like it. I like studying the law and I'm fascinated by politics and the political behavior of different peoples; however, while I do enjoy both--and it's clear the studies are not exclusive from one another--,it's obvious which career path is most-likely to keep me fed. You know, what would be great? Landing a job in which I can combine both. How likely is this? I'm pretty sure everyone can imagine how miniscule the opportunities are, but that doesn't mean there are none.
On August 07 2011 14:25 Cr4zyH0r5e wrote: ^I wholeheartedly agree with the 2 posts above LegendaryZ & akalarry's posts. Of course I wouldn't get a PhD thinking I'll make tons of money. That's why I'm focusing on politics and international law (being a lawyer); the double major in philosophy is because I'm fascinated by it.
Why do I want to get the PhD? Self-realization, being able to say that, besides "selling my soul as a lawyer/politician", I achieved something in the field I'm most passionate about. Why, then, do I study law? Because I like it. I like studying the law and I'm fascinated by politics and the political behavior of different peoples; however, while I do enjoy both--and it's clear the studies are not exclusive from one another--,it's obvious which career path is most-likely to keep me fed. You know, what would be great? Landing a job in which I can combine both. How likely is this? I'm pretty sure everyone can imagine how miniscule the opportunities are, but that doesn't mean there are none.
Well I'm certain there's bound to be jobs out there where you could combine legal advice with ethics or something along those lines. Doesn't hurt to look, I suppose.
Is anyone getting a PhD in math? I've always wondered what happens if you show up to your PhD program and they give a few problems and you simply don't get it. Just can't add any meaningful insight, do they give you a new problem? Can you flunk out if you can't come up with something original? I feel like in the sciences you can do research and put together observations from experiments and whatnot, what do you do in math if you can't pull something from your intellect?
On August 07 2011 14:16 Veldril wrote: I'm going to start my Ph.D. in Chemistry this Fall, at Texas A&M University. Don't know if there is anyone here at TAMU or going to join TAMU soon, lol.
Anyway, one of the professor here game me a really insightful thought of what is PhD He said that undergraduate study and below is a teaching to a group of people, but a PhD is about teaching a person as an individual, tailoring him/her in a way that would fit his/her characters. He also said that you need to be able to learn by yourself, not relying on other people to give you knowledge. I will bear those words in my mind when I start my study soon.
@0mar
I think people value different things. Many people value knowledge more than monetary gain, and they are already happy to do a hard work and push that boundary out a little bit more. Driving the same old car is not that bad, if you don't think it is bad in the first place (and if you really take a good care of your car).
Still, saying the money doesn't matter is simply doe-eyed idealism. Money does matter because your expenses go up as you mature. Living in a dingy apartment when you are 35 or 40 is a lot different than when you are 22. If you ever get married or enter a long-term relationship, you need to have stability. In the research sciences, you are a wandering scientist with no real ties until you secure that first job. You are on contract until the project ends or the grant money dries up.
My brother did a PhD in Chemistry and he absolutely regrets it to this day. His only options right now are dead-end post docs at MIT. Yes, you read that right. Even in chemistry, there's a huge glut of PhDs. You need to put out absolutely outstanding work which is all luck anyways, it's all dependent on what's hot in the field and what project you actually get.
I was in your position. I said to myself, money doesn't matter, as long as I get enough to live on, I'll be happy. Well, that was an extremely immature attitude because now my car is breaking down, my apartment rent has gone up twice in two years, gas, food and all these other things are increasing in price and our stipend didn't go up this year again due to budget problems. The best I could hope for by finishing my PhD was a dead-end postdoc slaving away for 60+ hours a week. Then in 4+ years, I could try my hand at jobs in industry (lol 200 applicants per job, yea fucking right) or professorships. You can go adjunct faculty, which basically means you teach 5-7 classes and get paid about 6k per class for the entire year. You won't hear this from any of your professors, you have to find this out yourself. Spend a day on google to look at your career choices after the PhD. That's why I quit my PhD because furthering knowledge doesn't mean shit if you can't even earn a middle class wage. It won't hurt right now, but in 3 years, when you are slaving away for the 3rd night in a row, at 12am, you'll realize that a fucking bus driver makes twice as much as you do, works half as much and can actually take a vacation now and then.
Leaving the PhD was the best decision I ever made. Medicine is far more rewarding, relevant and is well-compensated.
Doctors don't make that much money though :[
Doctors are very well compensated for the work they do. Your earning potential is only limited by the time you put in. You get paid by the patient/procedure, if you know the system. For example, charging for a 10 system check vs a 3 system check is a difference in about 5 minutes of work, but pays about triple depending on the insurance plan. You get paid a very nice salary as a doctor plus you have massive earning potential on top of that through clinic hours/procedure documentation/consulting.
Before anyone talks about the healthcare system and how it's so broken, doctors' compensation is a very small part of a very massive pie. If you don't make the career lucrative, then no one would want to be a doctor. You are talking about 4 years undergraduate, 4 years medical school, and at least 3 years as a resident. That's 11 years of training devoted solely to becoming a physician. Then, you are responsible for patient outcomes while any other profession is merely responsible for a small portion of a project (eg web designer, MBA, accounting). The responsibility that a physician has is in another galaxy by comparison. If anything, doctors should be compensated more. Your average doctor works 60 hours a week plus time to write notes, file paperwork and continuing his/her medical education as required by state boards in order to continue practicing.
On August 07 2011 15:23 n.DieJokes wrote: Is anyone getting a PhD in math? I've always wondered what happens if you show up to your PhD program and they give a few problems and you simply don't get it. Just can't add any meaningful insight, do they give you a new problem? Can you flunk out if you can't come up with something original? I feel like in the sciences you can do research and put together observations from experiments and whatnot, what do you do in math if you can't pull something from your intellect?
Now I will be always wondering this until someone replies haha. Intriguing question...I really wonder what would happen in that scenario :x
On August 07 2011 14:16 Veldril wrote: I'm going to start my Ph.D. in Chemistry this Fall, at Texas A&M University. Don't know if there is anyone here at TAMU or going to join TAMU soon, lol.
Anyway, one of the professor here game me a really insightful thought of what is PhD He said that undergraduate study and below is a teaching to a group of people, but a PhD is about teaching a person as an individual, tailoring him/her in a way that would fit his/her characters. He also said that you need to be able to learn by yourself, not relying on other people to give you knowledge. I will bear those words in my mind when I start my study soon.
@0mar
I think people value different things. Many people value knowledge more than monetary gain, and they are already happy to do a hard work and push that boundary out a little bit more. Driving the same old car is not that bad, if you don't think it is bad in the first place (and if you really take a good care of your car).
Still, saying the money doesn't matter is simply doe-eyed idealism. Money does matter because your expenses go up as you mature. Living in a dingy apartment when you are 35 or 40 is a lot different than when you are 22. If you ever get married or enter a long-term relationship, you need to have stability. In the research sciences, you are a wandering scientist with no real ties until you secure that first job. You are on contract until the project ends or the grant money dries up.
My brother did a PhD in Chemistry and he absolutely regrets it to this day. His only options right now are dead-end post docs at MIT. Yes, you read that right. Even in chemistry, there's a huge glut of PhDs. You need to put out absolutely outstanding work which is all luck anyways, it's all dependent on what's hot in the field and what project you actually get.
I was in your position. I said to myself, money doesn't matter, as long as I get enough to live on, I'll be happy. Well, that was an extremely immature attitude because now my car is breaking down, my apartment rent has gone up twice in two years, gas, food and all these other things are increasing in price and our stipend didn't go up this year again due to budget problems. The best I could hope for by finishing my PhD was a dead-end postdoc slaving away for 60+ hours a week. Then in 4+ years, I could try my hand at jobs in industry (lol 200 applicants per job, yea fucking right) or professorships. You can go adjunct faculty, which basically means you teach 5-7 classes and get paid about 6k per class for the entire year. You won't hear this from any of your professors, you have to find this out yourself. Spend a day on google to look at your career choices after the PhD. That's why I quit my PhD because furthering knowledge doesn't mean shit if you can't even earn a middle class wage. It won't hurt right now, but in 3 years, when you are slaving away for the 3rd night in a row, at 12am, you'll realize that a fucking bus driver makes twice as much as you do, works half as much and can actually take a vacation now and then.
Leaving the PhD was the best decision I ever made. Medicine is far more rewarding, relevant and is well-compensated.
Doctors are very well compensated for the work they do. Your earning potential is only limited by the time you put in. You get paid by the patient/procedure, if you know the system. For example, charging for a 10 system check vs a 3 system check is a difference in about 5 minutes of work, but pays about triple depending on the insurance plan. You get paid a very nice salary as a doctor plus you have massive earning potential on top of that through clinic hours/procedure documentation/consulting.
Before anyone talks about the healthcare system and how it's so broken, doctors' compensation is a very small part of a very massive pie. If you don't make the career lucrative, then no one would want to be a doctor. You are talking about 4 years undergraduate, 4 years medical school, and at least 3 years as a resident. That's 11 years of training devoted solely to becoming a physician. Then, you are responsible for patient outcomes while any other profession is merely responsible for a small portion of a project (eg web designer, MBA, accounting). The responsibility that a physician has is in another galaxy by comparison. If anything, doctors should be compensated more. Your average doctor works 60 hours a week plus time to write notes, file paperwork and continuing his/her medical education as required by state boards in order to continue practicing.
"dead-end post docs at MIT"
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL you have no idea what you are talking about. that is absolutely not dead end. if you can get a post doc at MIT you have a MASSIVE amount of opportunities ahead of you. not only can you work at corporate( ex. being a director at johnson and johnson or pfizer...etc), you can also get into business/consulting. management consulting at mckinsey? they LOVE people like that. maybe your position wasn't as good because you might've gone to a lesser school? (no hate, you're gonna be a doctor and make bank).
i'm curious you said youre gonna go to med school 2012? have you even gotten any interviews yet? (i don't even know the timing, i just know ppl start applying during the summer) or are you just assuming because of your scores/grades/ecs?
also "Medicine is far more rewarding, relevant and is well-compensated.". I agree with well-compensated. The other points just make you sound REALLY fucking bitter.
On August 07 2011 15:23 n.DieJokes wrote: Is anyone getting a PhD in math? I've always wondered what happens if you show up to your PhD program and they give a few problems and you simply don't get it. Just can't add any meaningful insight, do they give you a new problem? Can you flunk out if you can't come up with something original? I feel like in the sciences you can do research and put together observations from experiments and whatnot, what do you do in math if you can't pull something from your intellect?
Now I will be always wondering this until someone replies haha. Intriguing question...I really wonder what would happen in that scenario :x
You can always add something if you put in enough time, that's especially true for math. Assuming you have solid fundamentals and whatnot , to shorten it to a realistic time-frame.
On August 07 2011 14:16 Veldril wrote: I'm going to start my Ph.D. in Chemistry this Fall, at Texas A&M University. Don't know if there is anyone here at TAMU or going to join TAMU soon, lol.
Anyway, one of the professor here game me a really insightful thought of what is PhD He said that undergraduate study and below is a teaching to a group of people, but a PhD is about teaching a person as an individual, tailoring him/her in a way that would fit his/her characters. He also said that you need to be able to learn by yourself, not relying on other people to give you knowledge. I will bear those words in my mind when I start my study soon.
@0mar
I think people value different things. Many people value knowledge more than monetary gain, and they are already happy to do a hard work and push that boundary out a little bit more. Driving the same old car is not that bad, if you don't think it is bad in the first place (and if you really take a good care of your car).
Still, saying the money doesn't matter is simply doe-eyed idealism. Money does matter because your expenses go up as you mature. Living in a dingy apartment when you are 35 or 40 is a lot different than when you are 22. If you ever get married or enter a long-term relationship, you need to have stability. In the research sciences, you are a wandering scientist with no real ties until you secure that first job. You are on contract until the project ends or the grant money dries up.
My brother did a PhD in Chemistry and he absolutely regrets it to this day. His only options right now are dead-end post docs at MIT. Yes, you read that right. Even in chemistry, there's a huge glut of PhDs. You need to put out absolutely outstanding work which is all luck anyways, it's all dependent on what's hot in the field and what project you actually get.
I was in your position. I said to myself, money doesn't matter, as long as I get enough to live on, I'll be happy. Well, that was an extremely immature attitude because now my car is breaking down, my apartment rent has gone up twice in two years, gas, food and all these other things are increasing in price and our stipend didn't go up this year again due to budget problems. The best I could hope for by finishing my PhD was a dead-end postdoc slaving away for 60+ hours a week. Then in 4+ years, I could try my hand at jobs in industry (lol 200 applicants per job, yea fucking right) or professorships. You can go adjunct faculty, which basically means you teach 5-7 classes and get paid about 6k per class for the entire year. You won't hear this from any of your professors, you have to find this out yourself. Spend a day on google to look at your career choices after the PhD. That's why I quit my PhD because furthering knowledge doesn't mean shit if you can't even earn a middle class wage. It won't hurt right now, but in 3 years, when you are slaving away for the 3rd night in a row, at 12am, you'll realize that a fucking bus driver makes twice as much as you do, works half as much and can actually take a vacation now and then.
Leaving the PhD was the best decision I ever made. Medicine is far more rewarding, relevant and is well-compensated.
Doctors don't make that much money though :[
Doctors are very well compensated for the work they do. Your earning potential is only limited by the time you put in. You get paid by the patient/procedure, if you know the system. For example, charging for a 10 system check vs a 3 system check is a difference in about 5 minutes of work, but pays about triple depending on the insurance plan. You get paid a very nice salary as a doctor plus you have massive earning potential on top of that through clinic hours/procedure documentation/consulting.
Before anyone talks about the healthcare system and how it's so broken, doctors' compensation is a very small part of a very massive pie. If you don't make the career lucrative, then no one would want to be a doctor. You are talking about 4 years undergraduate, 4 years medical school, and at least 3 years as a resident. That's 11 years of training devoted solely to becoming a physician. Then, you are responsible for patient outcomes while any other profession is merely responsible for a small portion of a project (eg web designer, MBA, accounting). The responsibility that a physician has is in another galaxy by comparison. If anything, doctors should be compensated more. Your average doctor works 60 hours a week plus time to write notes, file paperwork and continuing his/her medical education as required by state boards in order to continue practicing.
"dead-end post docs at MIT"
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL you have no idea what you are talking about. that is absolutely not dead end. if you can get a post doc at MIT you have a MASSIVE amount of opportunities ahead of you. not only can you work at corporate( ex. being a director at johnson and johnson or pfizer...etc), you can also get into business/consulting. management consulting at mckinsey? they LOVE people like that. maybe your position wasn't as good because you might've gone to a lesser school? (no hate, you're gonna be a doctor and make bank).
i'm curious you said youre gonna go to med school 2012? have you even gotten any interviews yet? (i don't even know the timing, i just know ppl start applying during the summer) or are you just assuming because of your scores/grades/ecs?
also "Medicine is far more rewarding, relevant and is well-compensated.". I agree with well-compensated. The other points just make you sound REALLY fucking bitter.
Sorry to call you out but you seem like a troll. He clearly has an idea of what he is talking about, he was actually in the program. He has actual experience with what he's talking about while you seem content to pull stuff out of your.... you get it. The people who get the kind of jobs you mentioned are what he describes as lucky or outstanding. Sorry, this post kinda lacked substance, but it's kinda dumb to disagree with someone who has tangible experience when you have none.
On August 07 2011 14:16 Veldril wrote: I'm going to start my Ph.D. in Chemistry this Fall, at Texas A&M University. Don't know if there is anyone here at TAMU or going to join TAMU soon, lol.
Anyway, one of the professor here game me a really insightful thought of what is PhD He said that undergraduate study and below is a teaching to a group of people, but a PhD is about teaching a person as an individual, tailoring him/her in a way that would fit his/her characters. He also said that you need to be able to learn by yourself, not relying on other people to give you knowledge. I will bear those words in my mind when I start my study soon.
@0mar
I think people value different things. Many people value knowledge more than monetary gain, and they are already happy to do a hard work and push that boundary out a little bit more. Driving the same old car is not that bad, if you don't think it is bad in the first place (and if you really take a good care of your car).
Still, saying the money doesn't matter is simply doe-eyed idealism. Money does matter because your expenses go up as you mature. Living in a dingy apartment when you are 35 or 40 is a lot different than when you are 22. If you ever get married or enter a long-term relationship, you need to have stability. In the research sciences, you are a wandering scientist with no real ties until you secure that first job. You are on contract until the project ends or the grant money dries up.
My brother did a PhD in Chemistry and he absolutely regrets it to this day. His only options right now are dead-end post docs at MIT. Yes, you read that right. Even in chemistry, there's a huge glut of PhDs. You need to put out absolutely outstanding work which is all luck anyways, it's all dependent on what's hot in the field and what project you actually get.
I was in your position. I said to myself, money doesn't matter, as long as I get enough to live on, I'll be happy. Well, that was an extremely immature attitude because now my car is breaking down, my apartment rent has gone up twice in two years, gas, food and all these other things are increasing in price and our stipend didn't go up this year again due to budget problems. The best I could hope for by finishing my PhD was a dead-end postdoc slaving away for 60+ hours a week. Then in 4+ years, I could try my hand at jobs in industry (lol 200 applicants per job, yea fucking right) or professorships. You can go adjunct faculty, which basically means you teach 5-7 classes and get paid about 6k per class for the entire year. You won't hear this from any of your professors, you have to find this out yourself. Spend a day on google to look at your career choices after the PhD. That's why I quit my PhD because furthering knowledge doesn't mean shit if you can't even earn a middle class wage. It won't hurt right now, but in 3 years, when you are slaving away for the 3rd night in a row, at 12am, you'll realize that a fucking bus driver makes twice as much as you do, works half as much and can actually take a vacation now and then.
Leaving the PhD was the best decision I ever made. Medicine is far more rewarding, relevant and is well-compensated.
Doctors don't make that much money though :[
Doctors are very well compensated for the work they do. Your earning potential is only limited by the time you put in. You get paid by the patient/procedure, if you know the system. For example, charging for a 10 system check vs a 3 system check is a difference in about 5 minutes of work, but pays about triple depending on the insurance plan. You get paid a very nice salary as a doctor plus you have massive earning potential on top of that through clinic hours/procedure documentation/consulting.
Before anyone talks about the healthcare system and how it's so broken, doctors' compensation is a very small part of a very massive pie. If you don't make the career lucrative, then no one would want to be a doctor. You are talking about 4 years undergraduate, 4 years medical school, and at least 3 years as a resident. That's 11 years of training devoted solely to becoming a physician. Then, you are responsible for patient outcomes while any other profession is merely responsible for a small portion of a project (eg web designer, MBA, accounting). The responsibility that a physician has is in another galaxy by comparison. If anything, doctors should be compensated more. Your average doctor works 60 hours a week plus time to write notes, file paperwork and continuing his/her medical education as required by state boards in order to continue practicing.
"dead-end post docs at MIT"
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL you have no idea what you are talking about. that is absolutely not dead end. if you can get a post doc at MIT you have a MASSIVE amount of opportunities ahead of you. not only can you work at corporate( ex. being a director at johnson and johnson or pfizer...etc), you can also get into business/consulting. management consulting at mckinsey? they LOVE people like that. maybe your position wasn't as good because you might've gone to a lesser school? (no hate, you're gonna be a doctor and make bank).
i'm curious you said youre gonna go to med school 2012? have you even gotten any interviews yet? (i don't even know the timing, i just know ppl start applying during the summer) or are you just assuming because of your scores/grades/ecs?
also "Medicine is far more rewarding, relevant and is well-compensated.". I agree with well-compensated. The other points just make you sound REALLY fucking bitter.
Dude, I have firsthand experience. A postdoc at MIT is nothing to sneeze at, but it's also not a ticket to freedom. The last 6 people to graduate from this guy's lab all ended up crashing and burning as tenure track professors. A postdoc at MIT is a different matter than an undergraduate. My brother completed his PhD at UIC which is a great school for nanocrystallography. His mentor, Preston Snee, is an alum of some big shot in the field. You don't understand the competition out there to get a tenure track or even an industry position now. People are applying with 15, 20, 25 first author papers and getting rejected because the competition is so intense. It's coming down to the point where if you don't have 500+ aggregate citations, don't even think about getting a career in science.
While I was at Northwestern for my PhD, I saw dozens of postdocs stagnate in their positions because the competition is so fierce. I know a postdoc who had to go get his realty license because he couldn't get a job in science anymore. And he published 12 first author papers, including two in Nature Immunology. He told me he applied to about 120 jobs around the country, got two interviews and didn't get either job. So this incredibly bright guy is getting his realty license because his wife is sick of living on less than 35,000 a year. That's the job market right now.
And yes, I've already gotten interviews for med school. The good thing about grad school is that adcoms love the research experience, even if you don't have a degree.
And finally, yes, I am bitter because the PhD is a bill of fucking goods. No less than Nature is telling us that there is a glut of PhDs. You need to register to view the site, but it's there. I honestly wish I could go back in time and tell myself to avoid research science like the plague.
On August 07 2011 15:23 n.DieJokes wrote: Is anyone getting a PhD in math? I've always wondered what happens if you show up to your PhD program and they give a few problems and you simply don't get it. Just can't add any meaningful insight, do they give you a new problem? Can you flunk out if you can't come up with something original? I feel like in the sciences you can do research and put together observations from experiments and whatnot, what do you do in math if you can't pull something from your intellect?
Now I will be always wondering this until someone replies haha. Intriguing question...I really wonder what would happen in that scenario :x
Yes, if you are blocked on your current line of research, your advisor should help steer you in a more fruitful direction. Remember that this is the cutting edge of knowledge, so research going south is par for the course. Researchers are constantly hitting dead ends and trying out new things with little (positive, direct) results to show for their previous efforts.
However, if you're unable to make any progress at all on anything, that's the equivalent of not being able to do your job. You end up washing out, typically by not making adequate progress towards your degree. In the most obvious cases, you simply won't pass your qualifying exams. If you aren't making adequate progress on research, your advisor may stop funding you and you'll be forced to find a new one. In the worst case, you may stay on as the stereotypical nth-year phd student that doesn't make any progress towards their thesis and eventually leaves of their own volition.
EDIT: also, in theory-style fields like math and certain branches of computer science, there are all sorts of problems out there from the fields medal award-type to the incremental, build-on-previous approaches in a semi-obvious way-type. So unless you are completely unmotivated/unqualified for your discipline (rare if you were accepted to the program in the first place), there will be something for you to do.
On August 07 2011 21:50 indecision wrote: Anyone from Germany wanna chime in on this? I feel things are quite a bit different here, but I couldn't say for sure.
both working conditions while doing your phd and the future job prospects, both in industry and academia, depend heavily on the subject or field of research. certain stuff is almost overfunded right now, while subjects like the humanities are still running, as they have always been, quite low on money.
So the above videos are not recognizable at all for me. I am doing a PhD in math, specifically in optimization, and for me my counsiler already had a topic I was going to be doing research on. Ofcourse within that topic I still have a lot of freedom but whatever.
Either way mayby it is because all the topics in those videos are liberal arts etc. In which, unless you want to continue in academia, there is like no work to be found at all / has no use / is not actually researchable (hence they always refer to math etc.). Although that is already true for their respective bachelors / masters.
On August 07 2011 23:48 DisneylandSC wrote: So the above videos are not recognizable at all for me. I am doing a PhD in math, specifically in optimization, and for me my counsiler already had a topic I was going to be doing research on. Ofcourse within that topic I still have a lot of freedom but whatever.
Either way mayby it is because all the topics in those videos are liberal arts etc. In which, unless you want to continue in academia, there is like no work to be found at all / has no use / is not actually researchable (hence they always refer to math etc.). Although that is already true for their respective bachelors / masters.
A PhD in STEM fields is a very different experience from a PhD in non-STEM fields (i.e. humanities). It is, apparently, quite a miserable experience.
On August 07 2011 23:48 DisneylandSC wrote: So the above videos are not recognizable at all for me. I am doing a PhD in math, specifically in optimization, and for me my counsiler already had a topic I was going to be doing research on. Ofcourse within that topic I still have a lot of freedom but whatever.
Either way mayby it is because all the topics in those videos are liberal arts etc. In which, unless you want to continue in academia, there is like no work to be found at all / has no use / is not actually researchable (hence they always refer to math etc.). Although that is already true for their respective bachelors / masters.
A PhD in STEM fields is a very different experience from a PhD in non-STEM fields (i.e. humanities). It is, apparently, quite a miserable experience.
And what makes you think this is not true in STEM fields? My friend is graduating this year with PhD in maths at Oxford. And he is damn worried about getting a job. Add to this lack of scholarship for the last year and you get a nice picture. All the points raised in the links you provided are true in smaller or larger extent regardless of PhD program. Even more so than for me doing PhD in econ. Job market for maths is tiny compared to Economics.
Yes, when I graduated from college being ranked top1 in my department and among few top students among my whole class I had those grand expectations. But life had really changed my perspective. The points raised by 0mar are all relevant. I wouldn't be as negative as him but maybe because we are more lucky in Economics regarding job/salary perspective. That is of course if you are good enough.
Regarding amount of work ph.d requires see points 61 and 62 in that blog. They are really really true.
On August 07 2011 23:48 DisneylandSC wrote: So the above videos are not recognizable at all for me. I am doing a PhD in math, specifically in optimization, and for me my counsiler already had a topic I was going to be doing research on. Ofcourse within that topic I still have a lot of freedom but whatever.
Either way mayby it is because all the topics in those videos are liberal arts etc. In which, unless you want to continue in academia, there is like no work to be found at all / has no use / is not actually researchable (hence they always refer to math etc.). Although that is already true for their respective bachelors / masters.
A PhD in STEM fields is a very different experience from a PhD in non-STEM fields (i.e. humanities). It is, apparently, quite a miserable experience.
And what makes you think this is not true in STEM fields? My friend is graduating this year with PhD in maths at Oxford. And he is damn worried about getting a job. Add to this lack of scholarship for the last year and you get a nice picture. All the points raised in the links you provided are true in smaller or larger extent regardless of PhD program. Even more so than for me doing PhD in econ. Job market for maths is tiny compared to Economics.
Yes, when I graduated from college being ranked top1 in my department and among few top students among my whole class I had those grand expectations. But life had really changed my perspective. The points raised by 0mar are all relevant. I wouldn't be as negative as him but maybe because we are more lucky in Economics regarding job/salary perspective. That is of course if you are good enough.
Regarding amount of work ph.d requires see points 61 and 62 in that blog. They are really really true.
the thing is that it depends a lot on the specialization in maths. there are indeed only very few jobs out there for experts in number theory or similar branches of maths. if you are an expert in stochastics, financial economics or stuff like that and are really good at it, then i wouldnt worry too much about getting a job after graduating....
On August 07 2011 23:48 DisneylandSC wrote: So the above videos are not recognizable at all for me. I am doing a PhD in math, specifically in optimization, and for me my counsiler already had a topic I was going to be doing research on. Ofcourse within that topic I still have a lot of freedom but whatever.
Either way mayby it is because all the topics in those videos are liberal arts etc. In which, unless you want to continue in academia, there is like no work to be found at all / has no use / is not actually researchable (hence they always refer to math etc.). Although that is already true for their respective bachelors / masters.
A PhD in STEM fields is a very different experience from a PhD in non-STEM fields (i.e. humanities). It is, apparently, quite a miserable experience.
Really seems to me it depends on where in the world you are, some of those reasons for example are about how expensive a PhD is. I'm lucky in Ireland, I don't have to pay, and actually get a small grant to survive while I work on my computer science.
On August 07 2011 23:48 DisneylandSC wrote: So the above videos are not recognizable at all for me. I am doing a PhD in math, specifically in optimization, and for me my counsiler already had a topic I was going to be doing research on. Ofcourse within that topic I still have a lot of freedom but whatever.
Either way mayby it is because all the topics in those videos are liberal arts etc. In which, unless you want to continue in academia, there is like no work to be found at all / has no use / is not actually researchable (hence they always refer to math etc.). Although that is already true for their respective bachelors / masters.
A PhD in STEM fields is a very different experience from a PhD in non-STEM fields (i.e. humanities). It is, apparently, quite a miserable experience.
Really seems to me it depends on where in the world you are, some of those reasons for example are about how expensive a PhD is. I'm lucky in Ireland, I don't have to pay, and actually get a small grant to survive while I work on my computer science.
Same thing happens here in Brazil, if you are good enough to make it into a public university (which most PhD students are) you study for free and get a small salary to help pay your staying in whichever city the college is located.
The American school system is far too bureaucratized, in every field, including med and law school. America basically just sucks. 70k a year for law school with room/board and misc. expenses is a joke.
As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to stay in the US is 1. You only speak English, 2. You already have a career here, 3. You like America's system of rights.
Outside of that, America sucks and in the next 50 years the economy is going to get raped and America is going to turn into a gigantic country of services sans production, like Britain has.
On August 07 2011 23:48 DisneylandSC wrote: So the above videos are not recognizable at all for me. I am doing a PhD in math, specifically in optimization, and for me my counsiler already had a topic I was going to be doing research on. Ofcourse within that topic I still have a lot of freedom but whatever.
Either way mayby it is because all the topics in those videos are liberal arts etc. In which, unless you want to continue in academia, there is like no work to be found at all / has no use / is not actually researchable (hence they always refer to math etc.). Although that is already true for their respective bachelors / masters.
A PhD in STEM fields is a very different experience from a PhD in non-STEM fields (i.e. humanities). It is, apparently, quite a miserable experience.
rofl now that's what I'd call a depressing disheartening blog...hopefully this really does go up to 100, otherwise I'd be afraid that the writer has just killed himself
The problem I see is, that many seem to "expect" something from a PhD, be it prestige, more money or w/e.
To me, writing my dissertation, being in the academic environment is enough reward. I don't care about expensive cars, clothes, houses..and I most certainly don't care about a prestigious "career". I do the PhD 100% for myself (doctorat actually; in Austria we have two different programs, but I'll just refer to it as PhD otherwise it gets to complicated...). I don't expect to get somehow "rewarded" afterwards.
its kinda like swearing, it's only bad becuase its commonly agrred that it is. I feel the same way how the OP goes about the circle graph, but only opposite
On August 08 2011 02:59 Ganfei2 wrote: The American school system is far too bureaucratized, in every field, including med and law school. America basically just sucks. 70k a year for law school with room/board and misc. expenses is a joke.
As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to stay in the US is 1. You only speak English, 2. You already have a career here, 3. You like America's system of rights.
