8 ms·

This actually reads almost normal for a last year of a phd. But you’re in a phd program and probably much closer to complete than you think. I’d reach out to y

by ianai 4y ago

This actually reads almost normal for a last year of a phd. But you’re in a phd program and probably much closer to complete than you think. I’d reach out to your professors about your misgivings about your research. Make it clear that you’re looking to complete the thing asap and need guidance. Forget the outside stuff. Relationships can wait until you’re done. Feeling like a failure or success is almost a worthless concern as you’re clearly nearly done with a huge life goal. A life goal that will change the context of your life ever after. Much more than any marriage could even. Marriages are fundamentally just a societal complication of a relationship - complete with dubious legal consequences and a not a sure thing that can end. (Plus if someone is bailing on you when you’re finishing a degree they definitely weren’t going to be there for you in actually troubling times - like an illness or your house burning down.) But a degree is a hurdle you surpass once and get to wave the success of forever after. (Just don’t be a jerk about it, side point.) Know that on the other side of your phd is a huge weight off your shoulders regardless of failure or successful defense. This time of strife will end when the phd. Freedom is soon. You’re looking at a time where the job market remains strongly favorable. I graduated into the Great Recession and would have benefited greatly from this market, high interest rates and other things be damned. The future is still bright - just got to get past this last bit.

