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> if the author can’t last 6 months This doesn’t seem like an entirely fair take. Nobody has perfect expectations fresh out of undergrad. PIs chasing funding i
by dahart 4y ago
> if the author can’t last 6 months
This doesn’t seem like an entirely fair take. Nobody has perfect expectations fresh out of undergrad. PIs chasing funding is real, and using those funds on grad students who are excited but don’t know what they’re getting into is extremely common. The one thing that is less common is providing zero resources & guidance to get the job done. This definitely sounds like at least as much advisory failure as student expectation.
- ModernMech 4y agoNot going to disagree that it’s not an advising failure as well, but if you’re so interested in Quantum computing that you’d like to devote 6-8+ years studying the subject under a professor, you might want to check first that the professor knows something about quantum computing. Step 1 of doing a PhD is to find a person who you want to work under for probably 10% of your entire life. If you’re serious about it, it’s something you should not quit at literally the first roadblock. If I may read between the lines here, because I see this often enough: it seems like this student had a passing interest in QC; joined a department without talking to anyone there to find out if the research they do is compatible with their interests; proposed a deep theoretical research topic that neither anyone in the department nor the author knows much about; and then promptly quit when they told him it’s probably not the best idea.