Outside of that, America sucks and in the next 50 years the economy is going to get raped and America is going to turn into a gigantic country of services sans production, like Britain has.
You sound like an extremely learned and dispassionate observer, but what does this have to do with PhDs.
I think there should be a new rule on TL: The 'stop hallucinating that you are Alexis Fucking de Tocqueville' rule.
On August 08 2011 02:59 Ganfei2 wrote: The American school system is far too bureaucratized, in every field, including med and law school. America basically just sucks. 70k a year for law school with room/board and misc. expenses is a joke.
As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to stay in the US is 1. You only speak English, 2. You already have a career here, 3. You like America's system of rights.
Outside of that, America sucks and in the next 50 years the economy is going to get raped and America is going to turn into a gigantic country of services sans production, like Britain has.
You sound like an extremely learned and dispassionate observer, but what does this have to do with PhDs.
I think there should be a new rule on TL: The 'stop hallucinating that you are Alexis Fucking de Tocqueville' rule.
Yeah, because I'm such a biased and uneducated observer and I have no idea about anything
On August 08 2011 02:59 Ganfei2 wrote: The American school system is far too bureaucratized, in every field, including med and law school. America basically just sucks. 70k a year for law school with room/board and misc. expenses is a joke.
As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to stay in the US is 1. You only speak English, 2. You already have a career here, 3. You like America's system of rights.
Outside of that, America sucks and in the next 50 years the economy is going to get raped and America is going to turn into a gigantic country of services sans production, like Britain has.
You sound like an extremely learned and dispassionate observer, but what does this have to do with PhDs.
I think there should be a new rule on TL: The 'stop hallucinating that you are Alexis Fucking de Tocqueville' rule.
I'd say the big thing is a PhD is a LOT less attractive when you work yourself into big debt getting it, so the US is going to bleed talented postgrad-seekers who leave to work elsewhere. I mean I wouldn't necessarily agree with the third point(I'd say the main reason to come to the US to do a PhD is so you can work with specific places or people) but they are the external factors that really do have an impact, unfortunately.
On August 08 2011 02:18 Lebesgue wrote:Job market for maths is tiny compared to Economics.
Any math Ph.D from a good school can get a (worst-case) high-paying actuarial job or a (best-case) very high-paying hedge fund/quantitative finance job.
The academic job market is pretty brutal, of course.
On August 08 2011 02:18 Lebesgue wrote:Job market for maths is tiny compared to Economics.
Any math Ph.D from a good school can get a (worst-case) high-paying actuarial job or a (best-case) very high-paying hedge fund/quantitative finance job.
The academic job market is pretty brutal, of course.
Why would they be able to do actuarial work? From what I can tell its not pure math by any stretch of the imagination, there's a lot of econ/stat/mgmt type stuff. Plus they'd have to start taking the tests just like everyone else without of the focused preparation of someone with an actuarial science degree
On August 08 2011 02:59 Ganfei2 wrote: The American school system is far too bureaucratized, in every field, including med and law school. America basically just sucks. 70k a year for law school with room/board and misc. expenses is a joke.
As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to stay in the US is 1. You only speak English, 2. You already have a career here, 3. You like America's system of rights.
Outside of that, America sucks and in the next 50 years the economy is going to get raped and America is going to turn into a gigantic country of services sans production, like Britain has.
You sound like an extremely learned and dispassionate observer, but what does this have to do with PhDs.
I think there should be a new rule on TL: The 'stop hallucinating that you are Alexis Fucking de Tocqueville' rule.
Yeah, because I'm such a biased and uneducated observer and I have no idea about anything
Depending on which subject you get your PhD in, you actually get paid a stipend and all of your tuition is paid for; this typically applies to science/engineering fields. In terms of getting a job, it definitely depends on what your field is. I am a PhD student in chemical engineering, and while another student that I know in the same department who specializes in reverse osmosis membranes is having issues finding a job since she's overqualified, there are others who specialize in process control, semiconductor manufacturing, or biotech who have a much easier time finding a job since the demand for educated individuals is there in those fields.
In my own personal experience, what I learned in undergraduate is only the surface of chemical engineering; in graduate school I pretty much picked what I was interested in and learned it in much much greater detail while setting aside the topics that I didn't care for. To anyone who thinks that this is a pointless waste of time, I just point to what some of my friends who work in the (semiconductor) industry have told me: that it's much more difficult to get promoted if you only have a BS degree. Now, take what I say with a grain of salt because I don't have knowledge of many other fields but I believe it's similar for biotechnology companies.
Honestly, it's very very case-by-case specific and not black and white as a lot of people are claiming.
On August 08 2011 02:18 Lebesgue wrote:Job market for maths is tiny compared to Economics.
Any math Ph.D from a good school can get a (worst-case) high-paying actuarial job or a (best-case) very high-paying hedge fund/quantitative finance job.
The academic job market is pretty brutal, of course.
Why would they be able to do actuarial work? From what I can tell its not pure math by any stretch of the imagination, there's a lot of econ/stat/mgmt type stuff. Plus they'd have to start taking the tests just like everyone else without of the focused preparation of someone with an actuarial science degree
Without wanting to sound arrogant, anyone capable of getting a math Ph.D from a good school should be able to breeze through the first few exams at the very least, with fairly minimal preparation. An actuarial science degree is fairly rigorous as undergraduate degrees go, but it's basically impossible to compare the level of quantitative ability required to complete a major in actuarial science with that required to complete a Ph.D at a top school. Quantitative skills transfer well; having 99.9+th percentile quantitative skills means that the 'focused preparation' that one would receive in the course of an actuarial science degree is not necessary.
On August 08 2011 02:18 Lebesgue wrote:Job market for maths is tiny compared to Economics.
Any math Ph.D from a good school can get a (worst-case) high-paying actuarial job or a (best-case) very high-paying hedge fund/quantitative finance job.
The academic job market is pretty brutal, of course.
Why would they be able to do actuarial work? From what I can tell its not pure math by any stretch of the imagination, there's a lot of econ/stat/mgmt type stuff. Plus they'd have to start taking the tests just like everyone else without of the focused preparation of someone with an actuarial science degree
Without wanting to sound arrogant, anyone capable of getting a math Ph.D from a good school should be able to breeze through the first few exams at the very least, with fairly minimal preparation. An actuarial science degree is fairly rigorous as undergraduate degrees go, but it's basically impossible to compare the level of quantitative ability required to complete a major in actuarial science with that required to complete a Ph.D at a top school. Quantitative skills transfer well; having 99.9+th percentile quantitative skills means that the 'focused preparation' that one would receive in the course of an actuarial science degree is not necessary.
I don't think anyone would doubt that a math phd has the capability to become an actuary. But their phd work, most likely, did not prepare them to be an actuary. They'll still have to study like a fresh undergraduate (perhaps less so as you mention, but they will need to put in some effort). And at the end of the day, they'll start at roughly the same place as the undergraduate that started being an actuary from the beginning.
At this point, one would wonder if it the phd was "worth it" from a career standpoint. In other words, is it better to be placed higher in the company as a fresh phd vs. having the 5-7 years of career experience and advancement by starting after undergrad? In most cases like this where the job you land can be achieved by someone with a lesser degree, it makes more sense to pursue the latter rather than the former.
Hmm....here PhD trick....if u smoke and drink a lot u live longer....ever notice people who workout tromendously and take care of themselves...die sooner? then those who enjoy themselves?....food for thought
On August 09 2011 22:08 iamtrickster wrote: Hmm....here PhD trick....if u smoke and drink a lot u live longer....ever notice people who workout tromendously and take care of themselves...die sooner? then those who enjoy themselves?....food for thought
wow, just wow... where, might I ask, did you get this stagering information?
On August 09 2011 22:08 iamtrickster wrote: Hmm....here PhD trick....if u smoke and drink a lot u live longer....ever notice people who workout tromendously and take care of themselves...die sooner? then those who enjoy themselves?....food for thought
On August 09 2011 22:08 iamtrickster wrote: Hmm....here PhD trick....if u smoke and drink a lot u live longer....ever notice people who workout tromendously and take care of themselves...die sooner? then those who enjoy themselves?....food for thought
wow, just wow... where, might I ask, did you get this stagering information?
On August 07 2011 14:16 Veldril wrote: I'm going to start my Ph.D. in Chemistry this Fall, at Texas A&M University. Don't know if there is anyone here at TAMU or going to join TAMU soon, lol.
Anyway, one of the professor here game me a really insightful thought of what is PhD He said that undergraduate study and below is a teaching to a group of people, but a PhD is about teaching a person as an individual, tailoring him/her in a way that would fit his/her characters. He also said that you need to be able to learn by yourself, not relying on other people to give you knowledge. I will bear those words in my mind when I start my study soon.
@0mar
I think people value different things. Many people value knowledge more than monetary gain, and they are already happy to do a hard work and push that boundary out a little bit more. Driving the same old car is not that bad, if you don't think it is bad in the first place (and if you really take a good care of your car).
Still, saying the money doesn't matter is simply doe-eyed idealism. Money does matter because your expenses go up as you mature. Living in a dingy apartment when you are 35 or 40 is a lot different than when you are 22. If you ever get married or enter a long-term relationship, you need to have stability. In the research sciences, you are a wandering scientist with no real ties until you secure that first job. You are on contract until the project ends or the grant money dries up.
My brother did a PhD in Chemistry and he absolutely regrets it to this day. His only options right now are dead-end post docs at MIT. Yes, you read that right. Even in chemistry, there's a huge glut of PhDs. You need to put out absolutely outstanding work which is all luck anyways, it's all dependent on what's hot in the field and what project you actually get.
I was in your position. I said to myself, money doesn't matter, as long as I get enough to live on, I'll be happy. Well, that was an extremely immature attitude because now my car is breaking down, my apartment rent has gone up twice in two years, gas, food and all these other things are increasing in price and our stipend didn't go up this year again due to budget problems. The best I could hope for by finishing my PhD was a dead-end postdoc slaving away for 60+ hours a week. Then in 4+ years, I could try my hand at jobs in industry (lol 200 applicants per job, yea fucking right) or professorships. You can go adjunct faculty, which basically means you teach 5-7 classes and get paid about 6k per class for the entire year. You won't hear this from any of your professors, you have to find this out yourself. Spend a day on google to look at your career choices after the PhD. That's why I quit my PhD because furthering knowledge doesn't mean shit if you can't even earn a middle class wage. It won't hurt right now, but in 3 years, when you are slaving away for the 3rd night in a row, at 12am, you'll realize that a fucking bus driver makes twice as much as you do, works half as much and can actually take a vacation now and then.
Leaving the PhD was the best decision I ever made. Medicine is far more rewarding, relevant and is well-compensated.
Doctors are very well compensated for the work they do. Your earning potential is only limited by the time you put in. You get paid by the patient/procedure, if you know the system. For example, charging for a 10 system check vs a 3 system check is a difference in about 5 minutes of work, but pays about triple depending on the insurance plan. You get paid a very nice salary as a doctor plus you have massive earning potential on top of that through clinic hours/procedure documentation/consulting.
Before anyone talks about the healthcare system and how it's so broken, doctors' compensation is a very small part of a very massive pie. If you don't make the career lucrative, then no one would want to be a doctor. You are talking about 4 years undergraduate, 4 years medical school, and at least 3 years as a resident. That's 11 years of training devoted solely to becoming a physician. Then, you are responsible for patient outcomes while any other profession is merely responsible for a small portion of a project (eg web designer, MBA, accounting). The responsibility that a physician has is in another galaxy by comparison. If anything, doctors should be compensated more. Your average doctor works 60 hours a week plus time to write notes, file paperwork and continuing his/her medical education as required by state boards in order to continue practicing.
I agree with you completely. I quit my PhD one year into the PhD. When I quit, the one medical physicist with a Bachelors who had a job, told me that I was recognizing the physicist job plight early and congratulated me. I would advise your brother to suck it up and retrain. I'm happy now that I'm not in academia. My after work hours aren't also for work.
My physics friends are now experiencing the same issues with job searching and they're inventing LinkedIn profiles that exaggerate their TA experience. One friend asked me if I missed physics and I said no. I like being middle class now.
My dad has a PhD in political science, got it during the 60's focusing on soviet studies at the age of 27. He later moved to the USSR during the cold war (70's) working for the US embassy in Moscow inthe state department. I've asked him multiple times over the years and he's been heavily outspoken against a PhD, as he puts it, "PhD's aren't needed unless you plan to become something like a professor." He said that basically, it was a waste of years of work because he found that in the government workplace, PhD's aren't as valued as he expected them to be. He also told me that they're valued even less now seeing as we aren't in a cold war.
He had his first wife and child while attending michigan state, so that coupled with his PhD from Iowa...well he regrets not having a social life during college. He resents MSU because he says he had no fun, between working to put food on the table and getting A's.
On August 10 2011 02:15 DetriusXii wrote:I agree with you completely. I quit my PhD one year into the PhD. When I quit, the one medical physicist with a Bachelors who had a job, told me that I was recognizing the physicist job plight early and congratulated me. I would advise your brother to suck it up and retrain. I'm happy now that I'm not in academia. My after work hours aren't also for work.
What did you go into after you quit?
On topic: I think the lesson is that you should only go for a PhD if you are really certain that is what you want to do after you have researched what the job market looks like in your particular field.
On August 10 2011 02:15 DetriusXii wrote:I agree with you completely. I quit my PhD one year into the PhD. When I quit, the one medical physicist with a Bachelors who had a job, told me that I was recognizing the physicist job plight early and congratulated me. I would advise your brother to suck it up and retrain. I'm happy now that I'm not in academia. My after work hours aren't also for work.
What did you go into after you quit?
On topic: I think the lesson is that you should only go for a PhD if you are really certain that is what you want to do after you have researched what the job market looks like in your particular field.
Computer science. I had courses from my first undergrad in computer science and I was still oriented towards something logical. I have a job with the City of Regina now as a programmer analyst now. Although, the market for computer science degree holders can be difficult, but I attribute that to the fact that not all degree holders were programmers or passionate about programming languages or learning new technologies.
On August 08 2011 02:18 Lebesgue wrote:Job market for maths is tiny compared to Economics.
Any math Ph.D from a good school can get a (worst-case) high-paying actuarial job or a (best-case) very high-paying hedge fund/quantitative finance job.
The academic job market is pretty brutal, of course.
Why would they be able to do actuarial work? From what I can tell its not pure math by any stretch of the imagination, there's a lot of econ/stat/mgmt type stuff. Plus they'd have to start taking the tests just like everyone else without of the focused preparation of someone with an actuarial science degree
On August 08 2011 02:59 Ganfei2 wrote: The American school system is far too bureaucratized, in every field, including med and law school. America basically just sucks. 70k a year for law school with room/board and misc. expenses is a joke.
As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to stay in the US is 1. You only speak English, 2. You already have a career here, 3. You like America's system of rights.
Outside of that, America sucks and in the next 50 years the economy is going to get raped and America is going to turn into a gigantic country of services sans production, like Britain has.
You sound like an extremely learned and dispassionate observer, but what does this have to do with PhDs.
I think there should be a new rule on TL: The 'stop hallucinating that you are Alexis Fucking de Tocqueville' rule.
Yeah, because I'm such a biased and uneducated observer and I have no idea about anything
That is what we all think, yes.
Because the math is the important part of being an actuary. If you can get a degree in math, especially applied math you've already done the math for being an actuary, everything else on the exam is cake. Now a phd in math, and lololol you should absolutely destroy the exam. Even a bachelors in applied math will absolutely destroy the earning potential of a phd in economics. Outside of academia and book writing economics degrees don't impress in the business world its the degree you get because XYZ certs required a degree so you took an easy one.
(only have my economics degree because it was literally 3 extra classes to grab from my other degree plans)
On August 09 2011 21:58 Kambing wrote: I don't think anyone would doubt that a math phd has the capability to become an actuary. But their phd work, most likely, did not prepare them to be an actuary. They'll still have to study like a fresh undergraduate (perhaps less so as you mention, but they will need to put in some effort). And at the end of the day, they'll start at roughly the same place as the undergraduate that started being an actuary from the beginning.
At this point, one would wonder if it the phd was "worth it" from a career standpoint. In other words, is it better to be placed higher in the company as a fresh phd vs. having the 5-7 years of career experience and advancement by starting after undergrad? In most cases like this where the job you land can be achieved by someone with a lesser degree, it makes more sense to pursue the latter rather than the former.
I mentioned that being an actuary is kind of a worst-case situation for a math Ph.D from a good school. Obviously it makes more sense to get a degree in actuarial science if you want to be an actuary, but it's still a high-paying job.
On the other hand, quantitative finance jobs pay better and look explicitly for math/physics Ph.Ds or mathematical finance masters degrees. There is no bachelor's degree that will prepare you for a career in this, although you may have a chance out of undergrad if you have extremely strong quantitative skills and go to a school like Harvard, Princeton, or MIT.
If you know 100% that you want to be an actuary from the moment you begin university, you should major in actuarial science. If you know 100% that you want to do quantitative finance, you should be certain that you have 99+th percentile quantitative skills, and then do an M.Sc in quantitative finance (or get hired out of undergrad if you are really good/lucky). But most people do not have this degree of certainty. A Ph.D in math qualifies you for all of these jobs and many more (especially assuming that you make some effort to pick up a bit of probability, statistics, numerical analysis, and programming ability), as well as academic and teaching jobs. Obviously the Ph.D has a higher opportunity cost but it is much more flexible and more impressive.
On August 09 2011 21:58 Kambing wrote: I don't think anyone would doubt that a math phd has the capability to become an actuary. But their phd work, most likely, did not prepare them to be an actuary. They'll still have to study like a fresh undergraduate (perhaps less so as you mention, but they will need to put in some effort). And at the end of the day, they'll start at roughly the same place as the undergraduate that started being an actuary from the beginning.
At this point, one would wonder if it the phd was "worth it" from a career standpoint. In other words, is it better to be placed higher in the company as a fresh phd vs. having the 5-7 years of career experience and advancement by starting after undergrad? In most cases like this where the job you land can be achieved by someone with a lesser degree, it makes more sense to pursue the latter rather than the former.
I mentioned that being an actuary is kind of a worst-case situation for a math Ph.D from a good school. Obviously it makes more sense to get a degree in actuarial science if you want to be an actuary, but it's still a high-paying job.
On the other hand, quantitative finance jobs pay better and look explicitly for math/physics Ph.Ds or mathematical finance masters degrees. There is no bachelor's degree that will prepare you for a career in this, although you may have a chance out of undergrad if you have extremely strong quantitative skills and go to a school like Harvard, Princeton, or MIT.
If you know 100% that you want to be an actuary from the moment you begin university, you should major in actuarial science. If you know 100% that you want to do quantitative finance, you should be certain that you have 99+th percentile quantitative skills, and then do an M.Sc in quantitative finance (or get hired out of undergrad if you are really good/lucky). But most people do not have this degree of certainty. A Ph.D in math qualifies you for all of these jobs and many more (especially assuming that you make some effort to pick up a bit of probability, statistics, numerical analysis, and programming ability), as well as academic and teaching jobs. Obviously the Ph.D has a higher opportunity cost but it is much more flexible and more impressive.
I would argue that by the time you finish your undergraduate degree, you should have an idea of what you're doing with it. I don't disagree that a phd gives you strictly more opportunities than a bachelor's in the equivalent field. However at the same time, I stress to anyone considering a phd that it isn't for people who are still trying to find what they want to do in life. Even though you get a phd at a university, it isn't "more school". It really is an apprenticeship training you for a specific career (specifically, a teaching or research-focused career), and you should enter any phd program with that mindset.
On August 08 2011 02:18 Lebesgue wrote:Job market for maths is tiny compared to Economics.
Any math Ph.D from a good school can get a (worst-case) high-paying actuarial job or a (best-case) very high-paying hedge fund/quantitative finance job.
The academic job market is pretty brutal, of course.
Why would they be able to do actuarial work? From what I can tell its not pure math by any stretch of the imagination, there's a lot of econ/stat/mgmt type stuff. Plus they'd have to start taking the tests just like everyone else without of the focused preparation of someone with an actuarial science degree
On August 08 2011 16:40 Ganfei2 wrote:
On August 08 2011 03:03 Jerubaal wrote:
On August 08 2011 02:59 Ganfei2 wrote: The American school system is far too bureaucratized, in every field, including med and law school. America basically just sucks. 70k a year for law school with room/board and misc. expenses is a joke.
As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to stay in the US is 1. You only speak English, 2. You already have a career here, 3. You like America's system of rights.
Outside of that, America sucks and in the next 50 years the economy is going to get raped and America is going to turn into a gigantic country of services sans production, like Britain has.
You sound like an extremely learned and dispassionate observer, but what does this have to do with PhDs.
I think there should be a new rule on TL: The 'stop hallucinating that you are Alexis Fucking de Tocqueville' rule.
Yeah, because I'm such a biased and uneducated observer and I have no idea about anything
That is what we all think, yes.
Because the math is the important part of being an actuary. If you can get a degree in math, especially applied math you've already done the math for being an actuary, everything else on the exam is cake. Now a phd in math, and lololol you should absolutely destroy the exam. Even a bachelors in applied math will absolutely destroy the earning potential of a phd in economics. Outside of academia and book writing economics degrees don't impress in the business world its the degree you get because XYZ certs required a degree so you took an easy one.
(only have my economics degree because it was literally 3 extra classes to grab from my other degree plans)
You're just super ignorant if you think PhD is economics is easy. If you want I can linked you to some economics papers and maybe you will change your mind because for now you have no fucking clue what econ PhD is about.
What is a joke, is the BA in econ in US. It has nothing to do what economic research is about. And you can't get to any decent PhD program with vanilla BA in Economics. PhD in econ is as hard as in any other science. BA in Economics is good to understand some simple things about the economy and how it works so you can make understand current deficit debate or the problems in EU. That's it.
And lol if you think any PhD in math regardless of their research can get a job. I wonder how can someone specializing in Group Theory get a job in finance, or Algebraic Topology? It seems you just have no clue what phd is about, never been in a program and don't understand how it works. All you do is to repeat stereotypes made by as clueless people as you.
On August 07 2011 23:48 DisneylandSC wrote: So the above videos are not recognizable at all for me. I am doing a PhD in math, specifically in optimization, and for me my counsiler already had a topic I was going to be doing research on. Ofcourse within that topic I still have a lot of freedom but whatever.
Either way mayby it is because all the topics in those videos are liberal arts etc. In which, unless you want to continue in academia, there is like no work to be found at all / has no use / is not actually researchable (hence they always refer to math etc.). Although that is already true for their respective bachelors / masters.
A PhD in STEM fields is a very different experience from a PhD in non-STEM fields (i.e. humanities). It is, apparently, quite a miserable experience.
I like how almost all those points are what I would call positive reasons to do a PhD or are not applicable to me. :D
On August 10 2011 23:02 Kambing wrote:I would argue that by the time you finish your undergraduate degree, you should have an idea of what you're doing with it. I don't disagree that a phd gives you strictly more opportunities than a bachelor's in the equivalent field. However at the same time, I stress to anyone considering a phd that it isn't for people who are still trying to find what they want to do in life. Even though you get a phd at a university, it isn't "more school". It really is an apprenticeship training you for a specific career (specifically, a teaching or research-focused career), and you should enter any phd program with that mindset.
Yeah, I agree with a lot of this. I am not trying to convince people to pursue Ph.Ds in math for the subsequent job opportunities, just asserting that they exist. A Ph.D is a very frustrating process for many people (even very capable people), and for people with very strong quantitative skills there are usually simpler paths to making a lot of money.
On August 11 2011 01:09 Lebesgue wrote:=And lol if you think any PhD in math regardless of their research can get a job. I wonder how can someone specializing in Group Theory get a job in finance, or Algebraic Topology? It seems you just have no clue what phd is about, never been in a program and don't understand how it works. All you do is to repeat stereotypes made by as clueless people as you.
I personally know Ph.Ds or aborted Ph.Ds in algebraic geometry, number theory, and logic who now work in quantitative finance.
On August 07 2011 23:48 DisneylandSC wrote: So the above videos are not recognizable at all for me. I am doing a PhD in math, specifically in optimization, and for me my counsiler already had a topic I was going to be doing research on. Ofcourse within that topic I still have a lot of freedom but whatever.
Either way mayby it is because all the topics in those videos are liberal arts etc. In which, unless you want to continue in academia, there is like no work to be found at all / has no use / is not actually researchable (hence they always refer to math etc.). Although that is already true for their respective bachelors / masters.
A PhD in STEM fields is a very different experience from a PhD in non-STEM fields (i.e. humanities). It is, apparently, quite a miserable experience.
And what makes you think this is not true in STEM fields? My friend is graduating this year with PhD in maths at Oxford. And he is damn worried about getting a job. Add to this lack of scholarship for the last year and you get a nice picture. All the points raised in the links you provided are true in smaller or larger extent regardless of PhD program. Even more so than for me doing PhD in econ. Job market for maths is tiny compared to Economics.
Yes, when I graduated from college being ranked top1 in my department and among few top students among my whole class I had those grand expectations. But life had really changed my perspective. The points raised by 0mar are all relevant. I wouldn't be as negative as him but maybe because we are more lucky in Economics regarding job/salary perspective. That is of course if you are good enough.
Regarding amount of work ph.d requires see points 61 and 62 in that blog. They are really really true.
That is so true about 61 and 62
I'm in a PhD program for Economics as well. My free time consists of 40 minutes of SC2 in the evening, sex once every 3 days, 2 hours of gym on Sundays and a run occasionally at 7 in the morning. I also browse forums, watch GSL and movies during meals. Here is the best part: I don't have even a part time job right now, all the time goes for the research and reading. And shit! guess what? I'm behind the schedule...
It was so funny to me how Manifesto quoted some professor that "once a week is enough". I mean in psychology or sociology when all you do is conduct surveys and publish results it may be right, but the value of such PhD is minimal. Honestly though, the more time you spend on your PhD, the better publications you will have, and the higher the value of your PhD will be.
Also PhD shouldn't be perceived as that dent you make on the outer border of knowledge. It's an irrelevant philosophical perspective for the researcher himself. PhD is, first of all, a salary increment or an academic job opportunity, and that's about it. Most of its value lies in the in-depth knowledge of the subject that you obtain by purposefully reading tons of literature. That knowledge is very marketable and very useful, while that little dent, in all the probability, will never even be referred to by anyone outside your university.
A PhD is a tool. Its the not end of your career but the beginning of your academic career. What you do your dissertation on doesn't matter. It shows is that you can conduct research and have it accepted by members of the academic community. Its a long and hard process that takes a huge amount of work, dedication, and self discipline.
Some of the replies in this thread have made it depressing for me since I am applying to PhD programs this fall haha.
@Slaughter: The issue with the PhD is that the beginning of academic career doesn't matter if the PhD doesn't translate to an income. Postdocs are terrible positions to attain for and they're a symptom that the money is stretching thin. And while there may be a direct value to the PhD, most employers don't know what to do with it and they aren't advertising for abstract value in their job search. Concrete skills matter much more when you're starting off in a career. They get your foot in the door. Soft skills are picked up later in life and contrary to academia, they can be picked up anywhere, and while working in groups with your manager.
Getting a PHD requires creativity. Something a lot of people lack, something a lot of people can only obtain through hammering their head against a wall for a long time, and something a very small number of people can do at the flick of a wrist.
I fall somewhere between the first and second category, depending on the topic. I knew absolutely for sure that going for a PHD after my Masters in Physics w/ Electronics would have been a completely futile gesture. I just wasn't interested and wasn't creative enough in any area to bother with it.
On August 13 2011 01:24 DetriusXii wrote: @Slaughter: The issue with the PhD is that the beginning of academic career doesn't matter if the PhD doesn't translate to an income. Postdocs are terrible positions to attain for and they're a symptom that the money is stretching thin. And while there may be a direct value to the PhD, most employers don't know what to do with it and they aren't advertising for abstract value in their job search. Concrete skills matter much more when you're starting off in a career. They get your foot in the door. Soft skills are picked up later in life and contrary to academia, they can be picked up anywhere, and while working in groups with your manager.
Oh I know that. My PhD in Biological Anthropology won't have much use outside of the academic world except in a few cases in the private sector so I am pretty much locked in
I've discussed this with my supervisor earlier this year - in simple terms, he told me that unless one is extremely enthusiastic about one's topic/subject, there is very little, if any point in doing a PhD. In fact, many of those that started a PhD dropped out later. This is for mathematics.
Fact of the matter is, the job market for PhDs (or, if you like, for anything) is extremely over-saturated right now, and one'd most likely have to look into jobs which have varying degrees of relation to one's PhD.
On August 13 2011 01:35 Bibdy wrote: Getting a PHD requires creativity. Something a lot of people lack, something a lot of people can only obtain through hammering their head against a wall for a long time, and something a very small number of people can do at the flick of a wrist.
I fall somewhere between the first and second category, depending on the topic. I knew absolutely for sure that going for a PHD after my Masters in Physics w/ Electronics would have been a completely futile gesture. I just wasn't interested and wasn't creative enough in any area to bother with it.
Quoted for truth!
Creativity is one of the reasons why I pursued PhD. I don't know how old you guys are, I'm 25, but I've been through enough jobs to realize that if it is not creative, it is a matter of time until you quit.
Life is just not worth it to spend it on routine. And that is not just my opinion. I've attended some psychological seminars (which was a part of a research as well), and I have to tell you that it reflects the stance of many many educated people. There is only so much you can do to make a life brighter: travel, climb mountains, visit night clubs in Netherlands or Moscow, but when you get a family and find yourself pinned down, you need your job to be creative. I'm not saying that PhD is for everyone, but in every one's life there is a moment when it is beneficial to do a research. Even if profession doesn't require it. But some professions just do.
In economics, it is almost mandatory to have research skills to get a decent job. I follow this couple of guys at Wall Street Journal, and they do some crazy research for their articles. I almost wonder if they know they could get a PhD for that. Their articles are always on the front page and on TV. But others just state facts and they get paid shit accordingly. I'm sure they also want to get first page space, but their work is crap, they just don't have skills. I don't know their biographies, but I'm sure they'd do a better job if they were taught to reason philosophically.
I am at the final stages of my PhD in engineering (defend in the next 2-3 months) and at the end of 5 years of graduate school experience, all I have to say is that it was a bittersweet experience. There are good aspects to it if you are interested in academic pursuits in the area of research and there are bad aspects to it when you realize the glaring issues that lie in a PhD.