nyokodo 4y ago
> Marriages are fundamentally just a societal complication of a relationship - complete with dubious legal consequences and a not a sure thing that can end. Or, alternatively marriage is the fundamental glue of society and the germ of new life across the vastness of time and in basically every culture through disasters and war. One of these perspectives is fair to the most ancient institution.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Evolve or die. Marriage is an unnecessary burden and construct in modern times. Love, date, cohabitat (non community property state), but the failure rate is too high (~66% of marriages fail) when the cost is similarly high. Warren Buffett says the factor which most contributes to your future wealth is who you pick to marry. Do you feel lucky? https://www.amazon.com/Science-Happily-Ever-After-Enduring/dp/037389290X/ https://www.amazon.com/Science-Happily-Ever-After-Enduring/d...
  - dash2 4y ago
    This is a very interesting perspective! I urge you to create a society or subculture which doesn't waste time on marriage. When it has lasted for at least one generation, come back and tell the rest of us about it.
    - rdsubhas 4y ago
      The divorce rate is 50% in US and 40-50% in developed societies today. I would rather urge you to find a society that doesn't waste time on divorces and dysfunctional marriages today.
      - newsclues 4y ago
        And yet the developed world is in turmoil, perhaps because we have abandoned the social contract involving marriage and the nuclear family for the good of our society. I don't know the answer to this massively complex problem, but I don't think it's easy to reduce things to "marriage = dumb", especially with the world so divided and angry.
      - chris_wot 4y ago
        So the number of successful marriages outside the U.S. is around 60%? Given the complexity of humanity, that actually sounds pretty reasonable to me. By all means, forgo marriage but many of us quite like being married. I love it. Most of the time!
      - EdSharkey 4y ago
        [flagged]
        starkd 4y ago
        Someone is in a foul mood today. Did you just have a breakup or a divorce? Cheer up, chief. Maybe divorces can be prevented by getting better at setting the terms of marriage. Like pre-marriage counselling.
- ianai 4y ago
  Someone working towards a phd in the final year of work shouldn’t be personally taking upon the baser weight and long term sustainability of society. That’s too much for any one person - Jimmy Carter clearly “settled for less” and still managed a lot more than the rest of us could hope in our lifetimes. OP is perfectly fine to just focus on the degree and know the world will continue on while OP works. Your framing this as something more than it is is abhorrent.
  - logicalmonster 4y ago
    > Someone working towards a phd in the final year of work shouldn’t be personally taking upon the baser weight and long term sustainability of society. What if that's the correct selfish viewpoint on an individual level, but the wrong decision for overall society? These are certainly some complex and nuanced issues, but just as a counterpoint, what if having a family is arguably the most important thing that somebody capable of completing a PHD likely does? Unless a PHD invents some important new technology that transforms humanity (and most PHDs probably don't get anywhere close to that level of contribution), the most likely valuable contribution they could make to the world comes with having large families, being a pillar for the community, and helping guide their children well. Successful families are the foundation for a stable and prosperous long-term future. Idiocracy presented a very satirical look at the future that emerged from the smart people being too focused on education and careers over actually maintaining the society they were given. We all see the news stories coming out where there's the claim that average IQ rates are dropping, right? OP might not be able to solve that problem on his own, but if every PHD candidate made the same decision to put off family, maybe society eventually gets into some trouble.
  - idopmstuff 4y ago
    > Your framing this as something more than it is is abhorrent. Framing marriage as something more than "a societal complication of a relationship" is abhorrent? Do you think maybe that's a little harsh?
    - ianai 4y ago
      That’s an outright abusive misreading of what I’ve said.
- dagmx 4y ago
  Depends what society you talk about too. Marriage isn’t integral to all societies, so much as monogamous partnership is (excluding some rare poly societies). You also don’t need marriage to procreate , and several societies are built around the concept of children raised by the community. That said, marriage is certainly the most persistent form of long term bond in history, but it’s not always borne out of mutual desire. It’s often been as much a means of politics as it has been of love.
  - throwayyy479087 4y ago
    It absolutely is and you should reconsider your filter bubble
    - dagmx 4y ago
      Great rebuttal. Should we continue by saying “no it isn’t/yes it is, you’re wrong” repeatedly at each other then?
  - joenot443 4y ago
    What successful societies exist today without some concept marriage? I’m not aware of any, but it sounds like you have one in mind.
    - dagmx 4y ago
      Ah you’ve introduced two other elements into the mix, and possibly have introduced the issue of conflation of causation and correlation. 1. What is a successful society? You may have a different definition but imho it’s one that hasn’t torn itself apart or causing active harm to itself. 2. I never said they didn’t have a concept of marriage, just that it’s not integral. Both those points however are dramatically affected by colonization. Particularly Christian colonization, but not restricted to it. Colonization both destroyed many otherwise successful societies and forced their own concepts onto the ones that remained. As such I don’t think there’s any society that does have absolutely no concept of marriage, but there are some where marriage is not integral. Various indigenous groups did not have a formal marriage, but did sometimes have a vow. Even within the US, you’d have the ancient traditions of hand fasting among settlers, which wasn’t a marriage but an informal vow. The Mosuo/Na people of China famously do not marry. Hence why I disambiguate between marriage and monogamous binding. heck, monogamous bindings for life are present in a lot of non human social norms too. But marriage is different in that it’s a formalized procedure to do the binding, and in many cultures was tied to the religious or governmental authority figure as a form of bookkeeping and control, or to show political bindings. And back to the point of causation/correlation, is marriage integral to success? I’d argue not since hand fasting continued into very relatively (to human history) recent times.
