3 ms·

Yeah, so, I ended up believing that my academic research was completely useless, but tried to continue with the PhD anyway. Not only was it demoralizing, but my

Yeah, so, I ended up believing that my academic research was completely useless, but tried to continue with the PhD anyway. Not only was it demoralizing, but my anxiety and ADHD just came pouring out and I hated even thinking about my research. It grew worse and worse. Eventually, my advisor left, I had no funding, and I withdrew with nothing to show for the past 3.5 years except student loans. Fun times. (What was the research? Basically taking Heckman's 70s-era selection correction and applying it to nonlinear models. Big fuckin' whoop. My advisor had already written multiple useless papers riffing on the idea anyway. He's probably still doing it to this day.)

tasogare 5y ago
That's hitting close to home. I'm near end my funding and visa time, with not enough publications. The three years have been mostly being told no to whatever I proposed and not given worthwhile stuff to do instead. And when it did it was things already done 3-4 decades ago. My advisor even told me the other day things that made it clear he was aware of the kind of stuffs I want to incorporate in my work, yet didn't seek any middle ground. On the other side I have multiple projects, the biggest one already presented in a conference. I meet multiple people my university and other big ones that are very enthusiastic about either that project or the official one (which got none in my own lab) so it's not like what I'm doing was totally dumb. I'm not sure what to do now. I have 3 more years to write the thesis, but would need to find a job to stay in the country. Hopefully I used web technologies I can market on my CV but I'm bit sour about the whole thing (and life in general).