More often that not it is a toss up between (i) Working in your area of interest where there is little or no funding (or) Working in the whatever project has the most funding so you don't have to do part-time work, TA, etc to sustain yourself. (ii) Working in an area where you can contribute to scientific research and knowledge (or) Working in an industrial problem that has little to do with research but guarantees you a job due to the applied skills gained during the PhD.
It is not as black and white as I am making it out to be and I am probably jaded but actual scientific research these days is being replaced by short-term focused 'research' which deals with some aspect of the industrial problem. In a sense, due to the funding model, university research is becoming more of an R&D division for the industry than a place where people pursue research (if I may) that actually pokes on the wall of the circle of knowledge in the OP. This one of the reasons that engineering PhDs usually have an easier time acquiring a job than some of the pure science PhDs.
This is generally not a bad thing but I just wanted to point out that some of broad generalized statements made in this thread are not necessarily true. A PhD is more than just working in an area of expertise. Of course, after working for 5 years in your niche area, you will be an expert with only 10's of peers in specific area and even an expert with peers in several 100s or 1000's in a broader area across the world. However, it goes beyond just the knowledge as 5 years of graduate school research provides valuable experience in research method, independent thought, communication skills, presentation skills, and so on. Even though, you might lack creativity in your PhD, you would end up being a rather well rounded person at the end of it.
My advice to those thinking about doing a PhD is that if you want to get a doctorate to make more money, it is terrible justification to do a PhD and you are better off getting out after a masters at max. My friends who start working straight after bachelors/masters are making a considerable amount and even though I might get a slightly higher starting payscale (which is dependent on numerous factors), I probably won't be able to recover the loss of not working for 5 years.
On the other hand, if you are not interested in regular office jobs that you get after a bachelors and so on, are passionate about research, and want to eventually work in R&D, a PhD is pretty much a must have to break into this field.
As I mentioned at the start, there will always be trade-offs and compromises made during the course of the PhD on the research topic, method, and application; but as long as you working in the broader field of interest; it is always possible to pursue the niche area of interest as a side project while working on the more pragmatic project as your thesis work.
At the end of 5 years, I am happy/satisfied with my decision to do a PhD but at the same time if I knew what I know at the start of it, I could have made some better choices along the way. I think I have rambled on a bit too much here but hopefully I have been to provide some insight into a PhD here.
So, in few months I'll have to start considering where to go for a PhD in Philosophy. Since my goal is to become a professor, I guess this is the only way to go. I'm not afraid of moving to other countries/cities, but I wonder if it is really important where do you get your PhD.
Is it 'bigger' if you get it in, let's say, Cambridge than Helsinki? Paris or Milan? I'm believing that it's more or less the same, then if you become a professor you can publish more important stuff and maybe more prestigious universities will ask you to come to teach. Do you know if that's how it works?
On September 04 2013 22:32 SoSexy wrote: So, in few months I'll have to start considering where to go for a PhD in Philosophy. Since my goal is to become a professor, I guess this is the only way to go. I'm not afraid of moving to other countries/cities, but I wonder if it is really important where do you get your PhD.
Is it 'bigger' if you get it in, let's say, Cambridge than Helsinki? Paris or Milan? I'm believing that it's more or less the same, then if you become a professor you can publish more important stuff and maybe more prestigious universities will ask you to come to teach. Do you know if that's how it works?
Depends upon a WHOLE range of factors such as funding, supervisors, research institutes, quality of research (is it international?), industry links (where appropriate), specialisms of academic staff, resources available to you, teaching opportunities, an active graduate school and research community etc. etc.
The reputation of the institution is one thing, but this will mean very little if, for example, your supervisor co-publishes all your work or if you’re told “thank you for your money, now come back in three years when you’ve written your thesis.” Think about how better off you will be when you complete if you have two years teaching experience, a journal publication and three paper presentations under your belt and a 5-year career plan compared to someone that JUST went to a high rep. Uni.
Always ask about completion rates too.
As a PhD/DPhil candidate you NEED to be active in researching what makes your prospective institution best for yoru needs. That said, all the above should ‘hopefully’ come with a good rep institution, Philosophy is not my field so I’d suggest you start out by finding out which research institutes have the most recognised outputs and then begin to find out what kinds of support they have on offer and what other kinds of added value they can give you as a prospective candidate.
Hey guys, Im considering doing a PhD but was wondering, what kind of degree did you get for your undergrad? a first class equivalent? (Im studying in the UK) I really want to do one just because im interested in learning more , but my grades arent great, Im nearing a First class but still not quite a first class and Ive got 2 years left. I reckon with hard work I can get that First class.
How does funding work for a PhD? Do you have to look for sponsors outside the universiy or does the university provide you with funding? Any advice you guys can give me? Do we need lots of research projects during the summer to help?
I wanted to do a PhD in theoretical physics, but I didn't get the grades. I'm passionate about physics, really studious, and I'm certain based on my interactions with them that I know more about physics than most PhD students. Unfortunately, I'm too much of a "free spirit" when it comes to study and during my time at university I kept going off on things that interested me. I would study for "my sake" rather than for getting good grades. It ended up that my grades weren't good enough to stand a chance of a funded place on a PhD.
For a while I was extremely depressed with this state of affairs. As it happens, though, it turned out to be a cloud with a silver lining. I never had to follow a supervisor, so I was free to work on my own projects. I continued to study and research physics, yet I branched out into software development to give myself some diversity and a fall-back option if it ever happened that my physics dreams were crushed. I got an idea for an AI program in handwriting recognition and my physics skills were invaluable in seeing that project through. At this point, I have work that I'm extremely proud of in both entangled systems and artifical intelligence. I anticipate that I'll meet with some external success soon. I'm hoping to get published in a physics journal or get a place on PhD. After spending so much time alone in the "dark tunnel" (I'm in my late 20s now), I can hardly think of anything I'd like better than some peers and some community.
On September 04 2013 23:38 Hadronsbecrazy wrote: Hey guys, Im considering doing a PhD but was wondering, what kind of degree did you get for your undergrad? a first class equivalent? (Im studying in the UK) I really want to do one just because im interested in learning more , but my grades arent great, Im nearing a First class but still not quite a first class and Ive got 2 years left. I reckon with hard work I can get that First class.
How does funding work for a PhD? Do you have to look for sponsors outside the universiy or does the university provide you with funding? Any advice you guys can give me? Do we need lots of research projects during the summer to help?
I can't answer your questions because I'm not familiar with the UK's education system. If it's anything like here, you can get grants if you're good, or borrow money from the government if you need it to pay for your studies and at least part of your rent/food/etc. Besides that, you may need to work a couple of hours on the side, although perhaps it's not necessarily where you need depending on the quality of student aid.
There are very few "sponsors" outside of the university and the government, besides actually working, unless you're particularly good. If you're good (LIKE MAH SELF), people will toss jobs and internships at you, some of which can be credited as courses and go toward getting your degree.
That said I'm mostly answering because I thought it was kind of funny... "Hey guys, kinda thinking of picking up one of these, how are the specs? Is it better than the iphone?"
On September 04 2013 23:38 Hadronsbecrazy wrote: Hey guys, Im considering doing a PhD but was wondering, what kind of degree did you get for your undergrad? a first class equivalent? (Im studying in the UK) I really want to do one just because im interested in learning more , but my grades arent great, Im nearing a First class but still not quite a first class and Ive got 2 years left. I reckon with hard work I can get that First class.
How does funding work for a PhD? Do you have to look for sponsors outside the universiy or does the university provide you with funding? Any advice you guys can give me? Do we need lots of research projects during the summer to help?
Your first port of call is prospective Universities. For the past several years now Research Council funding goes directly to Universities in a ‘funding block’ which works out as a set number of PhD/DPhil studentships (in previous years individual students applied directly to the Research Council). If your University doesn’t have a funding block you will not get funding from a research council, and block funding is HIGHLY competitive.
In addition to this Universities may also have their own partial or even full fee grants, sometimes available on a means-tested basis. Corporate or charitable sponsors may also approach Universities with money to issue a certain number of grants available to students, again there may/will be eligibility criteria.
Currently there is no mainstream govern loan system for postgraduate study (Research Council funding is via a grant) in the UK. A career development loan from a bank would be an alternative, as would private sponsors such as employers or charities, but again they are likely to have eligibility criteria.
If you are study Full-Time in the UK on a BA/BSc and are getting close to 1sts in your first year you should be well on track to get a 1st in your final result if you keep up the hard work and continue to improve; typically your first year’s grades do not count to your overall result, you only need to pass (however do check this with your institution).
It will depend upon your field and expertise, and professional experience, but generally it would be expected for you to go from Bachelors to Masters and then to Doctoral study.
On September 04 2013 23:38 Hadronsbecrazy wrote: Hey guys, Im considering doing a PhD but was wondering, what kind of degree did you get for your undergrad? a first class equivalent? (Im studying in the UK) I really want to do one just because im interested in learning more , but my grades arent great, Im nearing a First class but still not quite a first class and Ive got 2 years left. I reckon with hard work I can get that First class.
How does funding work for a PhD? Do you have to look for sponsors outside the universiy or does the university provide you with funding? Any advice you guys can give me? Do we need lots of research projects during the summer to help?
I'm not an expert since I'm still doing my undergrad degree but my understanding is that a first isn't required to do a PhD, a 2:1 is sufficient. Obviously having a first is beneficial though.
On September 04 2013 22:32 SoSexy wrote: So, in few months I'll have to start considering where to go for a PhD in Philosophy. Since my goal is to become a professor, I guess this is the only way to go. I'm not afraid of moving to other countries/cities, but I wonder if it is really important where do you get your PhD.
Is it 'bigger' if you get it in, let's say, Cambridge than Helsinki? Paris or Milan? I'm believing that it's more or less the same, then if you become a professor you can publish more important stuff and maybe more prestigious universities will ask you to come to teach. Do you know if that's how it works?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
I was considering a Ph.D. in philosophy before I went military, and where you go has a HUGE effect on your future prospects for a job. Getting your Ph.D. at a Rutgers/NYU/Oxford/MIT/U Mich Ann Arbor/etc. looks really good. What you need to be looking for is this; who are you working with when you get your Ph.D.? The name of the institution isn't the thing that matters, but the names of the people that you worked with and learned from. Being able to say that you worked with (for example) Philip Kitcher when your dissertation was on philosophy of science/epistemology of science (one of our most recent faculty appointments at the college I went to) while studying can be a massive boon to your job search.
Use this website. It is a general ranking of universities based on philosophy specialties. Great resource to see where you should aim for. It's a very tough market out there for philosophy professors. There were two new jobs that opened up at my college over the past 5 years or so and each one had over 300 applicants. One (for political philosophy/epistemology) was from Columbia and the other was from the University of Western Ontario.
On September 04 2013 23:38 Hadronsbecrazy wrote: Hey guys, Im considering doing a PhD but was wondering, what kind of degree did you get for your undergrad? a first class equivalent? (Im studying in the UK) I really want to do one just because im interested in learning more , but my grades arent great, Im nearing a First class but still not quite a first class and Ive got 2 years left. I reckon with hard work I can get that First class.
How does funding work for a PhD? Do you have to look for sponsors outside the universiy or does the university provide you with funding? Any advice you guys can give me? Do we need lots of research projects during the summer to help?
I got a PhD position with a 2:1, it's certainly possible.
Deleuze pretty much summed it up, but I have one thing to add. The reason I got my PhD position was because I engaged my third year lecturers in debate and conversation and challenged them when they weren't explaining something properly. I don't mean during lectures with 200-300 people watching but during the smaller classes / practical sessions. That way I got to know one lecturer who was very successful and received a number of research grants every year (although I didn't know it at the time, I was just being stubborn). These research grants normally come with 1 or 2 PhD positions attached to them and low-and-behold I was offered one of them.
tl;dr do a project/classes with a professor who publishes a lot of good papers and get yourself noticed
On September 04 2013 23:45 GhastlyUprising wrote: I wanted to do a PhD in theoretical physics, but I didn't get the grades. I'm passionate about physics, really studious, and I'm certain based on my interactions with them that I know more about physics than most PhD students. Unfortunately, I'm too much of a "free spirit" when it comes to study and during my time at university I kept going off on things that interested me. I would study for "my sake" rather than for getting good grades. It ended up that my grades weren't good enough to stand a chance of a funded place on a PhD.
For a while I was extremely depressed with this state of affairs. As it happens, though, it turned out to be a cloud with a silver lining. I never had to follow a supervisor, so I was free to work on my own projects. I continued to study and research physics, yet I branched out into software development to give myself some diversity and a fall-back option if it ever happened that my physics dreams were crushed. I got an idea for an AI program in handwriting recognition and my physics skills were invaluable in seeing that project through. At this point, I have work that I'm extremely proud of in both entangled systems and artifical intelligence. I anticipate that I'll meet with some external success soon. I'm hoping to get published in a physics journal or get a place on PhD. After spending so much time alone in the "dark tunnel" (I'm in my late 20s now), I can hardly think of anything I'd like better than some peers and some community.
Hi! I did a PhD in particle physics (phenomenology). Not quite what you are looking for maybe, but close enough for me to give some input I think.
To get a PhD position, you need something more concrete than work that you are impressed by yourself, or your own opinion that you know more physics than others. Anyone can say that (not saying you lie, just that it won't hold in an interview). You need some way of proving that you will do well in a PhD, such as good grades on at least a few of the high level courses, or a good recommendation letter from your masters supervisor, published papers in a decent journal, or something like that.
Problem is that there are too many lunatics around in theoretical physics, people that are convinced that they have found some brilliant solution that everyone else have overlooked. I got myself (and still get) frequent mails from people trying to push their brilliant (but surprisingly not published in a serious peer-reviewed paper...) ideas onto me. Only because my PhD gave me an email and small homepage on the theoretical physics webpage... With your background of working alone for a long time (as I understand), it is very important that you prove that you are not one of them. And to do that, you really need others in the field to review your work and pass their impression on to your potential PhD employer. Examples are the ones I mentioned above: grades on a course, recommendation letter, or decision to publish your work in a decent journal.
On September 04 2013 22:32 SoSexy wrote: So, in few months I'll have to start considering where to go for a PhD in Philosophy. Since my goal is to become a professor, I guess this is the only way to go. I'm not afraid of moving to other countries/cities, but I wonder if it is really important where do you get your PhD.
Is it 'bigger' if you get it in, let's say, Cambridge than Helsinki? Paris or Milan? I'm believing that it's more or less the same, then if you become a professor you can publish more important stuff and maybe more prestigious universities will ask you to come to teach. Do you know if that's how it works?
First a word of caution: it is extremely hard to get a permanent position in research. I also imagine that philosophy may not be most funded area around (although that is only my guess, I am happy to be wrong on this). If you want to go for research in philosophy, by all means do. But: keep in mind that you may change your mind, or you may find the road to a permanent position to be too hard, and at that point you want to have alternatives. So check up carefully (ask staff at your uni) what kind of work (outside academia) you can get with a philosophy PhD, and consider choosing place and area of research with this in mind. (For example maybe ethics will give you more industry work than history of philosophy, what do I know?)
Otherwise, yes, it is important to get a good group, good supervisor and good project for your PhD. A good PhD record (good publications, good connections with other groups, and not least a better understand that you got from your great supervisor) makes it sooo much easier to get a good postdoc. With a crappy PhD, you have to fight your way back up again as postdoc, which is possible, but requires a lot more work.
How to find a good group? Ummm, I am not senior enough to give you a good answer I think... Ask the people at your uni, they can tell you (unless they are a crappy group themselves that is ).
On September 05 2013 00:46 Cascade wrote: To get a PhD position, you need something more concrete than work that you are impressed by yourself, or your own opinion that you know more physics than others. Anyone can say that (not saying you lie, just that it won't hold in an interview). You need some way of proving that you will do well in a PhD, such as good grades on at least a few of the high level courses, or a good recommendation letter from your masters supervisor, published papers in a decent journal, or something like that.
Thanks for the condescension, but the reason I'm proud of my work is that I believe it's objectively an important contribution to the discipline. You're damn right I'm determined to get it published. I consider it to be far more consequential than the average PhD work, which does nothing but slightly further the ideas of the supervisor and disappears into a drawer somewhere immediately after it is defended. (Condescension works both ways, you know.)
On September 05 2013 00:46 Cascade wrote:Problem is that there are too many lunatics around in theoretical physics, people that are convinced that they have found some brilliant solution that everyone else have overlooked. I got myself (and still get) frequent mails from people trying to push their brilliant (but surprisingly not published in a serious peer-reviewed paper...) ideas onto me. Only because my PhD gave me an email and small homepage on the theoretical physics webpage... With your background of working alone for a long time (as I understand), it is very important that you prove that you are not one of them. And to do that, you really need others in the field to review your work and pass their impression on to your potential PhD employer. Examples are the ones I mentioned above: grades on a course, recommendation letter, or decision to publish your work in a decent journal.
My reaction to this paragraph is that you've just committed the scientific analogue of the right-wing scaremongering about a council estate full of welfare queens with ten kids and a Porsche parked up the drive-way.
You wilfully conflate innocent emails by some enthusiast, asking whether such-and-such a wild speculation is borne out by academic physics, with a 50 page dissertation by some zealous crank about why general relativity is wrong. Why should someone be dismissed as a crank merely because of the fact (unavoidable from his point of view) that he isn't a paid-up member of the academic inner-circle? Shouldn't his work speak for itself? Isn't the precedent of Einstein, and the dozens of independent gentlemen scientists in the 19th century, enough to make you wary of tarring?
On September 05 2013 00:46 Cascade wrote: Problem is that there are too many lunatics around in theoretical physics, people that are convinced that they have found some brilliant solution that everyone else have overlooked. I got myself (and still get) frequent mails from people trying to push their brilliant (but surprisingly not published in a serious peer-reviewed paper...) ideas onto me. Only because my PhD gave me an email and small homepage on the theoretical physics webpage...
On September 04 2013 23:00 NeThZOR wrote: I need to make one of those dents.
Having just finished my own PhD, I would say that NeThZOR's attitude is the only good reason to pursue such a degree. It may be different in computer science (someone in the thread mentioned 1 day a week, which sounds incredibly optimistic to me), but in the life sciences it is an all-consuming activity. If spending your life doing novel research is the only way you see yourself being happy, then do it; if there is anything else, go in that direction. I would describe myself that way, so I do see my choice to enter a PhD program a good one, but it was probably not for some of my classmates. If you simply want to "learn more", then the masters is appropriate degree.
On September 04 2013 23:00 NeThZOR wrote: I need to make one of those dents.
Having just finished my own PhD, I would say that NeThZOR's attitude is the only good reason to pursue such a degree. It may be different in computer science (someone in the thread mentioned 1 day a week, which sounds incredibly optimistic to me), but in the life sciences it is an all-consuming activity. If spending your life doing novel research is the only way you see yourself being happy, then do it; if there is anything else, go in that direction. I would describe myself that way, so I do see my choice to enter a PhD program a good one, but it was probably not for some of my classmates. If you simply want to "learn more", then the masters is appropriate degree.
I agree. Lots of people confuse wanting to learn more with wanting to do research. That said a Masters is always good to take that interim step.
I would be a cold day in hell before I let an undergrad on a DPhil.
On September 04 2013 23:38 Hadronsbecrazy wrote: Hey guys, Im considering doing a PhD but was wondering, what kind of degree did you get for your undergrad? a first class equivalent? (Im studying in the UK) I really want to do one just because im interested in learning more , but my grades arent great, Im nearing a First class but still not quite a first class and Ive got 2 years left. I reckon with hard work I can get that First class.
How does funding work for a PhD? Do you have to look for sponsors outside the universiy or does the university provide you with funding? Any advice you guys can give me? Do we need lots of research projects during the summer to help?
Your first port of call is prospective Universities. For the past several years now Research Council funding goes directly to Universities in a ‘funding block’ which works out as a set number of PhD/DPhil studentships (in previous years individual students applied directly to the Research Council). If your University doesn’t have a funding block you will not get funding from a research council, and block funding is HIGHLY competitive.
In addition to this Universities may also have their own partial or even full fee grants, sometimes available on a means-tested basis. Corporate or charitable sponsors may also approach Universities with money to issue a certain number of grants available to students, again there may/will be eligibility criteria.
Currently there is no mainstream govern loan system for postgraduate study (Research Council funding is via a grant) in the UK. A career development loan from a bank would be an alternative, as would private sponsors such as employers or charities, but again they are likely to have eligibility criteria.
If you are study Full-Time in the UK on a BA/BSc and are getting close to 1sts in your first year you should be well on track to get a 1st in your final result if you keep up the hard work and continue to improve; typically your first year’s grades do not count to your overall result, you only need to pass (however do check this with your institution).
It will depend upon your field and expertise, and professional experience, but generally it would be expected for you to go from Bachelors to Masters and then to Doctoral study.
First of all, thanks a lot for your reply :D I've had a look around at some prospective universities and some of them were saying a First Class is required so I was wondering if it was the same for most in the field of engineering. On our course every year counts a little towards the final degreebut the next 2 years make up 67% of the degree so good performance in the next two years is vital. I've got little to no professional experience (a lot of rejected applications for summer student research posts and internships from companies), bt hopefully I can get something this upcoming summer.
Did you know what field you wanted to go into? Also did you know the professors who offered you a place well? What kindof questions do they ask in an interview? Does it look bad if you go to work for say 2 years after completing your masters then go back for your PhD ?
On September 04 2013 23:38 Hadronsbecrazy wrote: Hey guys, Im considering doing a PhD but was wondering, what kind of degree did you get for your undergrad? a first class equivalent? (Im studying in the UK) I really want to do one just because im interested in learning more , but my grades arent great, Im nearing a First class but still not quite a first class and Ive got 2 years left. I reckon with hard work I can get that First class.
How does funding work for a PhD? Do you have to look for sponsors outside the universiy or does the university provide you with funding? Any advice you guys can give me? Do we need lots of research projects during the summer to help?
I got a PhD position with a 2:1, it's certainly possible.
Deleuze pretty much summed it up, but I have one thing to add. The reason I got my PhD position was because I engaged my third year lecturers in debate and conversation and challenged them when they weren't explaining something properly. I don't mean during lectures with 200-300 people watching but during the smaller classes / practical sessions. That way I got to know one lecturer who was very successful and received a number of research grants every year (although I didn't know it at the time, I was just being stubborn). These research grants normally come with 1 or 2 PhD positions attached to them and low-and-behold I was offered one of them.
tl;dr do a project/classes with a professor who publishes a lot of good papers and get yourself noticed
Cool thats great news, but im assuming you must have done a lot on the side too right? while at university. I will act on your advice this year , many thanks :D Did you have a lot of research experience? UROP or equivalent for students?
On September 04 2013 23:38 Hadronsbecrazy wrote: Hey guys, Im considering doing a PhD but was wondering, what kind of degree did you get for your undergrad? a first class equivalent? (Im studying in the UK) I really want to do one just because im interested in learning more , but my grades arent great, Im nearing a First class but still not quite a first class and Ive got 2 years left. I reckon with hard work I can get that First class.
How does funding work for a PhD? Do you have to look for sponsors outside the universiy or does the university provide you with funding? Any advice you guys can give me? Do we need lots of research projects during the summer to help?
Your first port of call is prospective Universities. For the past several years now Research Council funding goes directly to Universities in a ‘funding block’ which works out as a set number of PhD/DPhil studentships (in previous years individual students applied directly to the Research Council). If your University doesn’t have a funding block you will not get funding from a research council, and block funding is HIGHLY competitive.
In addition to this Universities may also have their own partial or even full fee grants, sometimes available on a means-tested basis. Corporate or charitable sponsors may also approach Universities with money to issue a certain number of grants available to students, again there may/will be eligibility criteria.
Currently there is no mainstream govern loan system for postgraduate study (Research Council funding is via a grant) in the UK. A career development loan from a bank would be an alternative, as would private sponsors such as employers or charities, but again they are likely to have eligibility criteria.
If you are study Full-Time in the UK on a BA/BSc and are getting close to 1sts in your first year you should be well on track to get a 1st in your final result if you keep up the hard work and continue to improve; typically your first year’s grades do not count to your overall result, you only need to pass (however do check this with your institution).
It will depend upon your field and expertise, and professional experience, but generally it would be expected for you to go from Bachelors to Masters and then to Doctoral study.
First of all, thanks a lot for your reply :D I've had a look around at some prospective universities and some of them were saying a First Class is required so I was wondering if it was the same for most in the field of engineering. On our course every year counts a little towards the final degreebut the next 2 years make up 67% of the degree so good performance in the next two years is vital. I've got little to no professional experience (a lot of rejected applications for summer student research posts and internships from companies), bt hopefully I can get something this upcoming summer.
Did you know what field you wanted to go into? Also did you know the professors who offered you a place well? What kindof questions do they ask in an interview? Does it look bad if you go to work for say 2 years after completing your masters then go back for your PhD ?
Hi!
Engineering isn't my field I'm afraid so it's difficult for me to say. The BEST people to speak to would be PhD students at your current institution in your field, they'll have the best and most up to date info for you, and they'll be full of hopes and regrets - awesome combination. Even relatively junior academics will have an out of date experience of gaining a Doctorate.
A PhD is a serious research undertaking. You cannot (must not) fuck it up, it is very much more than a 'next step' up a ladder (I think I might imply this a little, apologies). While it is almost essential for an academic career, it is not a professional development qualification you obtain to get this role, rather it is an opportunity for you to attempt to start 'being' an academic by undertaking research in a safe(r) environment; this is certainly the case when at the later stages of a PhD. If you succeed you should have something(s) you can publish.
What will get you your job is what you have done on the way: teaching experience, published work, professional experience where appropriate, the strength of your academic networks and your knowledge of the field. This is the kind of thing that you ultimately will want to get from your institution; some of it will depend upon your supervisor, but not all.
I can't advise on what would make you a better candidate, such as how much professional XP you should have - but in engineering I'd imagine this is looked upon very favourably. Speak to other PhD students and see what they say! I do like the masters-PhD route, but I may be wrong, don't take my advice over actual engineering PhDs.
I will say this though. Before ANYTHING you need to have (only the very roughest) idea of what you want to research. It's no good if you just want a PhD to become a Dr., you need to have the actual passion and interest to commit to your field. That always comes first, and regardless of how well you do at Uni this will determine whether you get a place on a PhD programme, whether you get funding, whether you will get bored and fail; yes, the strength of your prior accomplishments will demonstrate your ability to achieve your research aims, but they need to be worthwhile aims to begin with!
On September 04 2013 23:38 Hadronsbecrazy wrote: Hey guys, Im considering doing a PhD but was wondering, what kind of degree did you get for your undergrad? a first class equivalent? (Im studying in the UK) I really want to do one just because im interested in learning more , but my grades arent great, Im nearing a First class but still not quite a first class and Ive got 2 years left. I reckon with hard work I can get that First class.
How does funding work for a PhD? Do you have to look for sponsors outside the universiy or does the university provide you with funding? Any advice you guys can give me? Do we need lots of research projects during the summer to help?
Your first port of call is prospective Universities. For the past several years now Research Council funding goes directly to Universities in a ‘funding block’ which works out as a set number of PhD/DPhil studentships (in previous years individual students applied directly to the Research Council). If your University doesn’t have a funding block you will not get funding from a research council, and block funding is HIGHLY competitive.
In addition to this Universities may also have their own partial or even full fee grants, sometimes available on a means-tested basis. Corporate or charitable sponsors may also approach Universities with money to issue a certain number of grants available to students, again there may/will be eligibility criteria.
Currently there is no mainstream govern loan system for postgraduate study (Research Council funding is via a grant) in the UK. A career development loan from a bank would be an alternative, as would private sponsors such as employers or charities, but again they are likely to have eligibility criteria.
If you are study Full-Time in the UK on a BA/BSc and are getting close to 1sts in your first year you should be well on track to get a 1st in your final result if you keep up the hard work and continue to improve; typically your first year’s grades do not count to your overall result, you only need to pass (however do check this with your institution).
It will depend upon your field and expertise, and professional experience, but generally it would be expected for you to go from Bachelors to Masters and then to Doctoral study.
First of all, thanks a lot for your reply :D I've had a look around at some prospective universities and some of them were saying a First Class is required so I was wondering if it was the same for most in the field of engineering. On our course every year counts a little towards the final degreebut the next 2 years make up 67% of the degree so good performance in the next two years is vital. I've got little to no professional experience (a lot of rejected applications for summer student research posts and internships from companies), bt hopefully I can get something this upcoming summer.
Did you know what field you wanted to go into? Also did you know the professors who offered you a place well? What kindof questions do they ask in an interview? Does it look bad if you go to work for say 2 years after completing your masters then go back for your PhD ?
Hi!
Engineering isn't my field I'm afraid so it's difficult for me to say. The BEST people to speak to would be PhD students at your current institution in your field, they'll have the best and most up to date info for you, and they'll be full of hopes and regrets - awesome combination. Even relatively junior academics will have an out of date experience of gaining a Doctorate.
A PhD is a serious research undertaking. You cannot (must not) fuck it up, it is very much more than a 'next step' up a ladder (I think I might imply this a little, apologies). While it is almost essential for an academic career, it is not a professional development qualification you obtain to get this role, rather it is an opportunity for you to attempt to start 'being' an academic by undertaking research in a safe(r) environment; this is certainly the case when at the later stages of a PhD. If you succeed you should have something(s) you can publish.
What will get you your job is what you have done on the way: teaching experience, published work, professional experience where appropriate, the strength of your academic networks and your knowledge of the field. This is the kind of thing that you ultimately will want to get from your institution; some of it will depend upon your supervisor, but not all.
I can't advise on what would make you a better candidate, such as how much professional XP you should have - but in engineering I'd imagine this is looked upon very favourably. Speak to other PhD students and see what they say! I do like the masters-PhD route, but I may be wrong, don't take my advice over actual engineering PhDs.
I will say this though. Before ANYTHING you need to have (only the very roughest) idea of what you want to research. It's no good if you just want a PhD to become a Dr., you need to have the actual passion and interest to commit to your field. That always comes first, and regardless of how well you do at Uni this will determine whether you get a place on a PhD programme, whether you get funding, whether you will get bored and fail; yes, the strength of your prior accomplishments will demonstrate your ability to achieve your research aims, but they need to be worthwhile aims to begin with!
Literally every professor at my college that I talked to about this agreed with a very concise summary of getting a Ph.D.
You shouldn't get a Ph.D. if you want to be an academic/researcher in X field for the rest of your life. The only way you will succeed at getting and using a Ph.D. is not if that's all you want to do with your life, but if you simply cannot do anything else. Your commitment has to be so thorough, so obsessive, that you just could not do anything else with your life.
