9 ms·

Man, this view of getting a PhD, which seems fairly common, is so alien to me. Both my parents are research professors, both regularly have students, and I have

by fhood 8y ago

Man, this view of getting a PhD, which seems fairly common, is so alien to me. Both my parents are research professors, both regularly have students, and I have never seen any of the misery or stress that people keep bringing up. Sure, if you are unprepared to do research then you shouldn't do a PhD, but my parents' students are hand picked, and it is very rare that they end up with a student that doesn't want to, or is unprepared to do research. Being a PhD student should be one of the most fun parts of an academic career. You get to focus on your research, and are mostly removed from the politics and stress of securing funding. You aren't constantly being barraged by requests to review papers or having your time used up by a myriad of other responsibilities. I guess it is totally possible that the corner of academia that I grew up around (ocean sciences at a lab removed from the main campus) is an outlier, but my impressions of getting a PhD were always positive, and the reason I never did it was because the part after your PhD seemed like it sucked.

shusson 8y ago
> I guess it is totally possible that the corner of academia that I grew up around (ocean sciences at a lab removed from the main campus) is an outlier If only there was some way to investigate your statement. Like some sort of study that went for a few years and produced a report...
BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
> You ... are mostly removed from the politics and stress of securing funding. This is definitely not normal in the humanities. Want to continue working next year? Win this annual contest for your subfield that 800 other people are also applying for. It will cover your costs for 5 months if you win, after you spend an entire month preparing your submission for it. Didn't win this time? I guess you'll have to spend 20 hours per week every week on course prep readings and grading essays for the next six months. Good luck getting your research done at the same time. Humanities PhDs also on average take significantly longer than STEM PhDs. 7 years post BA is normal in the humanities. 5 years post BS is normal in STEM. Guess where all that extra time goes. It's because DARPA and Dow Chemical don't drop $30 million on your advisor for Enlightenment history.
- fastaguy88 8y ago
  If you are thinking about getting a PhD (in any field), you should be looking at an institution that guarantee's N (typically 4 or 5) years of funding. The best (and even the better) graduate schools do this, even in the humanities. It is much harder to get a job appropriate for a Ph.D. if you do not get into one of those schools that guarantees funding.
  - BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
    Define "best and better", though, because I can say with certainty that, for instance, Harvard's definition of "guarantee" doesn't align well with mine. See for instance the recent fight to unionize Harvard grad TAs because even (or perhaps especially) the "best" schools very regularly treat their students poorly, guarantees and all.
baby 8y ago
I guess it depends on your field, but I've definitely seen that happening in Physics and Math. I have many friends who continued school to pursue a PhD while I left to work in the industry. It's a mix of: * dropped out (some changed field completely) * failed to pass their defense * were miserable until they obtained their PhD * managed to obtain their PhD after a looooong time and a lot of financial trouble. After that followed a long quest to look for a job (humanities). * was uber successful and loved it Note that these are people I know from all over the world, not just one country or one school. The one guy that was uber successful absolutely loved what he was doing. The others either did not have the passion, or found out later that they did not enjoy doing research that much, or worse loved it but could not afford being poor.
- brandonjm 8y ago
  > The one guy that was uber successful absolutely loved what he was doing. This is the absolute most most important thing. I could have taken an increased scholarship however I would be bound to researching what the top-up provider wanted. Instead I opted to be on a base level scholarship but I got to choose exactly what path I wanted to take.

by fhood 8y ago

shusson 8y ago

> I guess it is totally possible that the corner of academia that I grew up around (ocean sciences at a lab removed from the main campus) is an outlier If only there was some way to investigate your statement. Like some sort of study that went for a few years and produced a report...

BugsJustFindMe 8y ago

> You ... are mostly removed from the politics and stress of securing funding. This is definitely not normal in the humanities. Want to continue working next year? Win this annual contest for your subfield that 800 other people are also applying for. It will cover your costs for 5 months if you win, after you spend an entire month preparing your submission for it. Didn't win this time? I guess you'll have to spend 20 hours per week every week on course prep readings and grading essays for the next six months. Good luck getting your research done at the same time. Humanities PhDs also on average take significantly longer than STEM PhDs. 7 years post BA is normal in the humanities. 5 years post BS is normal in STEM. Guess where all that extra time goes. It's because DARPA and Dow Chemical don't drop $30 million on your advisor for Enlightenment history.

fastaguy88 8y ago
If you are thinking about getting a PhD (in any field), you should be looking at an institution that guarantee's N (typically 4 or 5) years of funding. The best (and even the better) graduate schools do this, even in the humanities. It is much harder to get a job appropriate for a Ph.D. if you do not get into one of those schools that guarantees funding.
- BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
  Define "best and better", though, because I can say with certainty that, for instance, Harvard's definition of "guarantee" doesn't align well with mine. See for instance the recent fight to unionize Harvard grad TAs because even (or perhaps especially) the "best" schools very regularly treat their students poorly, guarantees and all.

baby 8y ago

I guess it depends on your field, but I've definitely seen that happening in Physics and Math. I have many friends who continued school to pursue a PhD while I left to work in the industry. It's a mix of: * dropped out (some changed field completely) * failed to pass their defense * were miserable until they obtained their PhD * managed to obtain their PhD after a looooong time and a lot of financial trouble. After that followed a long quest to look for a job (humanities). * was uber successful and loved it Note that these are people I know from all over the world, not just one country or one school. The one guy that was uber successful absolutely loved what he was doing. The others either did not have the passion, or found out later that they did not enjoy doing research that much, or worse loved it but could not afford being poor.

brandonjm 8y ago
> The one guy that was uber successful absolutely loved what he was doing. This is the absolute most most important thing. I could have taken an increased scholarship however I would be bound to researching what the top-up provider wanted. Instead I opted to be on a base level scholarship but I got to choose exactly what path I wanted to take.