- silverwasthere 4y ago
  Marriage is not all its cracked up to be. My divorce 1 year aniversary is this month, after being loyal and faithful for 12 years, I left due to abuse. I am now raising our child alone and I am so much happier now than I ever was while married. Marriage is societal cancer.
  - carlosjobim 4y ago
    There exists no society at all without marriage. The reason marriage is absolute central in all cultures and civilization is not because it's been forced onto people by bad men or because people think it's better, the reason is that cultures or people who don't practice marriage die out quickly.
    - rsaesha 4y ago
      Which culture died quickly due to not practicing marriage?
      - carlosjobim 4y ago
        All of them. They couldn't establish themselves enough to leave any important traces in history and are effectively erased. Sexual liberation is not a new idea, the reason why it's not traditional is because it is unsustainable and can never grow to a tradition
        krapp 4y ago
        You do realize people can have sex, procreate and raise families without marriage, right? "Sexual liberation" doesn't negate sex, it only negates the proscription of involuntary sex and gender roles through patriarchy. Also: >All of them. All of whom? Surely you can give us specific examples. Your certainty must based on solid archaeological and anthropological evidence, right?
        flangola7 4y ago
        We complain about ChatGPT making brazenly false statements with complete confidence, yet we have humans out here saying things like this.
- afpx 4y ago
  As universal as divorce Meaning, the "validity" of marriage is built into the power hierarchy. The same power hierarchy that determines whether a couple should stay together. People are going to get together. Wouldn't it be better if they could just be together without the need for an authority?
- BillyTheMage 4y ago
  People have children and live their lives together all the time without involving the government or their personal deity. Marriage is a hierarchical construct rooted in male supremacy and heteronormativity.
sicp-enjoyer 4y ago
I have noticed that Phd holders usually advise buckling down and dealing with whatever abuse or bureaucratic nightmares are required to finish. I think I agree with 1 year out, but I would be surprised if this hasn't been going on for longer.
ncr100 4y ago
@ianai: The POSTER is talking about being under-prepared for integrating their emotions into their lives, and NOT in the "life goal" sense. "[I am a] broken pile of glass" != "[I need to hear about the] job market" kind of situation. As I read their posting, it's more of a "help me develop my emotional intelligence."
- ianai 4y ago
  Which still sounds pretty normal for a last year of phd. Freedom and autonomy from the burden await past the degree. Deep psychological work is going to take longer than a year, cost $$$$, could be fleeting, and clearly not going to finish the degree in a year. Or quit the program and start a new life. But I’d strongly advise OP first honestly discuss that with their mentors. Life absolutely will go on and the market will find a place for OPs work in either direction.
  - ncr100 4y ago
    I see. Makes sense. And for me it's sad for me to see a person, the OP, being / complaining of overwhelmed by the tall wave of their goals competing with their significant emotional trauma .. their psyche is pretty unhappy.
spywaregorilla 4y ago
You seem to be arguing that marriage is a dumb legal thing, ergo relationships are not important. Even if the premise is true, your conclusion is unrelated. With empathy to the OP, this sentence > Plus if someone is bailing on you when you’re finishing a degree they definitely weren’t going to be there for you in actually troubling times - like an illness or your house burning down Is also kind of fucked up. There's no particular reason to suggest their partner left because they were unwilling to support a partner through a tough time. Maybe it is the case. But that's a very aggressive assumption that implicitly strips the lost partner of any individual autonomy.
dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
>Marriages are fundamentally just a societal complication of a relationship - complete with dubious legal consequences and a not a sure thing that can end. (Plus if someone is bailing on you when you’re finishing a degree they definitely weren’t going to be there for you in actually troubling times - like an illness or your house burning down.) Excellent observations.
kubbity 4y ago
> Marriages are fundamentally just a societal complication of a relationship - complete with dubious legal consequences and a not a sure thing that can end. Depending on how you see the marriage. Did people or God[1] invent it? TBH, I'm wondering if you are / were married or just talking. - Marriage is not about finding the right person, but rather BE the right person. - Don't expect a not perfect person to fulfill your desires, but rather try to be there to support the other. - Don't try to change the person. You fell in love in the end with that person. Why change her/him? [1] I know that this might not be popular on HN. I can accept that.
eschewingmycud 4y ago
> Forget the outside stuff. ... Feeling like a failure or success is almost a worthless concern as you’re clearly nearly done with a huge life goal. ... Marriages are fundamentally just a societal complication of a relationship ... Ungenerous translation: That thing that's been really important to you for four years -- just forget about it. If you stop feeling bad about it that you'll stop feeling bad about it. Also marriage is objectively a silly institution. Sounds like you'd like to get married. Maybe that makes you silly. Getting a PhD though -- that's going to change your life forever! You'll be proud! If you're not proud because you don't like your sub-field, well ... maybe that also makes you silly! To the OP: Sounds like stuff's really hard right now. I'm sorry for that. Grad school is damn hard some times and relationships are too. If find the above advice reassuring or helpful, great! If not, try to brush it off and read other more supportive comments. I hope things get better for you soon.