And even then, it'll be hell to actually finish your dissertation.
On September 04 2013 23:17 shaftofpleasure wrote: My OCD kicked in when I saw those last few pictures, thinking: "Make it a perfect circle again! OMG!"
it's a big fucking fractal, not a heavenly sphere :p
In six years all of you have to address me as Doctor Zdat, I will insist on it. Wooo! for whatever this data point is worth, in my cohort 8/12 have MA, but my program does not offer terminal MA. Kinda strange
On September 04 2013 23:17 shaftofpleasure wrote: My OCD kicked in when I saw those last few pictures, thinking: "Make it a perfect circle again! OMG!"
it's a big fucking fractal, not a heavenly sphere :p
In six years all of you have to address me as Doctor Zdat, I will insist on it. Wooo! for whatever this data point is worth, in my cohort 8/12 have MA, but my program does not offer terminal MA. Kinda strange
the kids who end up not finishing their desertion are still going to get an MA, as every American PhD program gives you an automatic MA for the first year course work.
On September 04 2013 23:17 shaftofpleasure wrote: My OCD kicked in when I saw those last few pictures, thinking: "Make it a perfect circle again! OMG!"
it's a big fucking fractal, not a heavenly sphere :p
In six years all of you have to address me as Doctor Zdat, I will insist on it. Wooo! for whatever this data point is worth, in my cohort 8/12 have MA, but my program does not offer terminal MA. Kinda strange
Yea its a bit weird that there is so much variation in degree paths. I took the route of getting my masters at a school that doesn't do PhD so now I am at my third school now for my PhD.... Kinda wished that I could have done a program direct PhD instead but there aren't many of those in my field (Bio Anthropology or just anthro in general).
On September 04 2013 23:17 shaftofpleasure wrote: My OCD kicked in when I saw those last few pictures, thinking: "Make it a perfect circle again! OMG!"
it's a big fucking fractal, not a heavenly sphere :p
In six years all of you have to address me as Doctor Zdat, I will insist on it. Wooo! for whatever this data point is worth, in my cohort 8/12 have MA, but my program does not offer terminal MA. Kinda strange
the kids who end up not finishing their desertion are still going to get an MA, as every American PhD program gives you an automatic MA for the first year course work.
This isn't necessarily true. Some programs make you write a thesis to get your MA and if you don't finish then you can get a terminal MA or just drop.
that's because political science is a bullshit field. You should know this because politics is obviously not science. Political science is where politics ends and we all become slaves of the election machine.
I think I have to take an exam or smth two and a half years in for the MA part. But I'm not sure everything about this is confusing, I'm just going to show up and think about literature and I'm sure it will work out.
On September 04 2013 22:32 SoSexy wrote: So, in few months I'll have to start considering where to go for a PhD in Philosophy. Since my goal is to become a professor, I guess this is the only way to go. I'm not afraid of moving to other countries/cities, but I wonder if it is really important where do you get your PhD.
Is it 'bigger' if you get it in, let's say, Cambridge than Helsinki? Paris or Milan? I'm believing that it's more or less the same, then if you become a professor you can publish more important stuff and maybe more prestigious universities will ask you to come to teach. Do you know if that's how it works?
Rutgers University in New Jersey has an absolutely exceptional Philosophy program.
Just sayin'
I'm getting my PhD at Rutgers, although it's in mathematics education ^^
EDIT: From my experience, Deleuze is spot on with his assessment.
On September 04 2013 22:32 SoSexy wrote: So, in few months I'll have to start considering where to go for a PhD in Philosophy. Since my goal is to become a professor, I guess this is the only way to go. I'm not afraid of moving to other countries/cities, but I wonder if it is really important where do you get your PhD.
Is it 'bigger' if you get it in, let's say, Cambridge than Helsinki? Paris or Milan? I'm believing that it's more or less the same, then if you become a professor you can publish more important stuff and maybe more prestigious universities will ask you to come to teach. Do you know if that's how it works?
Rutgers University in New Jersey has an absolutely exception Philosophy program.
Just sayin'
That's been true for a decent while now, but lately they've been straight-up bleeding top philosophers with little in the way of equal replacement. My university is in the process of trying to poach yet another one from them. I'm starting to wonder if the department is getting funding cuts or something.
Edit: regarding the OP graphic...isn't it impossible to ever break that circular barrier? Every time you learn something that barrier increases in that direction, right? Meaning you could reach it and you could be responsible for pushing it furthur but never break through...
On September 05 2013 09:24 sam!zdat wrote: that's because political science is a bullshit field. You should know this because politics is obviously not science. Political science is where politics ends and we all become slaves of the election machine.
I think I have to take an exam or smth two and a half years in for the MA part. But I'm not sure everything about this is confusing, I'm just going to show up and think about literature and I'm sure it will work out.
...you are obviously not a political scientist. Academic political science does not even resemble talking heads on TV, or whatever you are basing your post off of.
PhD in mathematics anyways is not anywhere near as rewarding as some people in this thread make it out to be. Even as one of the top students in an entry class with a full fellowship and great benefits (besides the obv stipend, health, only had to teach 2 of 5 years etc), you still spend most of the first 3 years just grinding out classes you may or may not care about. If you have to teach every semester it can be even worse for some people. (Teaching actually the only thing I liked about grad school myself). And then if you make it through the first 3 years of classes and get to start specializing, a LOT of people still just grind out a thesis for the purpose of a career in teaching.
Anyways, even in an academic discipline they will obviously expect you to make it your life for 5 years (more if they just need grad teaching assistants). But if you just want to go to school and extend the college experience and get it payed for (math at least) than its not so bad I guess.
As you can probably tell, I bailed on mine lol. Allthough it was largely geographical reasons in that I love Alaska, lived here my whole life, expect to live here the rest of it and that just didnt mesh. But it was not an enjoyable 3 years for me.
Also for reference I was not at a super high end school, but decent rank20 or something in most lists.
By the way in response to an earlier question, the school you go to (at least for Math in the US) basically just effects the experience during the duration of your studies, and also the marketing power your degree gives you in the job market afterward. Of these two its fairly important in my opinion to have someone to work with as close to your specific research interest as possible. This can be accomplished at smaller schools but the difficulty is you have to know what that is before you begin. The advantage of bigger better programs is basically the pools of quality people to work with.
On September 05 2013 11:10 Atreides wrote: PhD in mathematics anyways is not anywhere near as rewarding as some people in this thread make it out to be. Even as one of the top students in an entry class with a full fellowship and great benefits (besides the obv stipend, health, only had to teach 2 of 5 years etc), you still spend most of the first 3 years just grinding out classes you may or may not care about. If you have to teach every semester it can be even worse for some people. (Teaching actually the only thing I liked about grad school myself). And then if you make it through the first 3 years of classes and get to start specializing, a LOT of people still just grind out a thesis for the purpose of a career in teaching.
Anyways, even in an academic discipline they will obviously expect you to make it your life for 5 years (more if they just need grad teaching assistants). But if you just want to go to school and extend the college experience and get it payed for (math at least) than its not so bad I guess.
As you can probably tell, I bailed on mine lol. Allthough it was largely geographical reasons in that I love Alaska, lived here my whole life, expect to live here the rest of it and that just didnt mesh. But it was not an enjoyable 3 years for me.
Also for reference I was not at a super high end school, but decent rank20 or something in most lists.
By the way in response to an earlier question, the school you go to (at least for Math in the US) basically just effects the experience during the duration of your studies, and also the marketing power your degree gives you in the job market afterward. Of these two its fairly important in my opinion to have someone to work with as close to your specific research interest as possible. This can be accomplished at smaller schools but the difficulty is you have to know what that is before you begin. The advantage of bigger better programs is basically the pools of quality people to work with.
I didnt have the math aptitude to do a grad degree in that, but I wish I did because it seems like its a pretty lucrative field if you get into the high speed trading side of it and if not you can always bail, switch gears down into econ, coast through that PhD, and still land a sweet job teaching at some random business school.
On September 05 2013 10:47 sam!zdat wrote: nah, just read hegel and you too can have absolute knowing. You become the circle, looking in on it itself. You guys have read neuromancer right?
I think the circle is human knowledge, not absolute
This isn't necessarily true. Some programs make you write a thesis to get your MA and if you don't finish then you can get a terminal MA or just drop.
also known as the first 3 chapters of your PhD thesis.
Ah I wish that was true for me lol. Sadly my thesis and my dissertation have nothing to do with each other and focus on two different places and time periods T_T
On September 05 2013 09:24 sam!zdat wrote: that's because political science is a bullshit field. You should know this because politics is obviously not science. Political science is where politics ends and we all become slaves of the election machine.
I think I have to take an exam or smth two and a half years in for the MA part. But I'm not sure everything about this is confusing, I'm just going to show up and think about literature and I'm sure it will work out.
Don't hate man :/ Yes, there is a lot of bullshit, but you will be surprised what you learn.
On September 04 2013 22:32 SoSexy wrote: So, in few months I'll have to start considering where to go for a PhD in Philosophy. Since my goal is to become a professor, I guess this is the only way to go. I'm not afraid of moving to other countries/cities, but I wonder if it is really important where do you get your PhD.
Is it 'bigger' if you get it in, let's say, Cambridge than Helsinki? Paris or Milan? I'm believing that it's more or less the same, then if you become a professor you can publish more important stuff and maybe more prestigious universities will ask you to come to teach. Do you know if that's how it works?
Rutgers University in New Jersey has an absolutely exception Philosophy program.
Just sayin'
That's been true for a decent while now, but lately they've been straight-up bleeding top philosophers with little in the way of equal replacement. My university is in the process of trying to poach yet another one from them. I'm starting to wonder if the department is getting funding cuts or something.
On September 05 2013 09:24 sam!zdat wrote: that's because political science is a bullshit field. You should know this because politics is obviously not science. Political science is where politics ends and we all become slaves of the election machine.
I think I have to take an exam or smth two and a half years in for the MA part. But I'm not sure everything about this is confusing, I'm just going to show up and think about literature and I'm sure it will work out.
...you are obviously not a political scientist. Academic political science does not even resemble talking heads on TV, or whatever you are basing your post off of.
political science is the study of how to run and manipulate a degenerate electoral system and manufacture the illusion of legitimacy. It is about how to calculate your chessboard so you can write off everyone who doesn't live in the one swing district you need. It is about how to make polls and pretend they are the voice of the people. I know exactly what 'political science' is.
On September 05 2013 09:24 sam!zdat wrote: that's because political science is a bullshit field. You should know this because politics is obviously not science. Political science is where politics ends and we all become slaves of the election machine.
I think I have to take an exam or smth two and a half years in for the MA part. But I'm not sure everything about this is confusing, I'm just going to show up and think about literature and I'm sure it will work out.
...you are obviously not a political scientist. Academic political science does not even resemble talking heads on TV, or whatever you are basing your post off of.
political science is the study of how to run and manipulate a degenerate electoral system and manufacture the illusion of legitimacy. It is about how to calculate your chessboard so you can write off everyone who doesn't live in the one swing district you need. It is about how to make polls and pretend they are the voice of the people. I know exactly what 'political science' is.
That is a very cynical way of looking at the role of modern liberal democracy. Yes, you can definitely learn all of that within political science and become one of our many awful politicians who manipulate, but if I were you, I would think of political science more as psychology. Yes, you can do horrible thinks like manipulating people when it comes to consumerism but we also have counselors as well.
Fukuyama has written some amazing pieces of work on politics ever since he dropped his neo-conservatism. I will not argue for him the way you do for Klein as much as I respect her, but his works have mostly been on the functions of bureaucracy and the origins of our current political order which I am sure you would agree is very important to learn if you are interested in politics unlike say military tactics in relation to politics.
Although I did notice that most political science professors I know are either liberals or conservatives/liberal conservatives (Burke) with some social democrats here and there but regardless, much of their ideas is worth studying for the sole reason of understanding politics and ideology better.
On September 05 2013 09:24 sam!zdat wrote: that's because political science is a bullshit field. You should know this because politics is obviously not science. Political science is where politics ends and we all become slaves of the election machine.
I think I have to take an exam or smth two and a half years in for the MA part. But I'm not sure everything about this is confusing, I'm just going to show up and think about literature and I'm sure it will work out.
...you are obviously not a political scientist. Academic political science does not even resemble talking heads on TV, or whatever you are basing your post off of.
political science is the study of how to run and manipulate a degenerate electoral system and manufacture the illusion of legitimacy. It is about how to calculate your chessboard so you can write off everyone who doesn't live in the one swing district you need. It is about how to make polls and pretend they are the voice of the people. I know exactly what 'political science' is.
That is a very cynical way of looking at the role of modern liberal democracy. Yes, you can definitely learn all of that within political science and become one of our many awful politicians who manipulate, but if I were you, I would think of political science more as psychology. Yes, you can do horrible thinks like manipulating people when it comes to consumerism but we also have counselors as well.
lol, that's where i am right now. i love manipulating people. i feel like little finger from game of thrones sometimes ^^
Just entering my 4th year getting my PhD in biostatistics at Harvard. Fucking love it. My advisor gives me a lot of freedom so I just write look into topics that interest me, make a contribution where I see fit (often this means developing methodology where it is needed and then implementing that methodology into a user-friendly software package), and then write a paper about it. You only need 3 publishable papers for your thesis, but I'm at 5 and counting. I just love this job. AND on top of it all they pay you to attend (for many PhD programs this is true). Dream come true. If you enjoy school and have a passion for a subject, consider getting a PhD.
On September 05 2013 00:46 Cascade wrote: To get a PhD position, you need something more concrete than work that you are impressed by yourself, or your own opinion that you know more physics than others. Anyone can say that (not saying you lie, just that it won't hold in an interview). You need some way of proving that you will do well in a PhD, such as good grades on at least a few of the high level courses, or a good recommendation letter from your masters supervisor, published papers in a decent journal, or something like that.
Thanks for the condescension, but the reason I'm proud of my work is that I believe it's objectively an important contribution to the discipline. You're damn right I'm determined to get it published. I consider it to be far more consequential than the average PhD work, which does nothing but slightly further the ideas of the supervisor and disappears into a drawer somewhere immediately after it is defended. (Condescension works both ways, you know.)
On September 05 2013 00:46 Cascade wrote:Problem is that there are too many lunatics around in theoretical physics, people that are convinced that they have found some brilliant solution that everyone else have overlooked. I got myself (and still get) frequent mails from people trying to push their brilliant (but surprisingly not published in a serious peer-reviewed paper...) ideas onto me. Only because my PhD gave me an email and small homepage on the theoretical physics webpage... With your background of working alone for a long time (as I understand), it is very important that you prove that you are not one of them. And to do that, you really need others in the field to review your work and pass their impression on to your potential PhD employer. Examples are the ones I mentioned above: grades on a course, recommendation letter, or decision to publish your work in a decent journal.
My reaction to this paragraph is that you've just committed the scientific analogue of the right-wing scaremongering about a council estate full of welfare queens with ten kids and a Porsche parked up the drive-way.
You wilfully conflate innocent emails by some enthusiast, asking whether such-and-such a wild speculation is borne out by academic physics, with a 50 page dissertation by some zealous crank about why general relativity is wrong. Why should someone be dismissed as a crank merely because of the fact (unavoidable from his point of view) that he isn't a paid-up member of the academic inner-circle? Shouldn't his work speak for itself? Isn't the precedent of Einstein, and the dozens of independent gentlemen scientists in the 19th century, enough to make you wary of tarring?
Cascade actually made some really good points and gave you helpful advice. Sorry, but physics is hard. You don't develop a revolutionary theory in your spare time. People work full time on this stuff, and still papers come out once a year from reputable groups. If you want funding, then you do need to get into graduate school. If your grades are bad, you have to convince the university that despite the bad grades, that you are a good investment. And you can do that by publishing the papers. Anyone can say "I'm smarter than all of those graduate students, my work is more important.", but you need a peer reviewed paper for anyone to believe it. Most graduate students in physics will tell you that they get emails from crack pots. I read them when I get them, I only say the guy is a crack pot when he tries to explain that entanglement allows faster than light communication, which is clearly wrong. So then, why should anyone believe that your great work on entangled systems (that no one has seen) is not just another random guy emailing the university? You have to convince them. You have to do stuff similar to what Cascade told you. He wasn't being condescending, he was being straight up and honest with you.
I'm getting a doctorate (Psy.D.) in Clinical Psychology and it's basically tied with blowjobs for the most rewarding thing I've experienced in my whole life.
On September 05 2013 00:46 Cascade wrote: To get a PhD position, you need something more concrete than work that you are impressed by yourself, or your own opinion that you know more physics than others. Anyone can say that (not saying you lie, just that it won't hold in an interview). You need some way of proving that you will do well in a PhD, such as good grades on at least a few of the high level courses, or a good recommendation letter from your masters supervisor, published papers in a decent journal, or something like that.
Thanks for the condescension, but the reason I'm proud of my work is that I believe it's objectively an important contribution to the discipline. You're damn right I'm determined to get it published. I consider it to be far more consequential than the average PhD work, which does nothing but slightly further the ideas of the supervisor and disappears into a drawer somewhere immediately after it is defended. (Condescension works both ways, you know.)
On September 05 2013 00:46 Cascade wrote:Problem is that there are too many lunatics around in theoretical physics, people that are convinced that they have found some brilliant solution that everyone else have overlooked. I got myself (and still get) frequent mails from people trying to push their brilliant (but surprisingly not published in a serious peer-reviewed paper...) ideas onto me. Only because my PhD gave me an email and small homepage on the theoretical physics webpage... With your background of working alone for a long time (as I understand), it is very important that you prove that you are not one of them. And to do that, you really need others in the field to review your work and pass their impression on to your potential PhD employer. Examples are the ones I mentioned above: grades on a course, recommendation letter, or decision to publish your work in a decent journal.
My reaction to this paragraph is that you've just committed the scientific analogue of the right-wing scaremongering about a council estate full of welfare queens with ten kids and a Porsche parked up the drive-way.
You wilfully conflate innocent emails by some enthusiast, asking whether such-and-such a wild speculation is borne out by academic physics, with a 50 page dissertation by some zealous crank about why general relativity is wrong. Why should someone be dismissed as a crank merely because of the fact (unavoidable from his point of view) that he isn't a paid-up member of the academic inner-circle? Shouldn't his work speak for itself? Isn't the precedent of Einstein, and the dozens of independent gentlemen scientists in the 19th century, enough to make you wary of tarring?
Cascade actually made some really good points and gave you helpful advice. Sorry, but physics is hard. You don't develop a revolutionary theory in your spare time. People work full time on this stuff, and still papers come out once a year from reputable groups. If you want funding, then you do need to get into graduate school. If your grades are bad, you have to convince the university that despite the bad grades, that you are a good investment. And you can do that by publishing the papers. Anyone can say "I'm smarter than all of those graduate students, my work is more important.", but you need a peer reviewed paper for anyone to believe it. Most graduate students in physics will tell you that they get emails from crack pots. I read them when I get them, I only say the guy is a crack pot when he tries to explain that entanglement allows faster than light communication, which is clearly wrong. So then, why should anyone believe that your great work on entangled systems (that no one has seen) is not just another random guy emailing the university? You have to convince them. You have to do stuff similar to what Cascade told you. He wasn't being condescending, he was being straight up and honest with you.
Yes, didn't mean to be condescending, sorry.
It actually goes for any job interview that you need others to say how good you are. It is not enough to vouch for your own skills, no matter how true it is, as anyone can do that. I have myself been subject to this problem for that matter.
On September 05 2013 09:24 sam!zdat wrote: that's because political science is a bullshit field. You should know this because politics is obviously not science. Political science is where politics ends and we all become slaves of the election machine.
I think I have to take an exam or smth two and a half years in for the MA part. But I'm not sure everything about this is confusing, I'm just going to show up and think about literature and I'm sure it will work out.
...you are obviously not a political scientist. Academic political science does not even resemble talking heads on TV, or whatever you are basing your post off of.
political science is the study of how to run and manipulate a degenerate electoral system and manufacture the illusion of legitimacy. It is about how to calculate your chessboard so you can write off everyone who doesn't live in the one swing district you need. It is about how to make polls and pretend they are the voice of the people. I know exactly what 'political science' is.
Political science isn't just about studying politics and democracy. It's also about how different areas of the state works from a more technical point of view. If a government wants to implement a reform on for example the labour market or the school system, there will probably be political science people working on the proposal and then evaluating it afterwards.
I haven't noticed someone directly give this advice yet in the recent part of the thread, so I might as well give it.
Unless you come from (a lot) of money, don't pay for a Ph.D, at least not if you're going to use it to try to be a professor. It simply isn't a reliable enough path to getting the kind of money that can pay off high levels of student debt. Good schools will pay you, guaranteeing funding for the official length of the program and de facto guaranteeing it for the extra years everyone takes.
On September 04 2013 22:32 SoSexy wrote: So, in few months I'll have to start considering where to go for a PhD in Philosophy. Since my goal is to become a professor, I guess this is the only way to go. I'm not afraid of moving to other countries/cities, but I wonder if it is really important where do you get your PhD.
Is it 'bigger' if you get it in, let's say, Cambridge than Helsinki? Paris or Milan? I'm believing that it's more or less the same, then if you become a professor you can publish more important stuff and maybe more prestigious universities will ask you to come to teach. Do you know if that's how it works?
Rutgers University in New Jersey has an absolutely exception Philosophy program.
Just sayin'
That's been true for a decent while now, but lately they've been straight-up bleeding top philosophers with little in the way of equal replacement. My university is in the process of trying to poach yet another one from them. I'm starting to wonder if the department is getting funding cuts or something.
On September 05 2013 00:46 Cascade wrote: To get a PhD position, you need something more concrete than work that you are impressed by yourself, or your own opinion that you know more physics than others. Anyone can say that (not saying you lie, just that it won't hold in an interview). You need some way of proving that you will do well in a PhD, such as good grades on at least a few of the high level courses, or a good recommendation letter from your masters supervisor, published papers in a decent journal, or something like that.
Thanks for the condescension, but the reason I'm proud of my work is that I believe it's objectively an important contribution to the discipline. You're damn right I'm determined to get it published. I consider it to be far more consequential than the average PhD work, which does nothing but slightly further the ideas of the supervisor and disappears into a drawer somewhere immediately after it is defended. (Condescension works both ways, you know.)
On September 05 2013 00:46 Cascade wrote:Problem is that there are too many lunatics around in theoretical physics, people that are convinced that they have found some brilliant solution that everyone else have overlooked. I got myself (and still get) frequent mails from people trying to push their brilliant (but surprisingly not published in a serious peer-reviewed paper...) ideas onto me. Only because my PhD gave me an email and small homepage on the theoretical physics webpage... With your background of working alone for a long time (as I understand), it is very important that you prove that you are not one of them. And to do that, you really need others in the field to review your work and pass their impression on to your potential PhD employer. Examples are the ones I mentioned above: grades on a course, recommendation letter, or decision to publish your work in a decent journal.
My reaction to this paragraph is that you've just committed the scientific analogue of the right-wing scaremongering about a council estate full of welfare queens with ten kids and a Porsche parked up the drive-way.
You wilfully conflate innocent emails by some enthusiast, asking whether such-and-such a wild speculation is borne out by academic physics, with a 50 page dissertation by some zealous crank about why general relativity is wrong. Why should someone be dismissed as a crank merely because of the fact (unavoidable from his point of view) that he isn't a paid-up member of the academic inner-circle? Shouldn't his work speak for itself? Isn't the precedent of Einstein, and the dozens of independent gentlemen scientists in the 19th century, enough to make you wary of tarring?
Cascade actually made some really good points and gave you helpful advice.
He did, yes. I apologized to him over PM and have told him that I appreciate his help.
On September 05 2013 13:53 convention wrote: Sorry, but physics is hard. You don't develop a revolutionary theory in your spare time.
That's what Einstein did.
On September 05 2013 13:53 convention wrote: If your grades are bad, you have to convince the university that despite the bad grades, that you are a good investment. And you can do that by publishing the papers. Anyone can say "I'm smarter than all of those graduate students, my work is more important.", but you need a peer reviewed paper for anyone to believe it.
Well, that's what I'm trying to do. It's not easy. It's pretty silly that achieving something intrinsically harder than a PhD (finding a project without the aid of a supervisor and getting a sole author paper published in a respectable journal) is my only path to a place on a PhD. But that's what I'm prepared to do and what I am doing. It's my own fault, in a way, for not being more disciplined when I was a student.
On September 05 2013 00:46 Cascade wrote: To get a PhD position, you need something more concrete than work that you are impressed by yourself, or your own opinion that you know more physics than others. Anyone can say that (not saying you lie, just that it won't hold in an interview). You need some way of proving that you will do well in a PhD, such as good grades on at least a few of the high level courses, or a good recommendation letter from your masters supervisor, published papers in a decent journal, or something like that.
Thanks for the condescension, but the reason I'm proud of my work is that I believe it's objectively an important contribution to the discipline. You're damn right I'm determined to get it published. I consider it to be far more consequential than the average PhD work, which does nothing but slightly further the ideas of the supervisor and disappears into a drawer somewhere immediately after it is defended. (Condescension works both ways, you know.)
On September 05 2013 00:46 Cascade wrote:Problem is that there are too many lunatics around in theoretical physics, people that are convinced that they have found some brilliant solution that everyone else have overlooked. I got myself (and still get) frequent mails from people trying to push their brilliant (but surprisingly not published in a serious peer-reviewed paper...) ideas onto me. Only because my PhD gave me an email and small homepage on the theoretical physics webpage... With your background of working alone for a long time (as I understand), it is very important that you prove that you are not one of them. And to do that, you really need others in the field to review your work and pass their impression on to your potential PhD employer. Examples are the ones I mentioned above: grades on a course, recommendation letter, or decision to publish your work in a decent journal.
My reaction to this paragraph is that you've just committed the scientific analogue of the right-wing scaremongering about a council estate full of welfare queens with ten kids and a Porsche parked up the drive-way.
You wilfully conflate innocent emails by some enthusiast, asking whether such-and-such a wild speculation is borne out by academic physics, with a 50 page dissertation by some zealous crank about why general relativity is wrong. Why should someone be dismissed as a crank merely because of the fact (unavoidable from his point of view) that he isn't a paid-up member of the academic inner-circle? Shouldn't his work speak for itself? Isn't the precedent of Einstein, and the dozens of independent gentlemen scientists in the 19th century, enough to make you wary of tarring?
Cascade actually made some really good points and gave you helpful advice.
He did, yes. I apologized to him over PM and have told him that I appreciate his help.
On September 05 2013 13:53 convention wrote: If your grades are bad, you have to convince the university that despite the bad grades, that you are a good investment. And you can do that by publishing the papers. Anyone can say "I'm smarter than all of those graduate students, my work is more important.", but you need a peer reviewed paper for anyone to believe it.
Well, that's what I'm trying to do. It's not easy. It's pretty silly that achieving something intrinsically harder than a PhD (finding a project without the aid of a supervisor and getting a sole author paper published in a respectable journal) is my only path to a place on a PhD. But that's what I'm prepared to do and what I am doing. It's my own fault, in a way, for not being more disciplined when I was a student.
Ok, I think it's time to have a little talk.
Ghastly, I can sympathize with your situation... been there myself a while ago when I was searching for an opportunity to get my PhD. I agree that it's not easy, and I can also understand your anger over the whole procedure. There's a lot wrong with the system, and there's even some truth to your observations on an academic "inner circle" that promotes financial and educational malpractice. For instance, I shake my head whenever I get sent to some conference overseas and look at the bills... remembering how hard it was to get my PhD funded, I'm now astonished how eager people are to throw insane amounts of money at us for holding a 15-minute lecture at the other end of the world, over the same topic no less. Please note that I'm aware of my own hypocrisy here - I go to these conferences, so I'm using funds that would probably be better used on giving some PhD candidate a roof over their head -, so in effect I'm participating in the system that you valiantly accuse, and if you're angry at me, I can fully understand that.
That said, although you have every right to be angry about stuff like that, I would advise you to be angry in your spare time. For your goal - getting a PhD position - it's counterproductive: The way you are talking about the academic "inner circle" makes one wonder why you even want to be a part of it if you despise us that much. If I may be blunt, which I guess I may since I just gave you permission and reason to hate me anyway, you sound so full of yourself that it's hard to take you seriously. Don't get me wrong, for all I know, you could be the next Einstein... but that doesn't change the fact that you should never ever compare yourself to Einstein. For all I know, you could indeed be smarter than all other PhD students in the world... but going around and telling everybody makes you look petty. The same goes if you announce that other's projects are largely inconsequential or that you publishing one paper is more of an effort than somebody else working on their project. You say that you're proud of your work - which you should be if it's as good as you say; yet, simultaneously you're just at the beginning of your scientific career, and some modesty would also be in order... And please don't misinterpret this as me advising you to put on make-up for the beauty contest organized by the nefarious "inner circle" (though it would most likely also be helpful if it comes to that); in order to do quality scientific work, be it on your own, be it as part of a research team, you need a decent amount of self-doubt as your touchstone for confirmation bias and to remain open for criticism and advice. And no matter how good you are - nobody's that good.
On September 05 2013 23:28 Poffel wrote: Don't get me wrong, for all I know, you could be the next Einstein... but that doesn't change the fact that you should never ever compare yourself to Einstein.
I never did that. I used him as an example of a physicist who came up with his theories in his "spare time". There's others, such as Georges Lemaître who had a day job as a Catholic priest.
I'm not even in the same situation as these guys, as I did most of the work on my physics ideas when I was unemployed for two years and I was supported by government welfare. I had more free time during that period than any post-doc.
But yes, for the record, I wasn't comparing myself. I was just saying that his precedent proves that line of analysis wrong. It's not even like physics professors work on their theories full-time. They have heavy teaching and administrative responsibilities.
As for the hostility: yes, I'm sorry about that. As you've correctly diagnosed, I'm rather bitter. I'll try to dial it down to a minimum in my future dealings on the subject. ("It is impossible for any process to reduce the bitterness of a system to its zero point value in a finite number of operations.")
You're a good guy though, and I agree with your post. Heartening that somebody has the same thoughts that I do. Definitely not angry at you for going to conferences. I would take advantage of them myself if I had access.
Well, I am a physicist but don't know the field of physics research that well, since I moved to do research in the field of human genetics. But if my experience is something to judge by, I would advise you to stop loosing your time trying to get something published all by yourself. It is a lunatic idea. You need at least one established scientist that can guide through the process of 1) shaping up a project 2) supervising your project and 3) helping you write out the paper. Without that, your chances to get anything published on a journal with an impact factor of >1 are probably worse than the chances of you winning several millions in the lottery.
If you like physics and would like to try and do physics research for a living (which in itself its already a questionable life choice..), my advise would be get a physics degree while getting to know the professors and their research inclinations. And if for some reason you can not do that (like lack of money if you are living in the US) either move to Europe where the access to universities is almost free, or try to get into a lab by some other means, like applying for summer internships or voluntary work of any kind. If you are good and your passion shows, it is a matter of only getting to know the right person, and that would give you a foot into the field. But by being all alone in your desk you will not get anything accomplished.
It took me the better part of 3 years to get my first paper published, and I would never had accomplished anything remotely like that without my supervisor and lab collegues. The knowledge you have when you are fresh out of university is simply not enough by a long shot, even if you did ace that course in high energy physics.
On September 06 2013 01:02 Ender985 wrote: Well, I am a physicist but don't know the field of physics research that well, since I moved to do research in the field of human genetics. But if my experience is something to judge by, I would advise you to stop loosing your time trying to get something published all by yourself. It is a lunatic idea. You need at least one established scientist that can guide through the process of 1) shaping up a project 2) supervising your project and 3) helping you write out the paper. Without that, your chances to get anything published on a journal with an impact factor of >1 are probably worse than the chances of you winning several millions in the lottery.
On September 06 2013 01:02 Ender985 wrote: Well, I am a physicist but don't know the field of physics research that well, since I moved to do research in the field of human genetics. But if my experience is something to judge by, I would advise you to stop loosing your time trying to get something published all by yourself. It is a lunatic idea. You need at least one established scientist that can guide through the process of 1) shaping up a project 2) supervising your project and 3) helping you write out the paper. Without that, your chances to get anything published on a journal with an impact factor of >1 are probably worse than the chances of you winning several millions in the lottery.
If you like physics and would like to try and do physics research for a living (which in itself its already a questionable life choice..), my advise would be get a physics degree while getting to know the professors and their research inclinations. And if for some reason you can not do that (like lack of money if you are living in the US) either move to Europe where the access to universities is almost free, or try to get into a lab by some other means, like applying for summer internships or voluntary work of any kind. If you are good and your passion shows, it is a matter of only getting to know the right person, and that would give you a foot into the field. But by being all alone in your desk you will not get anything accomplished.
It took me the better part of 3 years to get my first paper published, and I would never had accomplished anything remotely like that without my supervisor and lab collegues. The knowledge you have when you are fresh out of university is simply not enough by a long shot, even if you did ace that course in high energy physics.
So why is that a questionable life choice? I heard quite many physicists advising sudents to NOT do theoretical physics. Is that some kind of your inner circle plot so that you can grab all the funding for yourself?
Btw you are doing research (albeit not theoretical physics), so what's the situation in research, what are the hot spots for the next 15 years (can be any field)
On September 06 2013 01:02 Ender985 wrote: Well, I am a physicist but don't know the field of physics research that well, since I moved to do research in the field of human genetics. But if my experience is something to judge by, I would advise you to stop loosing your time trying to get something published all by yourself. It is a lunatic idea. You need at least one established scientist that can guide through the process of 1) shaping up a project 2) supervising your project and 3) helping you write out the paper. Without that, your chances to get anything published on a journal with an impact factor of >1 are probably worse than the chances of you winning several millions in the lottery.
If you like physics and would like to try and do physics research for a living (which in itself its already a questionable life choice..), my advise would be get a physics degree while getting to know the professors and their research inclinations. And if for some reason you can not do that (like lack of money if you are living in the US) either move to Europe where the access to universities is almost free, or try to get into a lab by some other means, like applying for summer internships or voluntary work of any kind. If you are good and your passion shows, it is a matter of only getting to know the right person, and that would give you a foot into the field. But by being all alone in your desk you will not get anything accomplished.
It took me the better part of 3 years to get my first paper published, and I would never had accomplished anything remotely like that without my supervisor and lab collegues. The knowledge you have when you are fresh out of university is simply not enough by a long shot, even if you did ace that course in high energy physics.
So why is that a questionable life choice? I heard quite many physicists advising sudents to NOT do theoretical physics. Is that some kind of your inner circle plot so that you can grab all the funding for yourself?
Btw you are doing research (albeit not theoretical physics), so what's the situation in research, what are the hot spots for the next 15 years (can be any field)
My guess is that the job market for basically anyone with a Ph.D. in any field is incredibly difficult, so professors/researchers just discourage everyone so you only get those that really, really want to do it.
On September 06 2013 01:02 Ender985 wrote: Well, I am a physicist but don't know the field of physics research that well, since I moved to do research in the field of human genetics. But if my experience is something to judge by, I would advise you to stop loosing your time trying to get something published all by yourself. It is a lunatic idea. You need at least one established scientist that can guide through the process of 1) shaping up a project 2) supervising your project and 3) helping you write out the paper. Without that, your chances to get anything published on a journal with an impact factor of >1 are probably worse than the chances of you winning several millions in the lottery.
If you like physics and would like to try and do physics research for a living (which in itself its already a questionable life choice..), my advise would be get a physics degree while getting to know the professors and their research inclinations. And if for some reason you can not do that (like lack of money if you are living in the US) either move to Europe where the access to universities is almost free, or try to get into a lab by some other means, like applying for summer internships or voluntary work of any kind. If you are good and your passion shows, it is a matter of only getting to know the right person, and that would give you a foot into the field. But by being all alone in your desk you will not get anything accomplished.
It took me the better part of 3 years to get my first paper published, and I would never had accomplished anything remotely like that without my supervisor and lab collegues. The knowledge you have when you are fresh out of university is simply not enough by a long shot, even if you did ace that course in high energy physics.
So why is that a questionable life choice? I heard quite many physicists advising sudents to NOT do theoretical physics. Is that some kind of your inner circle plot so that you can grab all the funding for yourself?
Btw you are doing research (albeit not theoretical physics), so what's the situation in research, what are the hot spots for the next 15 years (can be any field)
My guess is that the job market for basically anyone with a Ph.D. in any field is incredibly difficult, so professors/researchers just discourage everyone so you only get those that really, really want to do it.
The job market for tenure-track positions is incredibly difficult. Depending on your field, you will not have trouble finding employment (within your field, not at a convenience store) with a PhD. Whether that job was worth getting a PhD in the first place (in terms of probability of earning said job with/without the degree, initial salary relative to time spent in school) is a different matter.
Currently mastering Biomechanical engineering. Really dislike the idea of getting a PhD afterwards. I don't feel like being a 'forever student' for an income that's WAY lower than entering the world of the big companies.
On September 06 2013 01:53 Henk wrote: Currently mastering Biomechanical engineering. Really dislike the idea of getting a PhD afterwards. I don't feel like being a 'forever student' for an income that's WAY lower than entering the world of the big companies.
What keeps you from entering the world of the big companies with a PhD? I understand that getting the masters is typically sufficient but getting a PhD and then calling it a day can give you certain advantages in your field also. You don't necessarily need to stay in academics after you get it.
If you're truly interested in your field, you can get a PhD. It's for your life, not your career. I would say that your life matters more. Obviously, that only matters if that's what you're into. More practical people don't care and I can respect that.
On September 05 2013 23:28 Poffel wrote: For instance, I shake my head whenever I get sent to some conference overseas and look at the bills... remembering how hard it was to get my PhD funded, I'm now astonished how eager people are to throw insane amounts of money at us for holding a 15-minute lecture at the other end of the world, over the same topic no less. Please note that I'm aware of my own hypocrisy here - I go to these conferences, so I'm using funds that would probably be better used on giving some PhD candidate a roof over their head -, so in effect I'm participating in the system that you valiantly accuse, and if you're angry at me, I can fully understand that.
I don't think you got the idea of conferences. It is not about giving a talk and then go home. It is about building networks, and finding new collaborators. During my conferences I met a lot of people that I have cited, and people that have cited me, and it was very useful to talk to them about the matters, how certain they felt about that and that, what parts they hoped to improve, what seemed to be impossible to continue on, etc.
But more importantly, you also get to met people from similar, but different fields, and every now and then you will see the possibility of a connection between your works. My most cited paper was actually another group in a related field that saw a talk of mine, and then approached us about using our model for one of their projects. And then we suddenly had this all new field to apply our work in, which is great. This would not have happened without conferences.
I do agree however, that cheaper hotels would have been enough sometimes... I think it is the senior staff that organise in general, and they are often a bit more prone to pick luxurious places. But anyway, compared to what they pay for your salary (before all the taxes, mind), it is still not a large amount, so I don't see a reason to pick too much on the travel money.
On September 06 2013 01:02 Ender985 wrote: Well, I am a physicist but don't know the field of physics research that well, since I moved to do research in the field of human genetics.
Wow, that is exactly me as well! Moved from particle physics to bioinformatics just half a year ago. We should exchange experiences!
But if my experience is something to judge by, I would advise you to stop loosing your time trying to get something published all by yourself. It is a lunatic idea. You need at least one established scientist that can guide through the process of 1) shaping up a project 2) supervising your project and 3) helping you write out the paper. Without that, your chances to get anything published on a journal with an impact factor of >1 are probably worse than the chances of you winning several millions in the lottery.
Agreeing on the general principle that supervisors are useful. You may think that "the system" is too closed to people outside said system, and it may be true (not passing judgement on that right now), but that doesn't change the fact that it speeds up your training A LOT to have a supervisor helping you out during your PhD. It may be possible for some to go straight from a master (where you in general get to do very little actual research) into proper research all by themselves, but then I just wonder what they could have done if they would have worked closer together with more experienced people at the start.
What if Einstein would have been doing research full time, and going to conferences a few times a year, directly after his education instead of sitting in that dusty old office of his with the patents? How much faster would the relativity theories have been published? Just becuase something works, doesn't mean it's the best way to do it.
Oh, this thread haha. I remember reading this thread three years ago as a high school senior thinking that I would NEVER go for a PhD and here I am, three years later, applying to graduate schools (PhD) for computer science.
What if Einstein would have been doing research full time, and going to conferences a few times a year, directly after his education instead of sitting in that dusty old office of his with the patents? How much faster would the relativity theories have been published? Just becuase something works, doesn't mean it's the best way to do it.
Sometimes I feel like the pressure to publish whatever you have right now (that is publishable) can slow you down. In my first year of PhD I published a paper in a not-even-so-great conference, and for months I had to do nothing but prepare posters, go to conferences abroad, give all kind of talks with various durations, seminaries for my lab, on the very paper. As a result, I was stuck in my own research, and I was basically not going forward. That work wasn't even that special, it was just a preliminary work and I had plenty of other ideas to follow up, but boy did I talk about it a lot.... :D
I'm doing my second year of PhD in computer science right now (computational linguistics to be precise).
On September 04 2013 23:38 Hadronsbecrazy wrote: Hey guys, Im considering doing a PhD but was wondering, what kind of degree did you get for your undergrad? a first class equivalent? (Im studying in the UK) I really want to do one just because im interested in learning more , but my grades arent great, Im nearing a First class but still not quite a first class and Ive got 2 years left. I reckon with hard work I can get that First class.
How does funding work for a PhD? Do you have to look for sponsors outside the universiy or does the university provide you with funding? Any advice you guys can give me? Do we need lots of research projects during the summer to help?
Your first port of call is prospective Universities. For the past several years now Research Council funding goes directly to Universities in a ‘funding block’ which works out as a set number of PhD/DPhil studentships (in previous years individual students applied directly to the Research Council). If your University doesn’t have a funding block you will not get funding from a research council, and block funding is HIGHLY competitive.
In addition to this Universities may also have their own partial or even full fee grants, sometimes available on a means-tested basis. Corporate or charitable sponsors may also approach Universities with money to issue a certain number of grants available to students, again there may/will be eligibility criteria.
Currently there is no mainstream govern loan system for postgraduate study (Research Council funding is via a grant) in the UK. A career development loan from a bank would be an alternative, as would private sponsors such as employers or charities, but again they are likely to have eligibility criteria.
If you are study Full-Time in the UK on a BA/BSc and are getting close to 1sts in your first year you should be well on track to get a 1st in your final result if you keep up the hard work and continue to improve; typically your first year’s grades do not count to your overall result, you only need to pass (however do check this with your institution).
It will depend upon your field and expertise, and professional experience, but generally it would be expected for you to go from Bachelors to Masters and then to Doctoral study.
First of all, thanks a lot for your reply :D I've had a look around at some prospective universities and some of them were saying a First Class is required so I was wondering if it was the same for most in the field of engineering. On our course every year counts a little towards the final degreebut the next 2 years make up 67% of the degree so good performance in the next two years is vital. I've got little to no professional experience (a lot of rejected applications for summer student research posts and internships from companies), bt hopefully I can get something this upcoming summer.
Did you know what field you wanted to go into? Also did you know the professors who offered you a place well? What kindof questions do they ask in an interview? Does it look bad if you go to work for say 2 years after completing your masters then go back for your PhD ?
Hi!
Engineering isn't my field I'm afraid so it's difficult for me to say. The BEST people to speak to would be PhD students at your current institution in your field, they'll have the best and most up to date info for you, and they'll be full of hopes and regrets - awesome combination. Even relatively junior academics will have an out of date experience of gaining a Doctorate.
A PhD is a serious research undertaking. You cannot (must not) fuck it up, it is very much more than a 'next step' up a ladder (I think I might imply this a little, apologies). While it is almost essential for an academic career, it is not a professional development qualification you obtain to get this role, rather it is an opportunity for you to attempt to start 'being' an academic by undertaking research in a safe(r) environment; this is certainly the case when at the later stages of a PhD. If you succeed you should have something(s) you can publish.
What will get you your job is what you have done on the way: teaching experience, published work, professional experience where appropriate, the strength of your academic networks and your knowledge of the field. This is the kind of thing that you ultimately will want to get from your institution; some of it will depend upon your supervisor, but not all.
I can't advise on what would make you a better candidate, such as how much professional XP you should have - but in engineering I'd imagine this is looked upon very favourably. Speak to other PhD students and see what they say! I do like the masters-PhD route, but I may be wrong, don't take my advice over actual engineering PhDs.
I will say this though. Before ANYTHING you need to have (only the very roughest) idea of what you want to research. It's no good if you just want a PhD to become a Dr., you need to have the actual passion and interest to commit to your field. That always comes first, and regardless of how well you do at Uni this will determine whether you get a place on a PhD programme, whether you get funding, whether you will get bored and fail; yes, the strength of your prior accomplishments will demonstrate your ability to achieve your research aims, but they need to be worthwhile aims to begin with!
Wow, that was a very nice reply, thank you
What happens if your PhD thesis is rejected? I will try and ask around this year thanks a lot dude :D
yes pressure to publish just produces a lot of publications the world would be better off without. People need to think more and write less. Einstein was likely better off in the patent office. When you turn research into a commodity, it becomes degraded, just like everything else
On September 06 2013 22:46 sam!zdat wrote: yes pressure to publish just produces a lot of publications the world would be better off without. People need to think more and write less. Einstein was likely better off in the patent office. When you turn research into a commodity, it becomes degraded, just like everything else
Yea sometimes you read stuff and think "how the hell did reviewers miss that" then you realize that basically everyone is under massive pressure and lack of time and it allows for some crap to slip through. Of course the better the journal the more rare it is.
I consistently appalled at the mediocrity pervading academia. If they would just shut up and teach and only write when they have something to say, we'd all be better off. It just means I have more mediocre scholarship to slog through and our sisyphean task becomes even more so.
On September 07 2013 00:12 sam!zdat wrote: I consistently appalled at the mediocrity pervading academia. If they would just shut up and teach and only write when they have something to say, we'd all be better off. It just means I have more mediocre scholarship to slog through and our sisyphean task becomes even more so.
Except if they shut up and only wrote when they had a Nature paper in their hands, nobody would hold jobs long enough to get there, or acquire the skills to do the work in the first place.
On September 07 2013 00:12 sam!zdat wrote: I consistently appalled at the mediocrity pervading academia. If they would just shut up and teach and only write when they have something to say, we'd all be better off. It just means I have more mediocre scholarship to slog through and our sisyphean task becomes even more so.
Except if they shut up and only wrote when they had a Nature paper in their hands, nobody would hold jobs long enough to get there, or acquire the skills to do the work in the first place.
Are you saying that folks need to write bad articles in order to learn how to write?
it doesn't help them run better. Maybe things are different in the sciences, but in the humanities it just produces mounds of poop. Nobody is learning anything.
On September 07 2013 00:12 sam!zdat wrote: I consistently appalled at the mediocrity pervading academia. If they would just shut up and teach and only write when they have something to say, we'd all be better off. It just means I have more mediocre scholarship to slog through and our sisyphean task becomes even more so.
Except if they shut up and only wrote when they had a Nature paper in their hands, nobody would hold jobs long enough to get there, or acquire the skills to do the work in the first place.
Are you saying that folks need to write bad articles in order to learn how to write?
The writing is a very small part of the "work" in many fields. The rest, being data collection, experiments, theory, networking/professional development/teaching/whatever, takes a long long time to get good at.
It's pretty normal for a group or an individual academic to work their way up, making minor contributions to a field in minor journals before managing some kind of breakthrough. You need to publish the minor work in order to both gain experience and demonstrate competence, so you can continue to be funded long enough to make the breakthrough. If you swore to publish nothing but the final, amazing product, you'd never have a job long enough to get there.
Of course, it's also fairly common for rising stars to get a leg-up by walking into an already top-tier laboratory, and publishing fantastic papers from the start due to the people they're working with. That's great for them (and their fields) but it obviously doesn't mean everyone else should lose funding or the ability to publish.
I can't comment on humanities. Those (poop-covered?) halls just mystify me. But in the harder sciences you need a good runup.
On September 07 2013 00:49 oneofthem wrote: can't blame the runner for bad form when there's an alligator behind chasing, and it helps to make them run better. yea
It would be more akin to ignoring that massive discrepancy in arch height as you plod forward, ultimately leading to a total collapse of the knee. Learning good form is the first step.
On September 07 2013 00:12 sam!zdat wrote: I consistently appalled at the mediocrity pervading academia. If they would just shut up and teach and only write when they have something to say, we'd all be better off. It just means I have more mediocre scholarship to slog through and our sisyphean task becomes even more so.
Except if they shut up and only wrote when they had a Nature paper in their hands, nobody would hold jobs long enough to get there, or acquire the skills to do the work in the first place.
Are you saying that folks need to write bad articles in order to learn how to write?
The writing is a very small part of the "work" in many fields. The rest, being data collection, experiments, theory, networking/professional development/teaching/whatever, takes a long long time to get good at.
It's pretty normal for a group or an individual academic to work their way up, making minor contributions to a field in minor journals before managing some kind of breakthrough. You need to publish the minor work in order to both gain experience and demonstrate competence, so you can continue to be funded long enough to make the breakthrough. If you swore to publish nothing but the final, amazing product, you'd never have a job long enough to get there.
Of course, it's also fairly common for rising stars to get a leg-up by walking into an already top-tier laboratory, and publishing fantastic papers from the start due to the people they're working with. That's great for them (and their fields) but it obviously doesn't mean everyone else should lose funding or the ability to publish.
I can't comment on humanities. Those (poop-covered?) halls just mystify me. But in the harder sciences you need a good runup.
This isn't about punishing those who are complicit to a shitty system, as appealing as that thought may be. It is about identifying the bad tendencies in higher ed and doing our best to ameliorate them.
one thing that IS cool is that I'm being told that my dissertation really just needs to be a book, rather than the old dissertation form, because the first thing you have to do is turn your dissertation into a book. So that's a modernization which is nice.
the problem with the humanities compared to the sciences is that in science you only have to understand a little piece to do your work. The humanities is not like that, you really have to know a little bit about everything. The diagram in the OP therefore doesn't really apply to humanities. Especially now that we are all becoming increasingly skeptical that there are really separate fields called 'history' 'literature' 'philosophy' etc. You really can't understand any one of those without understanding the others. So as we know more, the time required to get up to speed just balloons. It will take me another 30 years until I'm really someone that anyone should listen to, but it doesn't work like that unfortunately.
edit: and in the meantime I'm just some idiot who hasn't read anything publishing papers that are of no use to anyone, because I have to. I think when I get my degree I might move to tibet or something and come back when I'm 60.
But in all seriousness, you make changes to it, re-run experiments to find more data, and do whatever else your committee says.
But honestly, you kinda know beforehand if your shit is gonna be accepted or rejected :D No surprise.
Over here in France, it's almost accepted by default. People who wouldn't have gotten theirs quit long before they even start to write their dissertation :D
But in all seriousness, you make changes to it, re-run experiments to find more data, and do whatever else your committee says.
But honestly, you kinda know beforehand if your shit is gonna be accepted or rejected :D No surprise.
Over here in France, it's almost accepted by default. People who wouldn't have gotten theirs quit long before they even start to write their dissertation :D
Yeah, that's a good point. You should be keeping your advisor in the loop with what you're working on, how effective your research is, etc. You can certainly make changes to your subject and design before defending your final product.
On September 07 2013 00:49 oneofthem wrote: can't blame the runner for bad form when there's an alligator behind chasing, and it helps to make them run better. yea
It would be more akin to ignoring that massive discrepancy in arch height as you plod forward, ultimately leading to a total collapse of the knee. Learning good form is the first step.
given the extremely casual (bad) analogy, you are not supposed to put features like arch height into it. but anyway, if we are going to discuss bad humanities papers i'm afraid i'll say something offensive to someone so it's best to just drop it here. teehee
one thing though, the effect of journal prestige functions as a signal for the quality of ideas found in them, so there's a meta level effect that more or less affects all soft disciplines, making journal 'ranking' more incestuous and not purely objective indicator of quality, if there is anything like that
yes yes, we know, our entire field is useless and we should just become scientists because the only knowledge worth having is scientific knowledge. If you can't express it quantitatively, it simply is not worth knowing
On September 06 2013 01:02 Ender985 wrote: Well, I am a physicist but don't know the field of physics research that well, since I moved to do research in the field of human genetics. But if my experience is something to judge by, I would advise you to stop loosing your time trying to get something published all by yourself. It is a lunatic idea. You need at least one established scientist that can guide through the process of 1) shaping up a project 2) supervising your project and 3) helping you write out the paper. Without that, your chances to get anything published on a journal with an impact factor of >1 are probably worse than the chances of you winning several millions in the lottery.
See, this shit is why I get so ornery.
When I said that, I did not mean to imply any sort of hidden conspiracy. The fact that you will probably never be able to publish anything by yourself in any half-reputable journal it is NOT because of the lack of a 'big name' in your authors list. It's simply because with the knowledge you have when your are fresh out of any faculty, there is simply no way you can write up anything meaningful for the rest of the scientific community.
The graph in the OP explains it really clearly, in order to push the boundaries of human knowledge you first need to BE in that boundary, and a faculty degree does not bring you anywhere near there. To be in that boundary, you need to: 1) Read all the papers relevant to your field that have been published up to today, and keep reading everything that comes up every single day. 2) Be surrounded by people that are also part of that boundary, meet with them, expose your ideas and listen to what they have to say. Attend conferences and make presentations of your data yourself. You need to exchange ideas with others, explain your thoughts and see if they make sense to them: generally other people can point out flaws in your thoughts that you'd never have found by yourself. 3) And most important of all, be under the supervision and guidance of someone who has already done everything I mentioned above for several years, plus published a few papers. I know all these things now, but if you asked me this question 4 years ago, I would be completely clueless as to what does it take to get a paper published. Experience gets you a long way, and when you lack it, you better be next to someone who does have it. Plus you probably need to eat, and you are never going to get your research funded if you have not yet produced outstanding research; on the other hand a PI with a solid CV can get your food money for you much more easily.
On September 06 2013 01:02 Ender985 wrote: Well, I am a physicist but don't know the field of physics research that well, since I moved to do research in the field of human genetics. But if my experience is something to judge by, I would advise you to stop loosing your time trying to get something published all by yourself. It is a lunatic idea. You need at least one established scientist that can guide through the process of 1) shaping up a project 2) supervising your project and 3) helping you write out the paper. Without that, your chances to get anything published on a journal with an impact factor of >1 are probably worse than the chances of you winning several millions in the lottery.
If you like physics and would like to try and do physics research for a living (which in itself its already a questionable life choice..), my advise would be get a physics degree while getting to know the professors and their research inclinations. And if for some reason you can not do that (like lack of money if you are living in the US) either move to Europe where the access to universities is almost free, or try to get into a lab by some other means, like applying for summer internships or voluntary work of any kind. If you are good and your passion shows, it is a matter of only getting to know the right person, and that would give you a foot into the field. But by being all alone in your desk you will not get anything accomplished.
It took me the better part of 3 years to get my first paper published, and I would never had accomplished anything remotely like that without my supervisor and lab collegues. The knowledge you have when you are fresh out of university is simply not enough by a long shot, even if you did ace that course in high energy physics.
So why is that a questionable life choice? I heard quite many physicists advising sudents to NOT do theoretical physics. Is that some kind of your inner circle plot so that you can grab all the funding for yourself?
Btw you are doing research (albeit not theoretical physics), so what's the situation in research, what are the hot spots for the next 15 years (can be any field)
It is a questionable life choice because as somebody has already mentioned in this thread, to dedicate your life to research means earning a meager salary in comparison with industry standards, means no financial stability since you will only have a guaranteed money income until your grant runs out in a few months/years, means you will have to relocate to a different lab/probably a different country every 3 o 4 years, etc. Plus in todays economic environment, the money available for research is diminishing while the amount of people trying to pursue a research carreer is only increasing, which stresses further all points I made above.
Again I did a physics degree but I'm currently doing research in genetics and biomedicine, so take my oppinion with that in mind. But IMHO the research opportunities in physics are quite dim at best. Physics is a very old science and basically everyhting that could be easily figured out or proved, already has. In my oppinion the only 2 worthwhile current areas of research in physics are high energy particle phyiscs and quantum information. For the first one you basically HAVE to be in the LHC, and there are so many people able to work in there. You could work in a lesser collider but you are never going to make impactful sicence in there. And for the second one the possiblilities are a bit better, since setting up a lab with a handful of lasers and beam splitters is far more doable than building another LHC, but again there are already many groups doing just that and you would probably be hard pressed to find way into one of those. The advantage of theoretical physics is that it is a very cheap research line, since you basically only need your food money, a pen and a paper and maybe a computer to run simulations. The downside is that there are already many extremely clever people doing exactly that, and that the great majority of theories that are being researched and proposed at the moment by these very guys are simply not demonstrable/probable by any currently doable experiment, basically rendering any theory as good as the next one, and ultimately making them all pretty useless, at least for the time being.
What I see blooming in comparison to phyiscs is the genetics field. The human genome was sequenced only 10 years ago, and we still don't know what 75% of it means or is supposed to do. In my oppinion, the discovery of DNA is what marked the start of biology as a true science, since up to that point the discipline was basically descriptive and oriented into making catalogs of living specimens, with only some scientific exceptions like Mendel or Darwin. Compare that to astronomy where the first instances of mathematical predicitons of celestial events were performed more than 3000 years ago, and you will see what I mean when I say that biology is a very new science and that it offers a lot of room for research. Right now you can sequence a whole human genome for less than 2000$ and in less than 3 weeks, while the first one 10 years ago took 7 years and 3 billion dollars. Right today you can insert zinc fingers to perform point mutations in a specific part of a cell's genome and then grow that mutated cell line, which was simply impossible 2 years ago. And you can research human genetics or any of the genetic diseases, but also mouse or dog or fish or bacteria or virus genetics, or even plant genetics, which is a field that is also blooming due to the GMO interests. And in contrast to research in physics, you can start a lab with a non ridiculous budget, and there is a good chance that you can find something useful in any of those subfields.
Well that is my biased oppinion anyway. This is also the reason why I choose to go from a physics degree to a biophysics master to a PhD in biomedicin while doing computational genetics, because I think the field is much more open and accessible, and because I find it incredibly interesting as well.
On September 06 2013 01:02 Ender985 wrote: Well, I am a physicist but don't know the field of physics research that well, since I moved to do research in the field of human genetics.
Wow, that is exactly me as well! Moved from particle physics to bioinformatics just half a year ago. We should exchange experiences!
here are some videos following/interviewing a physicist on his path (now completed) to a PhD. figured it might be relevant to this topic and anyone interested
On September 07 2013 01:44 Ender985 wrote: When I said that, I did not mean to imply any sort of hidden conspiracy. The fact that you will probably never be able to publish anything by yourself in any half-reputable journal it is NOT because of the lack of a 'big name' in your authors list. It's simply because with the knowledge you have when your are fresh out of any faculty, there is simply no way you can write up anything meaningful for the rest of the scientific community.
I think what you mean is that YOU wouldn't be able to progress with these things because you don't have that particular set of skills and dispositions. Some people work better in a team, and vice versa, too.
Don't think that you speak for everyone, because clearly you don't. No less a physicist than Gerald 't Hooft has a webpage in which he encourages people to take the independent route and provides resources in that direction.
As for attending conferences and reading papers that come up every day...you simply don't seem to have a very good understanding of the history of science and how scientists make their discoveries. As one example, Richard Feynman arrived at his "sum over histories" formulation by digging up a paper of Dirac's that was 15 years old and noticing a passage in which Dirac said that one expression can be regarded as "analogous" to a Lagrangian. He didn't have to attend conferences or stay abreast of recent papers. (Yes, he had a lot of help from Wheeler with his early work, but he probably would have done good work even without that collaboration, and what's more, he didn't have the Internet and all the other advantages that the modern age brings.)
On September 07 2013 01:44 Ender985 wrote: Experience gets you a long way, and when you lack it, you better be next to someone who does have it. Plus you probably need to eat, and you are never going to get your research funded if you have not yet produced outstanding research; on the other hand a PI with a solid CV can get your food money for you much more easily.
As for this nonsense...I already made clear that I'm working as a programmer and I have patent coming out that could set me up financially for quite some time. If you can't be bothered to read people's posts, then don't presume to give advice.
On September 07 2013 01:44 Ender985 wrote: When I said that, I did not mean to imply any sort of hidden conspiracy. The fact that you will probably never be able to publish anything by yourself in any half-reputable journal it is NOT because of the lack of a 'big name' in your authors list. It's simply because with the knowledge you have when your are fresh out of any faculty, there is simply no way you can write up anything meaningful for the rest of the scientific community.
I think what you mean is that YOU wouldn't be able to progress with these things because you don't have that particular set of skills and dispositions. Some people work better in a team, and vice versa, too.
Don't think that you speak for everyone, because clearly you don't. No less a physicist than Gerald 't Hooft has a webpage in which he encourages people to take the independent route and provides resources in that direction.
As for attending conferences and reading papers that come up every day...you simply don't seem to have a very good understanding of the history of science and how scientists make their discoveries. As one example, Richard Feynman arrived at his "sum over histories" formulation by digging up a paper of Dirac's that was 15 years old and noticing a passage in which Dirac said that one expression can be regarded as "analogous" to a Lagrangian. He didn't have to attend conferences or stay abreast of recent papers. (Yes, he had a lot of help from Wheeler with his early work, but he probably would have done good work even without that collaboration, and what's more, he didn't have the Internet and all the other advantages that the modern age brings.)
Why are you so defensive? No one is attacking you. On the contrary, people are bending over backwards to not offend you. If what you say is true, you'll be published and a success and an exception and anyone who thought otherwise (not that anyone is expressing this view) will have to eat their words.
Just take what they're saying as advice based on personal experience, not as a criticism.
On September 07 2013 01:44 Ender985 wrote: When I said that, I did not mean to imply any sort of hidden conspiracy. The fact that you will probably never be able to publish anything by yourself in any half-reputable journal it is NOT because of the lack of a 'big name' in your authors list. It's simply because with the knowledge you have when your are fresh out of any faculty, there is simply no way you can write up anything meaningful for the rest of the scientific community.
I think what you mean is that YOU wouldn't be able to progress with these things because you don't have that particular set of skills and dispositions. Some people work better in a team, and vice versa, too.
Don't think that you speak for everyone, because clearly you don't. No less a physicist than Gerald 't Hooft has a webpage in which he encourages people to take the independent route and provides resources in that direction.
As for attending conferences and reading papers that come up every day...you simply don't seem to have a very good understanding of the history of science and how scientists make their discoveries. As one example, Richard Feynman arrived at his "sum over histories" formulation by digging up a paper of Dirac's that was 15 years old and noticing a passage in which Dirac said that one expression can be regarded as "analogous" to a Lagrangian. He didn't have to attend conferences or stay abreast of recent papers. (Yes, he had a lot of help from Wheeler with his early work, but he probably would have done good work even without that collaboration, and what's more, he didn't have the Internet and all the other advantages that the modern age brings.)
Why are you so defensive? No one is attacking you. On the contrary, people are bending over backwards to not offend you. If what you say is true, you'll be published and a success and an exception and anyone who thought otherwise (not that anyone is expressing this view) will have to eat their words.
Just take what they're saying as advice based on personal experience, not as a criticism.
Hogwash, I'm afraid. Ender's post was obviously designed to masturbate. He ignored the basic facts of my situation, treating me as some neophyte with wild (or even "lunatic", as he called them) dreams of doing research. I repeatedly made clear that I have ALREADY completed much work that I believe is objectively important. He's free to give his opinion, though one wonders who the hell he thinks he is to lay those assertions down like stone tablets...
you're not really helping your case bro, you just sound defensive. What are you trying to prove? Convince tl that you are a real physicist? We're not the people to whom you must prove yourself. Just accept that you're horribly misunderstood and that you'll have the last laugh
On September 07 2013 02:31 ZenithM wrote: It's generally considered good practice to keep up with the latest state of the art research though ;D
Yet he's simply masturbating if he's honestly going to pretend that a scientist has a duty to read every new paper, as he put it. I had an email correspondence with David Deutsch in which he admitted that he only has time to read only a fraction of the papers in his own field. It's not for want of commitment on his part, but merely because there's so many papers coming out and he was being honest (unlike many of these snobbish types of which Ender985 is a sterling example).
On September 07 2013 02:54 sam!zdat wrote: you're not really helping your case bro, you just sound defensive.
Just read Ender's post again. Imagine if you or any normal human being had to put up with that level of profound condescension. Would you get "defensive"?
(No more derail from me. This will be my last post on the subject.)
Not every paper indeed, but you can check out the list of the new papers published at the top conferences of your field each year, and then among those, you fully read the ones with a title (or reading further, the abstract) that relate to your research. I mean, it doesn't take that much time either, and after a while you start to develop some kind of "flair" for the good important articles, if I may say so. Maybe it doesn't work that way in every field though, I don't know...
As a PhD student with a thesis relating to natural language processing, information retrieval, semantics and more generally artificial intelligence, I find myself also following closely what happens in the industry and keeping up to the best of my ability with what the tech giants seem to be up to (Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc...) with the problems that I'm concerned with. This is something that few of my colleagues do, and I think it should be done more. You know, just to remember what the real world is like :D
On September 07 2013 02:54 sam!zdat wrote: you're not really helping your case bro, you just sound defensive.
Just read Ender's post again. Imagine if you or any normal human being had to put up with that level of profound condescension. Would you get "defensive"?
(No more derail from me. This will be my last post on the subject.)
Profound condescension? I'm not seeing it. Maybe he's just giving general advice and isn't aware of your situation. He's trying to be helpful, not a prick. Just assume a benign tolerance if he's getting everything wrong in his assumptions as they pertain to you.
So I try to give you my oppinion based on my 5 years of doing actual research, and you not only completely misinterpret my words (where did I say to read every paper that ever comes out?), but also attack my intelligence and call me snob and masturbatory. I will read that as a thank you then.
Good luck with your endeavours. When you succeed, please make fun of me in every single one of your conferences. I will be very glad to be proven wrong.
On September 07 2013 02:54 sam!zdat wrote: you're not really helping your case bro, you just sound defensive.
Just read Ender's post again. Imagine if you or any normal human being had to put up with that level of profound condescension. Would you get "defensive"?
(No more derail from me. This will be my last post on the subject.)
Profound condescension? I'm not seeing it. Maybe he's just giving general advice and isn't aware of your situation. He's trying to be helpful, not a prick. Just assume a benign tolerance if he's getting everything wrong in his assumptions as they pertain to you.
If he was so concerned about intervening on my behalf, you'd imagine he would have bothered to skim a few of my various posts in the thread or at least would have taken a few moments to wonder whether I'm not a complete idiot, and might have given some thought to this matter, before he wrote all those dubious and self-serving statements.
I was too prickly toward one other guy, who turned out to be really nice and offered numerous helpful comments. On Ender we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Okay...this is REALLY my last post on the subject. Sorry for the derail, all.
On September 07 2013 02:31 ZenithM wrote: It's generally considered good practice to keep up with the latest state of the art research though ;D
Yet he's simply masturbating if he's honestly going to pretend that a scientist has a duty to read every new paper, as he put it. I had an email correspondence with David Deutsch in which he admitted that he only has time to read only a fraction of the papers in his own field. It's not for want of commitment on his part, but merely because there's so many papers coming out and he was being honest (unlike many of these snobbish types of which Ender985 is a sterling example).
Ghastly, you're really the only one sounding like a dick in this thread (aside from Sam, who has his irrational and ill-informed hatred of all humanities).
I'm only 19 and things might change, but at the core I am a perfectionist. That is my reason to strive for it. I don't know if I am going to do it, but it only seems logical to me.
On September 07 2013 02:54 sam!zdat wrote: you're not really helping your case bro, you just sound defensive.
Just read Ender's post again. Imagine if you or any normal human being had to put up with that level of profound condescension. Would you get "defensive"?
(No more derail from me. This will be my last post on the subject.)
Profound condescension? I'm not seeing it. Maybe he's just giving general advice and isn't aware of your situation. He's trying to be helpful, not a prick. Just assume a benign tolerance if he's getting everything wrong in his assumptions as they pertain to you.
If he was so concerned about intervening on my behalf, you'd imagine he would have bothered to skim a few of my various posts in the thread or at least would have taken a few moments to wonder whether I'm not a complete idiot, and might have given some thought to this matter, before he wrote all those dubious and self-serving statements.
I was too prickly toward one other guy, who turned out to be really nice and offered numerous helpful comments. On Ender we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Okay...this is REALLY my last post on the subject. Sorry for the derail, all.
Believe me, the first lesson anyone doing a PhD learns is that their work is of questionable value, questionable quality and is questionably funded. I've learned it, and am still learning it. I'm fairly sure everyone here who has one will have learned it as well.
A PhD teaches you, first and foremost, how to fail. That is a hard lesson, and you might need to make some adjustments to the way you respond to criticism if you want to try it.
On September 07 2013 02:25 GhastlyUprising wrote: As one example, Richard Feynman arrived at his "sum over histories" formulation by digging up a paper of Dirac's that was 15 years old and noticing a passage in which Dirac said that one expression can be regarded as "analogous" to a Lagrangian. He didn't have to attend conferences or stay abreast of recent papers. (Yes, he had a lot of help from Wheeler with his early work, but he probably would have done good work even without that collaboration, and what's more, he didn't have the Internet and all the other advantages that the modern age brings.)
I've been starting to skim this thread now, so my apologies if this is no longer relevant.
Are you saying that the sum over histories formulation (one of my favourites!) could have been found 15 years earlier if Feynman had kept himself up to date on relevant papers??
Jokes aside, I am fine with people working by themselves, in the sense of not the usual academic route, but surely it must be relevant for any researcher to keep him/herself up to date on work by others in fields of interest. Otherwise we will have a lot of people (some of which possibly very talented) that will sit at home by themselves wasting years of their talent rediscovering things they could have read up on in an afternoon, and then furthered on those ideas. And possibly worse, people sitting home and wrestling with important problems that they could have solved if they had all the existing tools (like Einstein, differential geometry and GR).
On September 07 2013 07:36 Cascade wrote: Jokes aside, I am fine with people working by themselves, in the sense of not the usual academic route, but surely it must be relevant for any researcher to keep him/herself up to date on work by others in fields of interest. Otherwise we will have a lot of people (some of which possibly very talented) that will sit at home by themselves wasting years of their talent rediscovering things they could have read up on in an afternoon, and then furthered on those ideas. And possibly worse, people sitting home and wrestling with important problems that they could have solved if they had all the existing tools (like Einstein, differential geometry and GR).
Well, a lot of the time what happens (probably to most scientists at some point in their career) is you're thinking about something that arouses your curiosity and you get the thought: "Why couldn't it be this way?" Then you try and find a reason why it couldn't be that way. After satisfying yourself that it could be that way, you then have to check whether someone else has thought of it before. If they haven't, then double, triple and quadruple check whether you've done something stupid. If you still don't believe you have, then you're ready to submit.
That is one way you can make a contribution to a literature without being up to date on that literature beforehand. You just need the minimum amount of knowledge required to know, to a pretty high degree of certainty, that you're not doing something stupid. (Unfortunately, this is what most cranks believe they're doing. What separates a crank from an honest practitioner of the method is little more than the Dunning-Kruger effect.)
Doing PhD is a great way to not have a paying job. Most importantly not having a paying job usually continues after PhD is granted, often for many years
On the brighter side PhDs are among the most valuable members of our society, because they are the ones who expand our understanding of the universe and make life better for future generations =)
tbh if you've already done good work, as you say. then first step would be to reach out to physicists who can vouch for you. look at who's working on teh same problem as you and strike up a discussion. you'll have to be tactful though
yes tactful. Say, 'can you help me with this problem' and then 'gee, might this be a solution?'
I knew a math savant in high school who is now at mit, apparently he walked into his advisor's life and instantly solved a problem the poor guy had been working on for 20 years. If it were me I would have murdered the kid probably
Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves.
When you're done, try to be less of a dick than most others who get one. Knowing a shit-ton about some stupidly precise subject does not make you as special as you think, and your precious discoveries are not going to be of any use, to anyone, ever. It just makes you feel good about yourself.
On September 07 2013 10:40 stuneedsfood wrote: Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves.
Or to teach at the university level, where a doctorate is preferred by many colleges... >.>
On September 07 2013 10:40 stuneedsfood wrote: Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves.
When you're done, try to be less of a dick than most others who get one. Knowing a shit-ton about some stupidly precise subject does not make you as special as you think, and your precious discoveries are not going to be of any use, to anyone, ever. It just makes you feel good about yourself.
I have a Ph.D.
This is what's known as "projection" in psychology, when you place your own issues onto others
On September 07 2013 10:40 stuneedsfood wrote: Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves.
Or to teach at the university level, where a doctorate is preferred by many colleges... >.>
No, no, you don't get it, we do it to shit on people.
Edit: And btw, I think a lot of PhD candidates ask themselves if doing a PhD isn't precisely the thing that is making their life meaningless. Like Belarius put it nicely:
On September 07 2013 02:54 sam!zdat wrote: you're not really helping your case bro, you just sound defensive.
Just read Ender's post again. Imagine if you or any normal human being had to put up with that level of profound condescension. Would you get "defensive"?
(No more derail from me. This will be my last post on the subject.)
Profound condescension? I'm not seeing it. Maybe he's just giving general advice and isn't aware of your situation. He's trying to be helpful, not a prick. Just assume a benign tolerance if he's getting everything wrong in his assumptions as they pertain to you.
If he was so concerned about intervening on my behalf, you'd imagine he would have bothered to skim a few of my various posts in the thread or at least would have taken a few moments to wonder whether I'm not a complete idiot, and might have given some thought to this matter, before he wrote all those dubious and self-serving statements.
I was too prickly toward one other guy, who turned out to be really nice and offered numerous helpful comments. On Ender we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Okay...this is REALLY my last post on the subject. Sorry for the derail, all.
Believe me, the first lesson anyone doing a PhD learns is that their work is of questionable value, questionable quality and is questionably funded. I've learned it, and am still learning it. I'm fairly sure everyone here who has one will have learned it as well.
A PhD teaches you, first and foremost, how to fail. That is a hard lesson, and you might need to make some adjustments to the way you respond to criticism if you want to try it.
On September 07 2013 09:53 Alex1Sun wrote: Doing PhD is a great way to not have a paying job. Most importantly not having a paying job usually continues after PhD is granted, often for many years
On the brighter side PhDs are among the most valuable members of our society, because they are the ones who expand our understanding of the universe and make life better for future generations =)
Like undergrad degrees, this depends entirely on what field you have a PhD in.
On September 07 2013 10:40 stuneedsfood wrote: Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves.
When you're done, try to be less of a dick than most others who get one. Knowing a shit-ton about some stupidly precise subject does not make you as special as you think, and your precious discoveries are not going to be of any use, to anyone, ever. It just makes you feel good about yourself.
On September 07 2013 21:59 Derrida wrote: I am getting a Ph.D. because I'm fucking lazy to do any other work. Just gonna read stuff and have a comfortable chair for the rest of my life.
Btw, HIGH FIVE DELEUZE ^
High five Derrida!
Being paid to read. It's a tough job but someone has to do it.
As for attending conferences and reading papers that come up every day...you simply don't seem to have a very good understanding of the history of science and how scientists make their discoveries. As one example, Richard Feynman arrived at his "sum over histories" formulation by digging up a paper of Dirac's that was 15 years old and noticing a passage in which Dirac said that one expression can be regarded as "analogous" to a Lagrangian. He didn't have to attend conferences or stay abreast of recent papers. (Yes, he had a lot of help from Wheeler with his early work, but he probably would have done good work even without that collaboration, and what's more, he didn't have the Internet and all the other advantages that the modern age brings.)
Do you actually think Feynman didn't keep up to date or collaborate with other top physicists?
What do you think the probability is that he would have come up with the "sum over histories" formulation if he never read recent papers or collaborated with colleagues? Are you confident that his revelation after reading Dirac's paper would have come had it not been for all of his other research and training?
A PhD at first appears to be focused on discovering new knowledge, but that implies that a PhD is knowledge specific when in fact, it is much more the mastery of a method. Getting a PhD (at least in science) is about learning how to ask a question and getting an answer. A PhD is about learning how to communicate all this knowledge and the questions that are a part of this discovery process in language other people can understand.
When you get a PhD you demonstrated your mastery over this method by contributing new knowledge to your given field.
Edit: if I were to add to your visual depiction, I would make the big circle smaller and add tons of little circles at the outside. Then I would make the arrow from the center non-linear, because when you do a PhD, what you started working on is rarely what you ended up working on. In the end, the experience of doing the PhD will have led you in unexpected places while trying to get to your destination.
A linear arrow assumes that you are getting to where you aimed to get to, but if that were the case, you wouldn't have needed to get on the road to get there to begin with. When you're doing research, you find out that going down that following that road actually led you some place else entirely. Thus by doing research, you discover that the assumptions that you made, that made you believe you would get to that particular point by following the road you took, were not true. Discovering that these assumptions were false is often as important to understanding how things work, as compared to reaching that one goal you hypothesized the road you took would take you to.
Edit 2: So to make this sound less convoluted, let's use the example of the gentleman who put his point right outside the big circle and called it "Saving my son's life". There are indubitably many points like these all around the circle that can save a lot of people's lives. We don't know where they are. When a scientist will make a hypothesis, he will make an educated guess that doing a set of experiments (ie the road) will demonstrate how something works that will add this outside point to the circle, that we will discover something useful that will help someone. However, what will happen is that instead of getting there, the scientist will get to a different point entirely, which may or may not help anyone in the immediate future (thus not linear).
On September 07 2013 21:59 Derrida wrote: I am getting a Ph.D. because I'm fucking lazy to do any other work. Just gonna read stuff and have a comfortable chair for the rest of my life.
Btw, HIGH FIVE DELEUZE ^
High five Derrida!
Being paid to read. It's a tough job but someone has to do it.
I've looked into becoming a Ph.D, but unless you have a godlike focus for years on end, this is not for you (might differ in relation to universities though). Being lazy and becoming a Ph.D don't go hand in hand, I suppose.
On September 07 2013 17:26 ZenithM wrote: For example, you have a much better shot at being hired by Google as a software engineer if you have a PhD in computer science.
Not necessarily as PhDs are held to a higher standard in terms of skills and maturity. That being said, I would like to think that if you have the gumption to complete a PhD (in computer science) that you can demonstrate more than enough skills to hack it in industry. In other words, it's less about the degree and more about the skills you inevitably acquire on your way to receiving that degree. At least in this particular example.
On September 07 2013 22:23 iSTime wrote: Do you actually think Feynman didn't keep up to date or collaborate with other top physicists?
I already admitted he collaborated a lot with Wheeler and it was probably formative for Feynman. His Nobel Prize address makes that clear. Doesn't change the fact that he got the chief inspiration for sum over histories from a passage in a 15-year-old paper.
On September 07 2013 22:23 iSTime wrote:What do you think the probability is that he would have come up with the "sum over histories" formulation if he never read recent papers or collaborated with colleagues? Are you confident that his revelation after reading Dirac's paper would have come had it not been for all of his other research and training?
If he chose the independent route and stayed with it, he would have had a different kind of training.
In previous centuries there were lots of independent, "gentlemen scientists". I agree there haven't been many recently, but that might change thanks to the Internet and all the opportunities it brings.
On September 07 2013 17:26 ZenithM wrote: For example, you have a much better shot at being hired by Google as a software engineer if you have a PhD in computer science.
Not necessarily as PhDs are held to a higher standard in terms of skills and maturity. That being said, I would like to think that if you have the gumption to complete a PhD (in computer science) that you can demonstrate more than enough skills to hack it in industry. In other words, it's less about the degree and more about the skills you inevitably acquire on your way to receiving that degree. At least in this particular example.
Yes, exactly. In this case, the PhD degree is just a filter, Google then checks that you can really do smart stuff in their job interviews :D
On September 07 2013 09:53 Alex1Sun wrote: Doing PhD is a great way to not have a paying job. Most importantly not having a paying job usually continues after PhD is granted, often for many years
On the brighter side PhDs are among the most valuable members of our society, because they are the ones who expand our understanding of the universe and make life better for future generations =)
Like undergrad degrees, this depends entirely on what field you have a PhD in.
No. It just depends on how much effort you actually put into it/having a job. Literally any degree can be quite successful. Some just aren't as easy as others. Sure, life isn't fair and you may get screwed, but there isn't a degree out there that is worthless by default.
On September 07 2013 10:40 stuneedsfood wrote: Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves.
Or to teach at the university level, where a doctorate is preferred by many colleges... >.>
On September 07 2013 10:40 stuneedsfood wrote: Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves.
Or to teach at the university level, where a doctorate is preferred by many colleges... >.>
Teaching at a university level is basically meaningless. Academia's no different from a circus at heart. In fact, it's probably worse due to all the bureaucratic and political bullshit you have to put up with.
It's a dream for the people who make it though. People pay me to entertain myself and them with esoteric knowledge that nobody really cares about? Hell yeah!
On September 07 2013 17:26 ZenithM wrote: For example, you have a much better shot at being hired by Google as a software engineer if you have a PhD in computer science.
depends on the what exactly you wnt to do at google. you can get hired as an undergraduate too, you just have to be really good.
So many ppl from my school go for masters/phd cause they couldn't line up a job straight out of college. The "well, couldn't find a job, might as apply for grad school" mentality is quite huge here. (and getting into a masters program is impossible to fail, some phd programs are more selective but isn't too difficult)
On September 05 2013 09:24 sam!zdat wrote: that's because political science is a bullshit field. You should know this because politics is obviously not science. Political science is where politics ends and we all become slaves of the election machine.
I think I have to take an exam or smth two and a half years in for the MA part. But I'm not sure everything about this is confusing, I'm just going to show up and think about literature and I'm sure it will work out.
...you are obviously not a political scientist. Academic political science does not even resemble talking heads on TV, or whatever you are basing your post off of.
political science is the study of how to run and manipulate a degenerate electoral system and manufacture the illusion of legitimacy. It is about how to calculate your chessboard so you can write off everyone who doesn't live in the one swing district you need. It is about how to make polls and pretend they are the voice of the people. I know exactly what 'political science' is.
Also, this is bullshit. Talk to more political scientists, and you'll start to get a glimmer of an idea of how wide and diverse the field is in terms of research interests and practice, esp. between policy and academia.
On September 07 2013 10:40 stuneedsfood wrote: Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves.
Or to teach at the university level, where a doctorate is preferred by many colleges... >.>
Teaching at a university level is basically meaningless. Academia's no different from a circus at heart. In fact, it's probably worse due to all the bureaucratic and political bullshit you have to put up with.
It's a dream for the people who make it though. People pay me to entertain myself and them with esoteric knowledge that nobody really cares about? Hell yeah!
I agree with you about how there is a ton of political bullshit that prevents educators from being as successful as possible... but teaching- at any level- is never meaningless.
On September 07 2013 10:40 stuneedsfood wrote: Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves.
When you're done, try to be less of a dick than most others who get one. Knowing a shit-ton about some stupidly precise subject does not make you as special as you think, and your precious discoveries are not going to be of any use, to anyone, ever. It just makes you feel good about yourself.
I have a Ph.D.
No. People get PhDs to sleep with undergrads.
sounds good to me, when does this start
I'm going to continue to believe that political science is a training camp for technocratic overlords and electoral puppetmasters, because nothing called 'political science' can be a real field, the whole term just reeks of ideology :p
On September 07 2013 10:40 stuneedsfood wrote: Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves.
Or to teach at the university level, where a doctorate is preferred by many colleges... >.>
Teaching at a university level is basically meaningless. Academia's no different from a circus at heart. In fact, it's probably worse due to all the bureaucratic and political bullshit you have to put up with.
It's a dream for the people who make it though. People pay me to entertain myself and them with esoteric knowledge that nobody really cares about? Hell yeah!
I agree with you about how there is a ton of political bullshit that prevents educators from being as successful as possible... but teaching- at any level- is never meaningless.
At the university level, that will depend on the perceived value of your field/subject, your teaching (which will suffer from all sorts of factors depending on which school you end up at), and your students' receptiveness. Chances are one of those will go wrong.
I do think that we need better educators in secondary education in the USA, but there's such a stigma attached to becoming a high/middle school teacher (reflected in salary) that the job is most often delegated to second-rate teachers who don't know their subjects and/or can't teach, while all the more knowledgeable and/or better educators traipse off to becoming professors, where they ultimately have less of an impact on a student's development.
On September 07 2013 10:40 stuneedsfood wrote: Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves.
When you're done, try to be less of a dick than most others who get one. Knowing a shit-ton about some stupidly precise subject does not make you as special as you think, and your precious discoveries are not going to be of any use, to anyone, ever. It just makes you feel good about yourself.
I have a Ph.D.
No. People get PhDs to sleep with undergrads.
sounds good to me, when does this start
I'm going to continue to believe that political science is a training camp for technocratic overlords and electoral puppetmasters, because nothing called 'political science' can be a real field, the whole term just reeks of ideology :p
That's a bad, complacent attitude to have for a PhD student jsyk.
if they would rename their field I might care less. If I rename my field 'meaning of life science' will I get more respect? It's just stupid.
and I really do have a grudge against pollsters and election strategists, and I think that this aspect of political science is the undoing of democracy
the more you calculate your democracy, the less democracy there is. This paradox is inscribed in the very name 'political science'. That's why I hate it. If they want to say they are studying political philosophy, or governance, fine. But 'political science'? Ick
edit: I also think economics a bullshit field full of inbred ideologues. Does that also make me a bad phd student?
edit: also, babylon, you've already made self-denigrating jokes in this thread. Lots of people hurl opprobrium at humanists and everyone thinks it is funny because humanists don't study things that are 'real'. But the reality is that what you do is far more valuable than any 'political scientist'. Why should we be expected to diss ourselves for our 'esoteric' fields of study (which is bs btw) while the reified ideologues pat themselves on the back for their 'hardheaded pragmatism' and everyone plays along?
On September 07 2013 10:40 stuneedsfood wrote: Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves.
Or to teach at the university level, where a doctorate is preferred by many colleges... >.>
Teaching at a university level is basically meaningless. Academia's no different from a circus at heart. In fact, it's probably worse due to all the bureaucratic and political bullshit you have to put up with.
It's a dream for the people who make it though. People pay me to entertain myself and them with esoteric knowledge that nobody really cares about? Hell yeah!
I agree with you about how there is a ton of political bullshit that prevents educators from being as successful as possible... but teaching- at any level- is never meaningless.
At the university level, that will depend on the perceived value of your field/subject, your teaching (which will suffer from all sorts of factors depending on which school you end up at), and your students' receptiveness. Chances are one of those will go wrong.
I do think that we need better educators in secondary education in the USA, but there's such a stigma attached to becoming a high/middle school teacher (reflected in salary) that the job is most often delegated to second-rate teachers who don't know their subjects and/or can't teach, while all the more knowledgeable and/or better educators traipse off to becoming professors, where they ultimately have less of an impact on a student's development.
I think it's even worse at the secondary level than in university. It's certainly harder to teach in high school, although you may have more of an impact than with older students. There is even more political bullshit at the high school level, where teachers need to bend over backwards for any ignorant parent or any student who doesn't take school seriously... not to mention standardized testing. And then after all of those hoops are jumped through and eggshells are walked on, every teacher (regardless of level and field) has to consider general points like teaching, student receptiveness, and how valuable your curriculum will be to your students.
But either way, the teaching profession is definitely the Rodney Dangerfield job of the United States.
I would love to teach high school if I could teach what I wanted, say dangerous things, burn the standardized tests, and be respected as one of the only actually useful members of society (which is what teachers are).
edit: oh, and also have some time to pursue research
On September 08 2013 02:07 Count9 wrote: So many ppl from my school go for masters/phd cause they couldn't line up a job straight out of college. The "well, couldn't find a job, might as apply for grad school" mentality is quite huge here. (and getting into a masters program is impossible to fail, some phd programs are more selective but isn't too difficult)
I can vouch for this. I have quite a number of PhD student fellows who couldn't have possibly found a job after their master (because... they're not competent in anything, harshly yet simply put). So they ended up "doing research". Wonderful researchers indeed.
As someone who actually does a PhD, I can state with utmost certainty that the majority of the claims in this thread are false and highly subjective.
Just because you did a study in some loser field noone cares about doesn't mean all the work being done in University is 'meaningless'. Nor is the fact that you are talentless an implication for the supposed fact that a PhD student can not make a real contribution to anything. And if you haven't even had any experience with doing research you most likely won't know what you are talking about.
I've seen numerous cases of people around me making actual contributions to both science and the real world, from creating optimization frameworks for all kinds of processes in industry to cancer treatment.
Seriously this petty Universities are political entities bla bla nonsense needs to stop. It's worse than those idiots that claim going to school is pointless and you might as well read stuff yourself on wikipedia. [/rant]
On September 08 2013 03:35 sam!zdat wrote: if they would rename their field I might care less. If I rename my field 'meaning of life science' will I get more respect? It's just stupid.
and I really do have a grudge against pollsters and election strategists, and I think that this aspect of political science is the undoing of democracy
the more you calculate your democracy, the less democracy there is. This paradox is inscribed in the very name 'political science'. That's why I hate it. If they want to say they are studying political philosophy, or governance, fine. But 'political science'? Ick
edit: I also think economics a bullshit field full of inbred ideologues. Does that also make me a bad phd student?
edit: also, babylon, you've already made self-denigrating jokes in this thread. Lots of people hurl opprobrium at humanists and everyone thinks it is funny because humanists don't study things that are 'real'. But the reality is that what you do is far more valuable than any 'political scientist'. Why should we be expected to diss ourselves for our 'esoteric' fields of study (which is bs btw) while the reified ideologues pat themselves on the back for their 'hardheaded pragmatism' and everyone plays along?
you are doing a phd in economics? is that what I get from your post here?
so far in this thread people have thought that I hate the humanities and am studying economics. I must be communicating even more poorly than usual
edit: for the record, I'm an insufferable troll and I don't actually think that either economics or 'political science' are completely bullshit. But I do think they are much more ideological and not nearly as 'scientific' as their adherents would like everyone to believe.
edit: and I do passionately resent the fact that I have voted in two presidential elections and neither time has my vote mattered, even theoretically, and I blame this on 'political science'. And 'political science' views politics as a system to be objectively administered and calculated, rather than as what it actually is, which is the battlefield of class struggle.
On September 08 2013 10:43 sam!zdat wrote: so far in this thread people have thought that I hate the humanities and am studying economics. I must be communicating even more poorly than usual
edit: for the record, I'm an insufferable troll and I don't actually think that either economics or 'political science' are completely bullshit. But I do think they are much more ideological and not nearly as 'scientific' as their adherents would like everyone to believe.
edit: and I do passionately resent the fact that I have voted in two presidential elections and neither time has my vote mattered, even theoretically, and I blame this on 'political science'. And 'political science' views politics as a system to be objectively administered and calculated, rather than as what it actually is, which is the battlefield of class struggle.
I thought it was pretty clear your comments on humanities implied you're an insider. From your 'meaning of life science' comment I'd guess Philosophy, but from what you usually post I'd guess Geography.
On September 08 2013 10:43 sam!zdat wrote: so far in this thread people have thought that I hate the humanities and am studying economics. I must be communicating even more poorly than usual
edit: for the record, I'm an insufferable troll and I don't actually think that either economics or 'political science' are completely bullshit. But I do think they are much more ideological and not nearly as 'scientific' as their adherents would like everyone to believe.
edit: and I do passionately resent the fact that I have voted in two presidential elections and neither time has my vote mattered, even theoretically, and I blame this on 'political science'. And 'political science' views politics as a system to be objectively administered and calculated, rather than as what it actually is, which is the battlefield of class struggle.
I thought it was pretty clear your comments on humanities implied you're an insider. From your 'meaning of life science' comment I'd guess Philosophy, but from what you usually post I'd guess Geography.
Sam's not always the clearest poster, but he really couldn't have telegraphed his sarcasm in that post any more strongly. It was obviously meant to parody anti-humanities thinking.
edit: assuming the post that started all the original "sam hates humanities" talk was this:
On September 07 2013 01:40 sam!zdat wrote: yes yes, we know, our entire field is useless and we should just become scientists because the only knowledge worth having is scientific knowledge. If you can't express it quantitatively, it simply is not worth knowing
On September 07 2013 10:40 stuneedsfood wrote: Almost everybody, this thread included, gets a Ph.D to validate they're otherwise meaningless existence and to give them a higher position to shit on those with less education than themselves.
When you're done, try to be less of a dick than most others who get one. Knowing a shit-ton about some stupidly precise subject does not make you as special as you think, and your precious discoveries are not going to be of any use, to anyone, ever. It just makes you feel good about yourself.
I have a Ph.D.
No. People get PhDs to sleep with undergrads.
sounds good to me, when does this start
I'm going to continue to believe that political science is a training camp for technocratic overlords and electoral puppetmasters, because nothing called 'political science' can be a real field, the whole term just reeks of ideology :p
what's wrong with reeking of ideology? if you're hiding your ideology, you're evil. and you can never escape ideology after all.
edit: my field is literature but I take that as an excuse to study whatever the hell I want because literature is about the world and the world is everything. In other words I'm a dilettante
On September 08 2013 12:28 sam!zdat wrote: ha! Caught at my own game
it's just the wrong ideology, is the problem
edit: my field is literature but I take that as an excuse to study whatever the hell I want because literature is about the world and the world is everything. In other words I'm a dilettante
On September 08 2013 12:28 sam!zdat wrote: ha! Caught at my own game
it's just the wrong ideology, is the problem
edit: my field is literature but I take that as an excuse to study whatever the hell I want because literature is about the world and the world is everything. In other words I'm a dilettante
On September 08 2013 12:28 sam!zdat wrote: ha! Caught at my own game
it's just the wrong ideology, is the problem
edit: my field is literature but I take that as an excuse to study whatever the hell I want because literature is about the world and the world is everything. In other words I'm a dilettante
Sam's posts= Possibly the most amusing and irreverently poignant on TL? Maybe?
Then again, I'd rather not inflate the little bastards ego any more than is necessary...
On topic: PhD's. Sheer silliness. Still a cool piece of paper to have I guess. I'd hang it right next to my Frank Frazetta paintings and when I showed it to people, I could segue into talking about Frank. The perfect conversational trap.
On September 08 2013 03:35 sam!zdat wrote: if they would rename their field I might care less. If I rename my field 'meaning of life science' will I get more respect? It's just stupid.
and I really do have a grudge against pollsters and election strategists, and I think that this aspect of political science is the undoing of democracy
the more you calculate your democracy, the less democracy there is. This paradox is inscribed in the very name 'political science'. That's why I hate it. If they want to say they are studying political philosophy, or governance, fine. But 'political science'? Ick
edit: I also think economics a bullshit field full of inbred ideologues. Does that also make me a bad phd student?
edit: also, babylon, you've already made self-denigrating jokes in this thread. Lots of people hurl opprobrium at humanists and everyone thinks it is funny because humanists don't study things that are 'real'. But the reality is that what you do is far more valuable than any 'political scientist'. Why should we be expected to diss ourselves for our 'esoteric' fields of study (which is bs btw) while the reified ideologues pat themselves on the back for their 'hardheaded pragmatism' and everyone plays along?
It's not the fault of the students for having to major in a field that is officially titled "political science" across all universities in the USA, and you're not the only one who is cognizant of the issues of labeling it "political science." What's even worse is that you know less than political scientists do about their field, and yet proceed to shit on them by generalizing your opinions about democracy and the electoral system onto the entire field. Does it surprise you to know that some political scientists don't even deal with those two topics in the USA, that some just want to sit around obsessing over places like Kazakhstan? You're talking exactly like all the snobbish science majors who shit on humanities students for being too dumb to do math.
But hey, so what? You're trolling. So are all those snobbish science majors! But think about what happens when people actually start believing that sort of shit, as they already do re: hard sciences vs. humanities. What an excuse, huh? Think about how that reflects on your field and yourself.
My comments are not self-denigrating "jokes." They're what I believe about the state of academia across all fields. Point out where I specifically criticize humanities students in this thread, and sure, I'll apologize, but you won't find it, because I didn't.
hey man, I take it back. Everyone studying political science who knows that 'political science' is a ridiculous thing to call a field is hereby cool in my book. I'm just some guy who likes to hear myself talk. Pollsters, election strategists, and everyone contributing to the technocratization of american politics is still a running dog.
why you would be mad at me for suggesting that your studying the ANE is neither useless nor esoteric is beyond me. I think that makes you a badass, frankly, that's all I'm trying to say. You've just made some various comments that seem sort of self-denigrating about how teaching is pointless and so on and I don't understand why. What could be more important?
edit: I know this is like an armchair psychoanalysis and everything, but I feel like you've internalized the opinion of ignorant people that what you study is detached from reality and not the 'real world', and you then take it out on the 'ivory tower' with denigrating comments. If I had one experience leaving the ivory tower and sojourning in the real world, it was that what goes on in the ivory tower is real and important and what goes on in the real world is simulacral and useless. So I think you should cut it out.
edit: if the ivory tower has a problem, it's because of bean counters demanding that intellectuals conform to their limited mypoic reified view of what is 'useful', not that intellectuals are useless
On September 08 2013 09:49 DisneylandSC wrote: As someone who actually does a PhD, I can state with utmost certainty that the majority of the claims in this thread are false and highly subjective.
Just because you did a study in some loser field noone cares about doesn't mean all the work being done in University is 'meaningless'. Nor is the fact that you are talentless an implication for the supposed fact that a PhD student can not make a real contribution to anything. And if you haven't even had any experience with doing research you most likely won't know what you are talking about.
I've seen numerous cases of people around me making actual contributions to both science and the real world, from creating optimization frameworks for all kinds of processes in industry to cancer treatment.
Seriously this petty Universities are political entities bla bla nonsense needs to stop. It's worse than those idiots that claim going to school is pointless and you might as well read stuff yourself on wikipedia. [/rant]
Yeah, I can't imagine how awful would some people feel reading the posts here without previous knowledge on the topic. :D
I'm one of the hard sciences own humanities type of a guy, could anyone here try to convince me otherwise? I promise I'll try to be respectful.
I dislike a hierarchical arrangement of the sciences, so I'll use a handy illustration of my own making:
edit: for the record, I'm an insufferable troll and I don't actually think that either economics or 'political science' are completely bullshit. But I do think they are much more ideological and not nearly as 'scientific' as their adherents would like everyone to believe.
One day, political engineers will come to this great moral epiphany, realise how their interference in researching a thing controls the behaviour of the very thing they purport to be researching, and become gadflies like sam!dzat.
One day, all our gadflies will realise that those puppetmasters are necessary cogs in our civilisation, without which society could not function, and become a hedonist like me.
One day, we hedonists will realise that thought is the servant of action and not vice-versa, and we will become political engineers.
There's a place for everyone in this world, and without each other we'd each be less of ourselves.
P.S. If my own illustration is too prosaic to excite you, I would borrow the lines of The Lord from Goethe's Faust, when he spoke in the prologue to the devil:
Therein thou'rt free, according to thy merits; The like of thee have never moved My hate. Of all the bold, denying Spirits, The waggish knave least trouble doth create. Man's active nature, flagging, seeks too soon the level; Unqualified repose he learns to crave; Whence, willingly, the comrade him I gave, Who works, excites, and must create, as Devil. But ye, God's sons in love and duty, Enjoy the rich, the ever-living Beauty! Creative Power, that works eternal schemes, Clasp you in bonds of love, relaxing never, And what in wavering apparition gleams Fix in its place with thoughts that stand forever!
On September 08 2013 15:23 sam!zdat wrote: what does 'own humanities' even mean? Is it a wrestling match? Maybe we just study different things,
physics owns geology!!!!
I do prefer this hierarchy
Its funny cause its true.
Although I'd put physics way closer to math.
On September 09 2013 00:06 GhastlyUprising wrote: One day it might turn out that physics is the same as maths. As Einstein once asked: "Did God have a choice in creating the universe?"
On September 09 2013 00:10 Roe wrote: As always, philosophy is missing on the rightmost extreme of that picture.
I'd put philosophy next to math, as logic is the cousin of both.
But while physics certainly has some abstract elements to it, I don't think it'd ever be as "pure" as just mathematics.
On September 09 2013 00:06 GhastlyUprising wrote: One day it might turn out that physics is the same as maths. As Einstein once asked: "Did God have a choice in creating the universe?"
On September 09 2013 00:10 Roe wrote: As always, philosophy is missing on the rightmost extreme of that picture.
I'd put philosophy next to math, as logic is the cousin of both.
But while physics certainly has some abstract elements to it, I don't think it'd ever be as "pure" as just mathematics.
::shrugs::
Math is symbolic logic. Math is also just a priori statements. It's clearly a derivative of philosophy. You're never going to get to "the place" where there's only math and no a priori claims or philosophy.
I hope you realise the joke here, is that there is no such thing as purity of thought. Purity does not exist in the comparative, but is the immutable truth of an absolute extreme in nature, it is the absence of mixed or opposing states. In the Platonic-Socratic tradition, Purity lies beyond the state of mortal knowledge, and is reserved for the gods. Each branch of the sciences regards itself as the pure vehicle of intellectual inquiry, and estimates the legitimacy of the others by that relation.
I find philosophy a hobby...the non-metaphysics stuff is mostly about the stance on the matter and the metaphysics stuff is almost all the time out of our reach, so there's only speculation...
And math is way more abstract than physics, but physics itself is very challenging and demanding, math is more pure, but there's more correlation between physics and math than chemistry and phyics in my opinion, hence why I'd put it closer.
On September 09 2013 00:06 GhastlyUprising wrote: One day it might turn out that physics is the same as maths. As Einstein once asked: "Did God have a choice in creating the universe?"
On September 09 2013 00:10 Roe wrote: As always, philosophy is missing on the rightmost extreme of that picture.
I'd put philosophy next to math, as logic is the cousin of both.
But while physics certainly has some abstract elements to it, I don't think it'd ever be as "pure" as just mathematics.
::shrugs::
And I'd put philosophy to the fast left because it is not a science, it is a bunch of opinions. It particularly enjoys laying claim to logic as a subfield, and that is a big pile of bs.
lol sam i had a teacher in college who said the exact same thing every field likes to claim it's pure and free from the subjectivity that makes other fields 'less scientific' but when there's nowhere to go everyone turns to philosophy for a solution
On September 08 2013 15:23 sam!zdat wrote: what does 'own humanities' even mean? Is it a wrestling match? Maybe we just study different things,
physics owns geology!!!!
I do prefer this hierarchy
Its funny cause its true.
Although I'd put physics way closer to math.
On September 09 2013 00:06 GhastlyUprising wrote: One day it might turn out that physics is the same as maths. As Einstein once asked: "Did God have a choice in creating the universe?"
On September 09 2013 00:10 Roe wrote: As always, philosophy is missing on the rightmost extreme of that picture.
I'd put philosophy next to math, as logic is the cousin of both.
But while physics certainly has some abstract elements to it, I don't think it'd ever be as "pure" as just mathematics.
::shrugs::
And I'd put philosophy to the fast left because it is not a science, it is a bunch of opinions. It particularly enjoys laying claim to logic as a subfield, and that is a big pile of bs.
Only if you don't understand how to read it or consider it alongside other modes of investigation. It's probably not your fault though, many have very little chance when it comes to getting a good education in this regard.
everything from mathematical logic to the aesthetics of being funny is studied under 'philosophy,' not to mention the entire continental branch of the thing. it's really too diverse to be classified according to the level of its maths content, as that xkcd seems to be doing with the other fields.
On September 09 2013 00:42 MoltkeWarding wrote: I hope you realise the joke here, is that there is no such thing as purity of thought. Purity does not exist in the comparative, but is the immutable truth of an absolute extreme in nature, it is the absence of mixed or opposing states. In the Platonic-Socratic tradition, Purity lies beyond the state of mortal knowledge, and is reserved for the gods. Each branch of the sciences regards itself as the pure vehicle of intellectual inquiry, and estimates the legitimacy of the others by that relation.
I just realized I overlooked the word "purity" and assumed it was just a derivative relationship
On September 09 2013 04:03 oneofthem wrote: hobby does not say much. could say that about alchemy or archaeology. it does matter whether you do it well though
On September 08 2013 15:23 sam!zdat wrote: what does 'own humanities' even mean? Is it a wrestling match? Maybe we just study different things,
physics owns geology!!!!
I do prefer this hierarchy
Its funny cause its true.
Although I'd put physics way closer to math.
On September 09 2013 00:06 GhastlyUprising wrote: One day it might turn out that physics is the same as maths. As Einstein once asked: "Did God have a choice in creating the universe?"
On September 09 2013 00:10 Roe wrote: As always, philosophy is missing on the rightmost extreme of that picture.
I'd put philosophy next to math, as logic is the cousin of both.
But while physics certainly has some abstract elements to it, I don't think it'd ever be as "pure" as just mathematics.
::shrugs::
And I'd put philosophy to the fast left because it is not a science, it is a bunch of opinions. It particularly enjoys laying claim to logic as a subfield, and that is a big pile of bs.
Only if you don't understand how to read it or consider it alongside other modes of investigation. It's probably not your fault though, many have very little chance when it comes to getting a good education in this regard.
Not sure if you're referring to his second statement, but he's got that part correct. Logic cannot be a subfield of philosophy because all of philosophy is derived from logic. Without logic, there is no philosophy. Furthermore, you can have logic problems with no philosophical meaning, which combined with my previous statement implies that philosophy is a subfield of logic. Not the other way around.
Which means that mathematics is not a subfield of philosophy merely because it relies on logic. They'd be "siblings" on the hierarchy. Both subjects employ logic with less layers of abstraction than the rest of the sciences/fields, but they study different areas.
His first statement is pretty much troll bait though.
On September 05 2013 09:24 sam!zdat wrote: that's because political science is a bullshit field. You should know this because politics is obviously not science. Political science is where politics ends and we all become slaves of the election machine.
I think I have to take an exam or smth two and a half years in for the MA part. But I'm not sure everything about this is confusing, I'm just going to show up and think about literature and I'm sure it will work out.
On September 09 2013 06:26 sam!zdat wrote: all of philosophy is derived from logic?? Who are you, bertrand russell?
not even all of what anglos call 'philosophy' is derived from logic, let alone all of philosophy. How ludicrous
Simply because the logic is not formalized and explicitly defined doesn't mean it isn't derived from logic. Because philosophy is applied logic, there is going to be a layer of abstraction obviously. Like when physicists compute derivatives, they usually don't use the definition of a derivative. There are layers of abstraction (power rule, product rule, etc.) that seem to totally differentiate the two (definition of derivative and whatever other method you use to compute it), but one is still derived from the other.
If not all of philosophy is derived from logic, then give me an example of a philosophical idea that is not derived from logic.
"Good" is not philosophy. It's term that is defined and used in philosophy. If you were to make a philosophy involving good e.g. "One should live the Good life," it becomes a value argument, which is derived from logic.
EDIT: I realize that this is partially my own fault because of my sloppily worded request, as I asked for an example of a "philosophical idea," under which 'good' qualifies. But 'good' isn't philosophy until it's used for a larger argument.
On September 09 2013 06:55 sam!zdat wrote: yes that's the notion anyway. I'm useless for anything else of course
Dear comrade your painful sacrifice for the sake of justice will never be forgotten, with your PhD you will start a new age for humanity. The enslaved masses will be forevever grateful.
On September 09 2013 07:36 sam!zdat wrote: mozoku I'm just going to leave you to your little fantasies
If I was so obviously wrong, it wouldn't take much more time to explain why I was wrong then it would to write a condescending write-off of my claim. Not to mention, I'm legitimately interested in hearing the other side since I'm not a philosopher and haven't studied it past an elementary undergraduate level. But go ahead and assert you're right and that you're simply too good to respond to a peasant like me. Nevermind that its a very.. well.. ironic position to take for someone championing the humanities' value against those "arrogant" scientists who claim that the humanities are worthless.
Well I'm close with my brother and he is currently getting a PhD in microbiology. He is in his 3rd year. I also thought about getting a PhD in mathematics, but quickly realized I was not really motivated enough and will do fine with just a bachelors. Seeing my brother doing his PhD I definitely made the right decision.
First off I'm sure there are varying experiences depending on the university and the field one wishes to enter. For my brother once a week would be a crazy small amount of time and multiple people would have talks with him very soon. If it was during his first 2 years he would be kicked out of the program probably. After 2 years he was required to pick a lab to work with (after being required to work with 3 different labs) plus write a formal proposal of his ultimate thesis before being officially locked into the program. If they felt his proposal wasn't worthy enough he would have been dismissed from the program.
A program like this is work intensive and can be stressful at times. You really need to love the research. He can go into work and take off whenever he wants, but they really encourage not taking off frequently and spending 40 hours a week in the lab. My brother was smart and loves biology so he was involved in lab research all through undergrad plus searched out a lab doing research he liked before even deciding which PhD program to go into. He meet with the head of the lab he wanted before even deciding on attending that university and things have gone great for him. Also he isn't really a workaholic. Besides when he was writing his very important proposal for like a 2 month period, he works 40 hours a week and that's it. I've crashed at his place and stayed up until 3am playing Starcraft or other video games several times during workdays.
And yes those pictures do a great job at describing what he is currently doing.
Also the pay isn't that great so that's extra incentive why you really need to love it. Specifically though my brother was lucky and moved in with a couple of friends from college that got great paying jobs and than he got married so he hasn't had to live on just his salary.
On September 14 2010 11:12 illu wrote: ...the views in the comics are largely biased toward phd students in biological sciences and chemistry.
I believe those fields require so little technicality that doing a PhD in those fields is the same as doing a job as a lab technician for a PI. When you read their thesis it is really obvious that nothing fancy is going on - as just about anyone can understand it after spending two weeks on it on the relevant background information.
I guess I don't know what according to you is little technicality, but from the several biology PhD candidates I've met it's pretty damn technical. Of course part of the job is working as a lab tech, but you should choose a lab you like and they also do their own research.
hey mozoku I'm sorry, you're right, I'm being a jerk. It's just that I've written reams and reams about this topic on this site and I think everyone's probably sick of hearing about it. You could look through my profile and dig up some old threads where I blather on about this until everyone wants to punch me in the testicles, if you like. Long story short, the vast majority of philosophy frankly barely uses formal logic, let alone is grounded in it. The particular anglo tradition that you took in college places a higher value on formal logic than most, but even most of that is more window dressing to make it seem more 'logical' and 'scientific' than it really is, because we live in a society where everyone is obsessed with that sort of thing
On September 09 2013 08:23 sam!zdat wrote: hey mozoku I'm sorry, you're right, I'm being a jerk. It's just that I've written reams and reams about this topic on this site and I think everyone's probably sick of hearing about it. You could look through my profile and dig up some old threads where I blather on about this until everyone wants to punch me in the testicles, if you like. Long story short, the vast majority of philosophy frankly barely uses formal logic, let alone is grounded in it. The particular anglo tradition that you took in college places a higher value on formal logic than most, but even most of that is more window dressing to make it seem more 'logical' and 'scientific' than it really is, because we live in a society where everyone is obsessed with that sort of thing
I wish people were more obsessed with logic and science. It seems all they can talk about is their personality cults and superstitions. Oh and their shrink of course.
Hmm so have been doing my PhD for the last 5 or 6 months, so effectively in the very early stages of my PhD. After doing a psych undergrad, and then topping my honours class, now doing a PhD in forensic psycholoy, examining juror decision making and the role of forensic evidence in that decision making process.
Current research indicates that jurors are generally very trusting of forensic "experts" and forensic evidence, even if they don't understand it, whereas studies looking at the legitimacy and reliability/validity of forensic evidence propose that forensic evidence is fraught with bias at many different levels of an investigation. However, whilst there is a lot of new research coming up about how to reduce forensic bias in forensic labs and in the field, the same hasn't really been done for the courtroom, except for some proposed changes to forensic reports etc.
But yeah. So only just started my first study after they misplaced my ethics application, meaning the process took longer than it should have. Current workload is not high. And even if I will get to points where I have to do a lot of work in a short time, I doubt it will be any more stressful or tiring than anything I did in honours (in honours I looked at the impact of training schedules on the sleep/wake behaviours of Australian Olympic swimmers at the last Olympics, I was very lucky).
I also plan to apply for Clinical Masters in 2014, so as to be doing both the PhD and Masters at the same time (they have an actual program for that here), so I would finish with just about everything I could want, and do whatever I want. First and foremost would want to be a clinical psychologist, so yeah. Bit of ACT, CBT and the like.
Two of my friends are currently also doing PhDs in Biochem, and they practically live at their labs.
On September 09 2013 04:03 oneofthem wrote: hobby does not say much. could say that about alchemy or archaeology. it does matter whether you do it well though
Exactly, and many other disciplines.
this does seem like a serious bias on your part then. do you think bob the builder or tom the warlord are outstanding examples of necessary careers?
On September 09 2013 08:23 sam!zdat wrote: hey mozoku I'm sorry, you're right, I'm being a jerk. It's just that I've written reams and reams about this topic on this site and I think everyone's probably sick of hearing about it. You could look through my profile and dig up some old threads where I blather on about this until everyone wants to punch me in the testicles, if you like. Long story short, the vast majority of philosophy frankly barely uses formal logic, let alone is grounded in it. The particular anglo tradition that you took in college places a higher value on formal logic than most, but even most of that is more window dressing to make it seem more 'logical' and 'scientific' than it really is, because we live in a society where everyone is obsessed with that sort of thing
Would you say that a lot of philosophical ideas are not actually derived from logic, but really just based on hunches, with the logic coming after to try to prove the idea?
Or did you really just mean that not all philosophy is derived from formal logic?
it's somewhat difficult because most people have a vaguer notion of what 'logic' is than logicians do. They usually just mean thinking rationally, or not thinking in whatever way they find to be objectionable. Logic itself is pretty limited in scope, it tells you about relations of implication between various statements about subjects and predicates. But it doesn't tell you anything about the real world extension of these predicates, how we use words to talk about things, and if you want to treat such topics as time, causation, belief, possibility, and other things we take for granted in natural language, those are problems in logic, not something you can use logic to help you understand. I haven't really studied much of these modal logics and stuff because to be honest I think it is mostly a rather pointless scholasticism and I'm not sure they've really helped anyone understand much of anything. Though it's certainly possible I'm wrong about this.
you can mostly use logic to test the consistency of a collection of statements, or determine what implications follow from a set of knowns. But most of the 'verbs' that we use to do very basic types of reasoning have no rigorous logical definition. The world is just too complicated, and the kinds of things philosophers want to talk about too diverse, to do everything with logic. Logic is just one tool in your toolbox and, frankly, most problems that can be solved just with logic are by virtue of that fact trivially easy.
imo, the high status accorded to logic in anglo philosophy has mostly just served to impoverish anglo philosophy and reduce the scope of things that are considered 'philosophy' to those things that are easier to treat with logic. Here it is like the man who lost his keys in a parking lot, and searches for them only under the streetlight, because that's where he can see. As tmbg would say, 'im having a wonderful time but i'd rather be whistling in the dark.'
edit: which is not to say I disapprove of analytic philosophy, because I don't, for a while that's what I thought I wanted to do. And I don't believe there is any such thing as a pointless intellectual endeavor. But I do resent anglo philosophers who think that they have a monopoly on truth and that theirs is the only philosophy because it says 'philosophy' on their transcript and 'english' on mine.
On September 09 2013 11:06 sam!zdat wrote: it's somewhat difficult because most people have a vaguer notion of what 'logic' is than logicians do. They usually just mean thinking rationally, or not thinking in whatever way they find to be objectionable. Logic itself is pretty limited in scope, it tells you about relations of implication between various statements about subjects and predicates. But it doesn't tell you anything about the real world extension of these predicates, how we use words to talk about things, and if you want to treat such topics as time, causation, belief, possibility, and other things we take for granted in natural language, those are problems in logic, not something you can use logic to help you understand. I haven't really studied much of these modal logics and stuff because to be honest I think it is mostly a rather pointless scholasticism and I'm not sure they've really helped anyone understand much of anything. Though it's certainly possible I'm wrong about this.
you can mostly use logic to test the consistency of a collection of statements, or determine what implications follow from a set of knowns. But most of the 'verbs' that we use to do very basic types of reasoning have no rigorous logical definition. The world is just too complicated, and the kinds of things philosophers want to talk about too diverse, to do everything with logic. Logic is just one tool in your toolbox and, frankly, most problems that can be solved just with logic are by virtue of that fact trivially easy.
imo, the high status accorded to logic in anglo philosophy has mostly just served to impoverish anglo philosophy and reduce the scope of things that are considered 'philosophy' to those things that are easier to treat with logic. Here it is like the man who lost his keys in a parking lot, and searches for them only under the streetlight, because that's where he can see. As tmbg would say, 'im having a wonderful time but i'd rather be whistling in the dark.'
edit: which is not to say I disapprove of analytic philosophy, because I don't, for a while that's what I thought I wanted to do. And I don't believe there is any such thing as a pointless intellectual endeavor. But I do resent anglo philosophers who think that they have a monopoly on truth and that theirs is the only philosophy because it says 'philosophy' on their transcript and 'english' on mine.
I don't study philosophy, but I would presume that that is exactly the reason for the high status of logic. The fact that you can describe something in a way that is both trivial and unambiguous means that it is an efficient way to convey knowledge. I would argue that to be able to explain something logically you just need to have enough knowledge to eliminate ambiguity and hence I agree that it is limited with regards to discovering knowledge, but I feel that the only thing limiting the use of logic to describe subjects that you mentioned is our current limited understanding of those topics.
On September 09 2013 11:11 FireSA wrote: Wow, how very off topic.
Are you referring to our discussion of logic?
If so, I really don't see how it is, considering the OP was more of a conceptual view of what a PHD is, described as pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. So how is discussing logic as a tool for discovering/conveying knowledge "very off topic"?
all the truly interesting problems are fundamentally ambiguous and deal with things which, when we talk about them, we don't really know what we are talking about. But still we must talk about them.
things about which one can speak trivially and unambiguously are just that.
do you understand the concept of computational irreducibility? Even if david lewis were to complete his master plan for formalizing all knowledge, you wouldn't be able to talk about things using this perfect formal system in all the time that exists in the universe, it would take too long. We are not robots we are humans and we must try to understand things as humans
if you started trying to do philosophy you would quickly realize that logic by itself really doesn't get anywhere.
edit: philosophy is about trying to acquire some wisdom. Logic and wisdom are very different things. Have you ever heard of locke's madman?
On September 09 2013 12:34 sam!zdat wrote: all the truly interesting problems are fundamentally ambiguous and deal with things which, when we talk about them, we don't really know what we are talking about. But still we must talk about them.
things about which one can speak trivially and unambiguously are just that.
do you understand the concept of computational irreducibility? Even if david lewis were to complete his master plan for formalizing all knowledge, you wouldn't be able to talk about things using this perfect formal system in all the time that exists in the universe, it would take too long. We are not robots we are humans and we must try to understand things as humans
if you started trying to do philosophy you would quickly realize that logic by itself really doesn't get anywhere.
I don't think you are really disagreeing with me there, except for stating that they are fundamentally ambiguous. I am saying that they are interesting and described ambiguously because we don't know what we are talking about, but once we do, they are no longer interesting or ambiguous (at which point we should be able to describe them logically) and we move on to the next topic that we don't know enough about.
edit: philosophy is about trying to acquire some wisdom. Logic and wisdom are very different things. Have you ever heard of locke's madman?
I'm not trying to say that either, just that logic is a good method for conveying knowledge, since I would say wisdom generally requires some degree of experience and which is not something that can really be transferred.
the task of philosophy is to learn how to deal with irreconcilable contradiction. That is 'the dialectic'. The structure of reality is not logical, it is fundamentally and irreconcilably contradictory. You have to learn to hold these contradictions in your mind and let them play one against the other . God is not a machine
On September 09 2013 11:06 sam!zdat wrote: But I do resent anglo philosophers who think that they have a monopoly on truth and that theirs is the only philosophy because it says 'philosophy' on their transcript and 'english' on mine.
On September 09 2013 12:58 sam!zdat wrote: The task of philosophy is to learn how to deal with irreconcilable contradiction. That is 'the dialectic'. The structure of reality is not logical, it is fundamentally and irreconcilably contradictory. You have to learn to hold these contradictions in your mind and let them play one against the other . God is not a machine
I mean, I'm just saying. Bold words from a guy who resents having him told what his subject is about. I'll jump out on a limb that I'm quite sure can support my weight, and guess that there are some philosophers who would have issues with that characterization of their subject.
So I read the section of A New Kind of Science on Computational Irreducibility, and it didn't really conflict with my opinions, though perhaps my perception of formal logic is not strict enough. I don't disagree that there are some concepts that are so complex, that you would not be able to formally describe every possibility of every individual interaction, however I believe that if your understanding was such that you understood every interaction, that you would be able to describe the system logically and simply with use of abstraction.
I couldn't find a good source on Locke's Madman, I think I get the gist of the concept (a being capable of reasoning yet comes to the wrong conclusions) but if you could link me something specific that would be appreciated.
On September 09 2013 12:58 sam!zdat wrote: the task of philosophy is to learn how to deal with irreconcilable contradiction. That is 'the dialectic'. The structure of reality is not logical, it is fundamentally and irreconcilably contradictory. You have to learn to hold these contradictions in your mind and let them play one against the other . God is not a machine
How do you know it isn't logical? My argument is that anything could be described logically if only you had enough information, and I feel pretty safe in stating that you don't know enough (that nobody knows enough) about the structure of reality to make that assertion. I could agree that humanity may never know enough to be able to know enough about the structure of reality to describe it logically, but given enough time, effort and evolution I really don't see how you could state that we couldn't with certainty.
From my perspective, God is at least partially a concept used to fill gaps in our knowledge at the time. Ancient Greeks and Romans used Gods to describe concepts that I'm sure seemed unattainable in their time (like the sun) so I don't see any reason to believe that within a few hundred or thousand years (assuming we are still around) that some of the questions that seem beyond our comprehension now could be answered and we could have a whole new set of seemingly unanswerable questions.
my classes haven't started yet. I moved to a new city (blazing hot suburban wasteland) and have nothing to do but read, drink, and talk on TL. I don't even have my computer, so I can't get my civ4 on, I have nobody to sell me weed, and I have nowhere to play my guitar and no band to play it with. So here we are!
the point of the computational irreducibility is sure, maybe you could compute it, but only if you had a a computer that was bigger than the universe with more time than there is in the universe to run it! So that doesn't help you.
yes god is a name for what you do not know. That's why god is the Real (in the lacanian sense). And that's why I think positive theology is blashpemous and only negative theology is allowed. (edit: but maybe here I contradict myself because I think the christians are on to something when they say 'god is love'. God really is love, no matter what dr hoenikker says)
maybe you are right that anything could be described logically if you had enough information (i am not convinced), but I think it is not only an epistemological limitation, but an ontological (!) limitation that you will never have enough information. And so therefore I am just yr typical god fearing communist
lockes madman is someone who acts perfectly rational, but in the service of some insane irrational project. He is so rational that he is completely insane. Like david lewis, or Mr. Spock
I think there will always exist unanswerable questions which we nonetheless MUST answer (which is why one of my doctrines is 'god does not exist, He insists!' )
On September 09 2013 15:25 ZenithM wrote: Doesn't seem like your PhD is taking too much out of your TL time at least. I wouldn't allow myself monoliths of posting on logic ;D
Ah you got me, I'm not studying a PhD. In fact I don't even have a Master's. I am only a research assistant, though there are two PhD students with the same supervisor, so I do have some understanding of the process.
On September 09 2013 07:36 sam!zdat wrote: thanks bob that's the idea. Just wait, someday they will write books about me and I will make sure they put you in a footnote somewhere
Can't wait to be depicted as a decadent petit bourgeois lmao.
On September 09 2013 15:45 sam!zdat wrote: ^he means me, I think
Ah maybe haha, I assumed it was directed at me because it was right after my post.
Anyway, you could be right that not everything can be described logically, but I am content to agree to disagree since I can't think of any way to definitively prove either way as long as some questions remain unanswered. I did enjoy discussing the subject though, hearing counterpoints to my beliefs helps me figure out what my beliefs actually are.
On September 09 2013 07:36 sam!zdat wrote: thanks bob that's the idea. Just wait, someday they will write books about me and I will make sure they put you in a footnote somewhere
Can't wait to be depicted as a decadent petit bourgeois lmao.
nah you're just some guy who thinks he is my grandfather <3
On September 09 2013 15:45 sam!zdat wrote: ^he means me, I think
Ah maybe haha, I assumed it was directed at me because it was right after my post.
Anyway, you could be right that not everything can be described logically, but I am content to agree to disagree since I can't think of any way to definitively prove either way as long as some questions remain unanswered. I did enjoy discussing the subject though, hearing counterpoints to my beliefs helps me figure out what my beliefs actually are.
Sort of a side note, but the fact that not everything can be described logically --- namely that proofs of certain propositions cannot be expressed in sufficiently interesting logics --- is a cornerstone result of mathematical logic.
(Turns out that logic is where mathematics, philosophy, and computer science meet, something I wish I had realized earlier in my career.)
On September 10 2013 01:22 sam!zdat wrote: that's true, but incompleteness I think is not really nearly as big a deal as people think it is. It's sort of just a silly trick, really.
It is a (relatively) big deal, insofar as its implications towards the foundations of mathematics (i.e., Hilbert's program) and computer science (linking proof and program construction) goes.
sure. I guess what I'm saying is that I think there are much bigger problems in computation (namely computational irreducibility and p-np etc) than godel's proof, which relies on a particular sort of self referential statemtn which I'm not sure is really all that interesting philosophically. I don't know about those problems in computer science, can you explain to a layman?
On September 10 2013 02:55 sam!zdat wrote: ^mission accomplished! :D
opinions, arguments, and egos are what make life worth living
They are fun, until people take them far too seriously. Which happens all the time >_> Though most of the drama in my department hasn't happened due to academic arguments but personal drama lul.
On September 10 2013 02:19 sam!zdat wrote: sure. I guess what I'm saying is that I think there are much bigger problems in computation (namely computational irreducibility and p-np etc) than godel's proof, which relies on a particular sort of self referential statemtn which I'm not sure is really all that interesting philosophically. I don't know about those problems in computer science, can you explain to a layman?
Yeah. Incompleteness is surely not a topic that directly affects all of computation (or philosophy for that matter). But it certainly affects its foundational core. I think what's neat here is that what was once a paradoxical parlor trick in philosophy and logic has pragmatic consequence in computing.
The short story is that computer programs and proof share a close relationship. In programming languages, a type system classifies values and expressions used in computation. For example, the expressions 5, 10 * 10, and abs(-5) + 1 all have type int, the type of integers, in most programming languages. Another way to state of the relationship between types and expressions is that these expressions inhabit the type int.
Virtually all programming languages have a notion of a function which you can think of as a box that when, given some input, produces some output. For example, abs(-5) is an example of a call to the abs function that takes -5 as input and produces 5 as output. Functions themselves also have a type, typically written A ->B to stand for a function that takes as input values of type A and produce output values of type B. We would say that abs has type int -> int.
If you are familiar with propositional logic, then the notation A -> B should not be unfamiliar. This is how you write an implication in logic where A -> B stands for the proposition that "assuming A holds then B holds". For example A -> A is a tautology because something always implies itself.
The choice of arrow notation for function types is not a coincidence. The Curry-Howard Isomorphism outlines how we can interpret a value of a certain type (in a computer program) as a proof of that type interpreted as a logical proposition. For example, we can read the int -> int function type as stating the proposition "If you give me an int, I can produce an int". The abs function is "proof" that this proposition holds because it is a realization of that statement. Thus in general, any computer program is a "proof" of its type.
For traditional programming languages this correspondence is less interesting because the type systems (read: logics) of those languages are relatively weak. However, for languages with stronger type systems (of which Haskell is one), this correspondence becomes very important as we can prove properties about our program's behavior by creating programs that obey certain types. Because we can think of a type system of a programming language as a logic, Godel's incompleteness theorem puts an upper bound on the strength of any programming language's type system.
On September 10 2013 03:46 sam!zdat wrote: what does it mean for a type system to be stronger or weaker?
Broadly this means that a stronger type system can give better, more precise types to more programs than a weaker type system. A practical example, in most programming languages (e.g., Java), the conditional expression:
if e1 then e2 else e3
Requires that expression e1 have a boolean type and expressions e2 and e3 have the same types. Thus the overall type of the conditional is whatever the (shared) types of e2 and e3 are. The conditional:
if x < 5 then 0 else "hello"
is ill-typed in these languages because 0 has type int and "hello" has type string. However, this is not an inherent fundamental limitation of type systems in general, just a limitation of this particular type system. One can imagine an alternative type system where the conditional expression above has type int ^ string, the union of the types int and string. Such a type system would be able to give a type to this expression that a weaker type system would have to reject but would be more complex as a result.
On September 10 2013 04:06 sam!zdat wrote: ah, so then if you get a sufficiently strong type system all of the sudden you enable self-referential godel statements and the thing collapses?
Nah, in some sense stronger type systems constrain the potential bad behavior of programs it cannot characterize in a sound way. However, the worry that you describe is precisely the line that we have to thread when building these sorts of languages.
Where mathematical foundations and PL meet is in the realm of proof assistants such as Coq and Agda. Here, the type systems are strong enough that the types can encode honest-to-god logical statements and the programs are (constructive) proofs of those propositions. Just to give a flavor of what this looks like, here is a statement of a type/proposition and program/proof in Coq that n + 0 = n for any natural number n:
plus_n_O : forall n: nat, n = n + 0 = fun n : nat => nat_ind (fun n0: nat => n0 = n0 + 0) eq_refl (fun (n0: nat) (IHn: n0 = n0 + 0) => f_equal S IHn) n
Coq contains a full-fledged (dependently-typed) programming language. However, it restricts the use of recursion (i.e., functions that can call themselves) in a particular way that other programming languages allow. This is precisely because of what you described. If Coq allowed (general) recursion, then its underlying type system/logic would become inconsistent and you could manufacture proofs of anything out of thin air.
'manufacture proofs of anything out of thin air'? That sounds like what we do in the english department! (probably because natural language is very badly designed and allows us to make recursive statements and prove anything because A&~A)
anyway, thanks for explaining. I think I understand what you are saying
On September 10 2013 02:55 sam!zdat wrote: ^mission accomplished! :D
opinions, arguments, and egos are what make life worth living
I thought so too, then I fell in love. Then I fell out of love, and now I'm back in my hamster cage surrounded by my faithful friends, Mr. Opinion and Mme. Prejudice.
On September 10 2013 04:26 sam!zdat wrote: 'manufacture proofs of anything out of thin air'? That sounds like what we do in the english department! (probably because natural language is very badly designed and allows us to make recursive statements and prove anything because A&~A)
anyway, thanks for explaining. I think I understand what you are saying
PS ADVISE TO ALL UNDERGRAD AND GRADUATE STUDENTS IN PHILOSOPHY, BELIEVE JESUS CHRIST SON OF GOD, NOT [a metaphysician in my department], ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIE.
I'm just starting a PhD in Particle Physics, at a major London university. Its pretty awesome, I get to go work at CERN for a year. So yeah :D. Feel free to sling any particle physics questions my way; my PhD is experimental, so analysing live data from the LHC, but my Masters' thesis was purely theoretical (simulating black hole creation events at the LHC, looking for dependence on the number of extra dimensions), so I'm pretty keyed up on both sides of the field.
On September 20 2013 05:30 sam!zdat wrote: ^why is there something instead of nothing?
That's one for the philosophy PhD dude, I think.
Though scientifically speaking, it would be because of an asymmetry between matter and anti-matter, just after the Big Bang, which caused the antimatter to decay/interact with matter, but somehow still leaving some matter behind. Hence, something existing instead of nothing.
why is there antimatter and matter, as opposed to not? I love it when people try to answer this question with answers involving the existence of something already!
On September 20 2013 05:43 sam!zdat wrote: why is there antimatter and matter, as opposed to not? I love it when people try to answer this question with answers involving the existence of something already!
turtles all the way down, imo
So you're asking how did the universe start. Welp, I can't answer that, and nobody really can, other than by taking a guess. As far as how matter first appeared, its because as the universe cooled down after the Big Bang, the most stable modes, as far as energy goes, were the elementary particles and gauge bosons. E=mc^2 and all that jazz. Hence matter! Before then, the universe was too hot and too energetic for matter or antimatter to exist.
If you're looking for the philosophical answer, the reason for existence is the Axiom of Existence.
Speaking of philosophy, what exactly is a PhD in Philosophy? I understand that a PhD is adding to the pool of human knowledge, but so much of philosophy is just bs subjectivist "he said she said" nonsense that I can't imagine people actually deciding that something in philosophy has added to the pool of human knowledge.
On September 20 2013 05:26 eonrulz wrote: I'm just starting a PhD in Particle Physics, at a major London university. Its pretty awesome, I get to go work at CERN for a year. So yeah :D. Feel free to sling any particle physics questions my way; my PhD is experimental, so analysing live data from the LHC, but my Masters' thesis was purely theoretical (simulating black hole creation events at the LHC, looking for dependence on the number of extra dimensions), so I'm pretty keyed up on both sides of the field.
So would you characterize yourself as a Sheldon Cooper? Or more of a Leonard Hofstadter?
On September 20 2013 05:26 eonrulz wrote: I'm just starting a PhD in Particle Physics, at a major London university. Its pretty awesome, I get to go work at CERN for a year. So yeah :D. Feel free to sling any particle physics questions my way; my PhD is experimental, so analysing live data from the LHC, but my Masters' thesis was purely theoretical (simulating black hole creation events at the LHC, looking for dependence on the number of extra dimensions), so I'm pretty keyed up on both sides of the field.
On September 20 2013 05:26 eonrulz wrote: I'm just starting a PhD in Particle Physics, at a major London university. Its pretty awesome, I get to go work at CERN for a year. So yeah :D. Feel free to sling any particle physics questions my way; my PhD is experimental, so analysing live data from the LHC, but my Masters' thesis was purely theoretical (simulating black hole creation events at the LHC, looking for dependence on the number of extra dimensions), so I'm pretty keyed up on both sides of the field.
Do sun rays lose energy as they travel to earth? My 6 year old cousin asked me last week, couldnt answer
On September 20 2013 08:50 AnotherRandom wrote: If you're looking for the philosophical answer, the reason for existence is the Axiom of Existence.
Speaking of philosophy, what exactly is a PhD in Philosophy? I understand that a PhD is adding to the pool of human knowledge, but so much of philosophy is just bs subjectivist "he said she said" nonsense that I can't imagine people actually deciding that something in philosophy has added to the pool of human knowledge.
I'm finishing my master degree in philosophy, so I hope my reply does make sense. I consider two possibilities for philosophy
1) More historical: i.e., writing stuff about St. Thomas. You add knowledge in the same way an historian does, adding details, interpretations, etc.
2) More 'real life style': you write stuff about things like morals, ethics, philosophy of science, etc. Don't be fooled by this: even if people believe there is no major truth in these fields, philosophy is like magma boiling under the surface. Its investigations reach all of society. Animal vivisection is on the verge of being banned for example, and this is thanks to many works in ethics (which show it's wrong) and in philosophy of science.
Do sun rays lose energy as they travel to earth? My 6 year old cousin asked me last week, couldnt answer
How do you think the zodiacal lights appear on those calm spring evenings? Helios' arrows are usually good for their mark, but sometimes the cosmos throws irritants in the way as a jest to mortal perplexity.
On September 20 2013 05:26 eonrulz wrote: I'm just starting a PhD in Particle Physics, at a major London university. Its pretty awesome, I get to go work at CERN for a year. So yeah :D. Feel free to sling any particle physics questions my way; my PhD is experimental, so analysing live data from the LHC, but my Masters' thesis was purely theoretical (simulating black hole creation events at the LHC, looking for dependence on the number of extra dimensions), so I'm pretty keyed up on both sides of the field.
That's cool. My dad did his Particle Physics PhD out at CERN thirty years ago when the internet was being invented there. Supposed to be a nice place.
Didn't take after him myself. I'm doing a Biology PhD; background in Microbiology but currently specialising in Molecular.
As a first year grad student on a PhD track in mathematics (the PhD that no one gets), I am surprised that no one on the TL forum thought to make the StarCraft league analogy, but it works largely the same way. First, you cheese your way to platinum (i.e. finish college), then you actually have to learn how to play the game to get to masters (i.e. get a masters degree), then you have to find some kind of strategic or mechanical edge to break into the highest percentiles (i.e. finish your PhD thesis), and then once you have done all that, you can go pro (i.e. become a researcher)
AND THEN, once you are a pro, you have to keep winning, which means keeping up with the game, practicing every day, going to tournaments, working on new strategies, etc. The research life is analogous, although research doesn't really have "losers" since the larger process doesn't end, and so instead of battling at tournaments for survival, you go to conferences to try and find people working on the same thing as you and convince them to collaborate with you before they publish what you were going to.
In then end though, you really do need that competitive fire to keep improving to pursue this kind of life. If you think that people do this because they are lost, couldn't find a job, or just wanted to stay in school a long time, you are thoroughly underestimating the amount of effort and commitment it takes to get to the point where you could "coast" along the Ph.D. track.
On September 20 2013 21:19 SecretDoves wrote: AND THEN, once you are a pro, you have to keep winning, which means keeping up with the game, practicing every day, going to tournaments, working on new strategies, etc.
Yes...and I recall that in Starcraft, the Korean pros are paid a hell of a lot less than the foreign pros...
I'm a 2nd-year physical chemistry PhD student. The statements in the OP make it sound like getting the PhD is something you can sort of do in addition to something else...there's absolutely no way that would happen in my field. My average work week is 60 hours in the department, and I do a lot of reading at home. During the hardest weeks, I've been at work for 80 hours.
But it's so amazing to actually be learning new things about how matter works. At this point, I'm done with classes and I don't have to TA for the foreseeable future, so it's all research all the time. Loving it!
I think the PhD represents a near total commitment to the pursuit of acquiring knowledge and skills and to generate just a tiny bit of new knowledge.
Biggest advice to anyone still in high school or undergrad: learn a programming language, no matter what you want to do later. It will pay off.
Of course the majority here at STEM PhDs! Anyone doing anything in the social sciences? About to be an ABD in criminology/sociology with a focus on rape, case attrition, sex offenders/victims/crimes, and sex offender policy.
Nothing like 50-60 hour work weeks for a wage that's barely above the federal poverty line.
On September 24 2013 14:26 Chemist391 wrote: I'm a 2nd-year physical chemistry PhD student. The statements in the OP make it sound like getting the PhD is something you can sort of do in addition to something else...there's absolutely no way that would happen in my field. My average work week is 60 hours in the department, and I do a lot of reading at home. During the hardest weeks, I've been at work for 80 hours.
well, it heavily depends on the major. biology or chemistry phds are famous for requiring tons of time spent at the lab. but things might look very different in other majors.
On September 28 2013 00:22 Dknight wrote: Of course the majority here at STEM PhDs! Anyone doing anything in the social sciences? About to be an ABD in criminology/sociology with a focus on rape, case attrition, sex offenders/victims/crimes, and sex offender policy.
Nothing like 50-60 hour work weeks for a wage that's barely above the federal poverty line.
I'm doing a PhD in biological anthropology. 2nd year that is focusing on bioarchaeology and paleopathology.
I just finished a PhD in theoretical computer science, more specifically computational complexity theory. Being a PhD student is great, but now I am looking forward to being a postdoc.
On September 24 2013 14:26 Chemist391 wrote: I'm a 2nd-year physical chemistry PhD student. The statements in the OP make it sound like getting the PhD is something you can sort of do in addition to something else...there's absolutely no way that would happen in my field. My average work week is 60 hours in the department, and I do a lot of reading at home. During the hardest weeks, I've been at work for 80 hours.
But it's so amazing to actually be learning new things about how matter works. At this point, I'm done with classes and I don't have to TA for the foreseeable future, so it's all research all the time. Loving it!
I think the PhD represents a near total commitment to the pursuit of acquiring knowledge and skills and to generate just a tiny bit of new knowledge.
Biggest advice to anyone still in high school or undergrad: learn a programming language, no matter what you want to do later. It will pay off.
About to start the same in a few days, any advice?
On September 29 2013 03:28 123Gurke wrote: I just finished a PhD in theoretical computer science, more specifically computational complexity theory. Being a PhD student is great, but now I am looking forward to being a postdoc.
I'm a CS undergrad but I was looking for someone to explain me theoretical CS. Would you do it? I mean the specialisations inside, what is each one of them focusing on etcetera?
I'm eyeing to major in AI though.
EDIT: Might I add the question, what kind of opportunities do you have outside Academia with theoretical CS?
AI is interesting but in my experience, anything touching in pure AI/Natural Language Processing/Computer Vision is going to be really hard. There haven't been any major break throughs in AI for the last 60 years outside of solving problems using the scaling of computational power and digging around in the brains of lab animals.
You could probably find some novel applications of existing AI techniques though.
As for application of theoretical CS? You could try and get hired by a company's research division like Microsoft Research.
On September 29 2013 04:05 Antisocialmunky wrote: AI is interesting but in my experience, anything touching in pure AI/Natural Language Processing/Computer Vision is going to be really hard. There haven't been any major break throughs in AI for the last 60 years outside of solving problems using the scaling of computational power and digging around in the brains of lab animals.
You could probably find some novel applications of existing AI techniques though.
As for application of theoretical CS? You could try and get hired by a company's research division like Microsoft Research.
Well AI has subfields like Machine Learning which has found it's way almost everywhere nowadays. And I like find the whole field appealing.
The practical applications for a select few people with PhDs in some field of more theory-based CS is continuing to do that field of CS for research or profit in a company, really pushing boundaries.
The practical applications for the rest of the people with PhDs is the same thing as the people with BS/MS - software development. One of my teammates who has a PhD in ML jokes with my other teammate who has a PhD in quantum computing that it was a complete waste of time given where they ended up. They're very cynical about it.
On September 29 2013 04:05 Antisocialmunky wrote: AI is interesting but in my experience, anything touching in pure AI/Natural Language Processing/Computer Vision is going to be really hard. There haven't been any major break throughs in AI for the last 60 years outside of solving problems using the scaling of computational power and digging around in the brains of lab animals.
You could probably find some novel applications of existing AI techniques though.
As for application of theoretical CS? You could try and get hired by a company's research division like Microsoft Research.
Well AI has subfields like Machine Learning which has found it's way almost everywhere nowadays. And I like find the whole field appealing.
machine learning rocks and is currently thriving. I often times read their papers since the field overlaps partially with my field (statistics).
but machine learning is quite applied, so its no field for pure theoriticians.
On September 29 2013 03:28 123Gurke wrote: I just finished a PhD in theoretical computer science, more specifically computational complexity theory. Being a PhD student is great, but now I am looking forward to being a postdoc.
I'm a CS undergrad but I was looking for someone to explain me theoretical CS. Would you do it? I mean the specialisations inside, what is each one of them focusing on etcetera?
I'm eyeing to major in AI though.
EDIT: Might I add the question, what kind of opportunities do you have outside Academia with theoretical CS?
There are no direct applications of theoretical computer science outside of academia that I am aware of (I am including places like Microsoft Reasearch into academia) . But people still find jobs in all kinds of areas. Some people go into software development, some do consulting (Mc Kinsey et al.), others become school teachers, have their own companies. Really all kinds of very different things. But in none of them there is any direct application of TCS. That is actually one of the reasons to do a PhD in TCS: There is no wayto work on these things outside of academia, so you should do a PhD if you are really pasionate about it.
I do not know all areas of theoretical computer science because the area is simply too big. If you have any concrete questions feel free to ask.
On September 29 2013 03:28 123Gurke wrote: I just finished a PhD in theoretical computer science, more specifically computational complexity theory. Being a PhD student is great, but now I am looking forward to being a postdoc.
I'm a CS undergrad but I was looking for someone to explain me theoretical CS. Would you do it? I mean the specialisations inside, what is each one of them focusing on etcetera?
I'm eyeing to major in AI though.
EDIT: Might I add the question, what kind of opportunities do you have outside Academia with theoretical CS?
There are no direct applications of theoretical computer science outside of academia that I am aware of (I am including places like Microsoft Reasearch into academia) . But people still find jobs in all kinds of areas. Some people go into software development, some do consulting (Mc Kinsey et al.), others become school teachers, have their own companies. Really all kinds of very different things. But in none of them there is any direct application of TCS. That is actually one of the reasons to do a PhD in TCS: There is no wayto work on these things outside of academia, so you should do a PhD if you are really pasionate about it.
I do not know all areas of theoretical computer science because the area is simply too big. If you have any concrete questions feel free to ask.
It sort of depends on your definition of theoretical computer science. If you broaden your definition of theory enough (e.g., what is presented in the TCS wikipedia article), then you find that the sub-branches have lots of direct applications, e.g., mathematical logic/type theory/automata theory with software correctness, graph theory with networks, cryptography with software security, and most researchers ground their theoretical work as such. If these people move on from academia into industry, they typically find jobs where their expertise in those areas are applicable.
On September 29 2013 03:28 123Gurke wrote: I just finished a PhD in theoretical computer science, more specifically computational complexity theory. Being a PhD student is great, but now I am looking forward to being a postdoc.
I'm a CS undergrad but I was looking for someone to explain me theoretical CS. Would you do it? I mean the specialisations inside, what is each one of them focusing on etcetera?
I'm eyeing to major in AI though.
EDIT: Might I add the question, what kind of opportunities do you have outside Academia with theoretical CS?
There are no direct applications of theoretical computer science outside of academia that I am aware of (I am including places like Microsoft Reasearch into academia) . But people still find jobs in all kinds of areas. Some people go into software development, some do consulting (Mc Kinsey et al.), others become school teachers, have their own companies. Really all kinds of very different things. But in none of them there is any direct application of TCS. That is actually one of the reasons to do a PhD in TCS: There is no wayto work on these things outside of academia, so you should do a PhD if you are really pasionate about it.
I do not know all areas of theoretical computer science because the area is simply too big. If you have any concrete questions feel free to ask.
It sort of depends on your definition of theoretical computer science. If you broaden your definition of theory enough (e.g., what is presented in the TCS wikipedia article), then you find that the sub-branches have lots of direct applications, e.g., mathematical logic/type theory/automata theory with software correctness, graph theory with networks, cryptography with software security, and most researchers ground their theoretical work as such. If these people move on from academia into industry, they typically find jobs where their expertise in those areas are applicable.
Well, I know several people who did a PhD in graph theory or related areas, but none of them who has not stayed in academia uses anything he did in his research for his job. And the only cryptography guy that I know who still works in cryptography related things outside of academia was definitely not a theory guy at university but did very applied crypto. But of course my sample is very small and probably biased, so maybe you are right and my impression is wrong.
On September 29 2013 03:28 123Gurke wrote: I just finished a PhD in theoretical computer science, more specifically computational complexity theory. Being a PhD student is great, but now I am looking forward to being a postdoc.
I'm a CS undergrad but I was looking for someone to explain me theoretical CS. Would you do it? I mean the specialisations inside, what is each one of them focusing on etcetera?
I'm eyeing to major in AI though.
EDIT: Might I add the question, what kind of opportunities do you have outside Academia with theoretical CS?
There are no direct applications of theoretical computer science outside of academia that I am aware of (I am including places like Microsoft Reasearch into academia) . But people still find jobs in all kinds of areas. Some people go into software development, some do consulting (Mc Kinsey et al.), others become school teachers, have their own companies. Really all kinds of very different things. But in none of them there is any direct application of TCS. That is actually one of the reasons to do a PhD in TCS: There is no wayto work on these things outside of academia, so you should do a PhD if you are really pasionate about it.
I do not know all areas of theoretical computer science because the area is simply too big. If you have any concrete questions feel free to ask.
It sort of depends on your definition of theoretical computer science. If you broaden your definition of theory enough (e.g., what is presented in the TCS wikipedia article), then you find that the sub-branches have lots of direct applications, e.g., mathematical logic/type theory/automata theory with software correctness, graph theory with networks, cryptography with software security, and most researchers ground their theoretical work as such. If these people move on from academia into industry, they typically find jobs where their expertise in those areas are applicable.
Well, I know several people who did a PhD in graph theory or related areas, but none of them who has not stayed in academia uses anything he did in his research for his job. And the only cryptography guy that I know who still works in cryptography related things outside of academia was definitely not a theory guy at university but did very applied crypto. But of course my sample is very small and probably biased, so maybe you are right and my impression is wrong.
I think the probability of anyone applying their thesis research to their job is unlikely by virtue of the fact that theses, by their nature, are extremely narrowly defined topics. What's more likely is people using their breadth knowledge about their specialty (which they should have picked up en route to defining that narrow thesis topic) to bring value to their industry job.
I also admit this is an American-centric view of the PhD process. European PhDs are usually more theory-oriented, so I can imagine that people with a European PhD have a different experience in industry compared to their American counterparts.
On September 29 2013 03:28 123Gurke wrote: I just finished a PhD in theoretical computer science, more specifically computational complexity theory. Being a PhD student is great, but now I am looking forward to being a postdoc.
I'm a CS undergrad but I was looking for someone to explain me theoretical CS. Would you do it? I mean the specialisations inside, what is each one of them focusing on etcetera?
I'm eyeing to major in AI though.
EDIT: Might I add the question, what kind of opportunities do you have outside Academia with theoretical CS?
There are no direct applications of theoretical computer science outside of academia that I am aware of (I am including places like Microsoft Reasearch into academia) . But people still find jobs in all kinds of areas. Some people go into software development, some do consulting (Mc Kinsey et al.), others become school teachers, have their own companies. Really all kinds of very different things. But in none of them there is any direct application of TCS. That is actually one of the reasons to do a PhD in TCS: There is no wayto work on these things outside of academia, so you should do a PhD if you are really pasionate about it.
I do not know all areas of theoretical computer science because the area is simply too big. If you have any concrete questions feel free to ask.
It sort of depends on your definition of theoretical computer science. If you broaden your definition of theory enough (e.g., what is presented in the TCS wikipedia article), then you find that the sub-branches have lots of direct applications, e.g., mathematical logic/type theory/automata theory with software correctness, graph theory with networks, cryptography with software security, and most researchers ground their theoretical work as such. If these people move on from academia into industry, they typically find jobs where their expertise in those areas are applicable.
Well, I know several people who did a PhD in graph theory or related areas, but none of them who has not stayed in academia uses anything he did in his research for his job. And the only cryptography guy that I know who still works in cryptography related things outside of academia was definitely not a theory guy at university but did very applied crypto. But of course my sample is very small and probably biased, so maybe you are right and my impression is wrong.
I think the probability of anyone applying their thesis research to their job is unlikely by virtue of the fact that theses, by their nature, are extremely narrowly defined topics. What's more likely is people using their breadth knowledge about their specialty (which they should have picked up en route to defining that narrow thesis topic) to bring value to their industry job.
I also admit this is an American-centric view of the PhD process. European PhDs are usually more theory-oriented, so I can imagine that people with a European PhD have a different experience in industry compared to their American counterparts.
Well, I did not mean directly applying thesis research but more generally using anything that might have any connection to something you did as a PhD student. Lots of people here do completely generic software development or become consultants. Those people are employed not because of anything related to their research, but because they have proven to be persistent enough to finish their degree and are assumed to be able to work and think independently.
But I agree that that may well be a difference between countries. I think there are far more interesting software jobs in the US than over here.
EPT
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