by ianai 4y ago

nyokodo 4y ago

> Marriages are fundamentally just a societal complication of a relationship - complete with dubious legal consequences and a not a sure thing that can end. Or, alternatively marriage is the fundamental glue of society and the germ of new life across the vastness of time and in basically every culture through disasters and war. One of these perspectives is fair to the most ancient institution.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Evolve or die. Marriage is an unnecessary burden and construct in modern times. Love, date, cohabitat (non community property state), but the failure rate is too high (~66% of marriages fail) when the cost is similarly high. Warren Buffett says the factor which most contributes to your future wealth is who you pick to marry. Do you feel lucky? https://www.amazon.com/Science-Happily-Ever-After-Enduring/dp/037389290X/ https://www.amazon.com/Science-Happily-Ever-After-Enduring/d...
- dash2 4y ago
  This is a very interesting perspective! I urge you to create a society or subculture which doesn't waste time on marriage. When it has lasted for at least one generation, come back and tell the rest of us about it.
  - rdsubhas 4y ago
    The divorce rate is 50% in US and 40-50% in developed societies today. I would rather urge you to find a society that doesn't waste time on divorces and dysfunctional marriages today.
    - newsclues 4y ago
      And yet the developed world is in turmoil, perhaps because we have abandoned the social contract involving marriage and the nuclear family for the good of our society. I don't know the answer to this massively complex problem, but I don't think it's easy to reduce things to "marriage = dumb", especially with the world so divided and angry.
    - chris_wot 4y ago
      So the number of successful marriages outside the U.S. is around 60%? Given the complexity of humanity, that actually sounds pretty reasonable to me. By all means, forgo marriage but many of us quite like being married. I love it. Most of the time!
    - EdSharkey 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - starkd 4y ago
        Someone is in a foul mood today. Did you just have a breakup or a divorce? Cheer up, chief. Maybe divorces can be prevented by getting better at setting the terms of marriage. Like pre-marriage counselling.
ianai 4y ago
Someone working towards a phd in the final year of work shouldn’t be personally taking upon the baser weight and long term sustainability of society. That’s too much for any one person - Jimmy Carter clearly “settled for less” and still managed a lot more than the rest of us could hope in our lifetimes. OP is perfectly fine to just focus on the degree and know the world will continue on while OP works. Your framing this as something more than it is is abhorrent.
- logicalmonster 4y ago
  > Someone working towards a phd in the final year of work shouldn’t be personally taking upon the baser weight and long term sustainability of society. What if that's the correct selfish viewpoint on an individual level, but the wrong decision for overall society? These are certainly some complex and nuanced issues, but just as a counterpoint, what if having a family is arguably the most important thing that somebody capable of completing a PHD likely does? Unless a PHD invents some important new technology that transforms humanity (and most PHDs probably don't get anywhere close to that level of contribution), the most likely valuable contribution they could make to the world comes with having large families, being a pillar for the community, and helping guide their children well. Successful families are the foundation for a stable and prosperous long-term future. Idiocracy presented a very satirical look at the future that emerged from the smart people being too focused on education and careers over actually maintaining the society they were given. We all see the news stories coming out where there's the claim that average IQ rates are dropping, right? OP might not be able to solve that problem on his own, but if every PHD candidate made the same decision to put off family, maybe society eventually gets into some trouble.
- idopmstuff 4y ago
  > Your framing this as something more than it is is abhorrent. Framing marriage as something more than "a societal complication of a relationship" is abhorrent? Do you think maybe that's a little harsh?
  - ianai 4y ago
    That’s an outright abusive misreading of what I’ve said.
dagmx 4y ago
Depends what society you talk about too. Marriage isn’t integral to all societies, so much as monogamous partnership is (excluding some rare poly societies). You also don’t need marriage to procreate , and several societies are built around the concept of children raised by the community. That said, marriage is certainly the most persistent form of long term bond in history, but it’s not always borne out of mutual desire. It’s often been as much a means of politics as it has been of love.
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  It absolutely is and you should reconsider your filter bubble
  - dagmx 4y ago
    Great rebuttal. Should we continue by saying “no it isn’t/yes it is, you’re wrong” repeatedly at each other then?
- joenot443 4y ago
  What successful societies exist today without some concept marriage? I’m not aware of any, but it sounds like you have one in mind.
  - dagmx 4y ago
    Ah you’ve introduced two other elements into the mix, and possibly have introduced the issue of conflation of causation and correlation. 1. What is a successful society? You may have a different definition but imho it’s one that hasn’t torn itself apart or causing active harm to itself. 2. I never said they didn’t have a concept of marriage, just that it’s not integral. Both those points however are dramatically affected by colonization. Particularly Christian colonization, but not restricted to it. Colonization both destroyed many otherwise successful societies and forced their own concepts onto the ones that remained. As such I don’t think there’s any society that does have absolutely no concept of marriage, but there are some where marriage is not integral. Various indigenous groups did not have a formal marriage, but did sometimes have a vow. Even within the US, you’d have the ancient traditions of hand fasting among settlers, which wasn’t a marriage but an informal vow. The Mosuo/Na people of China famously do not marry. Hence why I disambiguate between marriage and monogamous binding. heck, monogamous bindings for life are present in a lot of non human social norms too. But marriage is different in that it’s a formalized procedure to do the binding, and in many cultures was tied to the religious or governmental authority figure as a form of bookkeeping and control, or to show political bindings. And back to the point of causation/correlation, is marriage integral to success? I’d argue not since hand fasting continued into very relatively (to human history) recent times.
silverwasthere 4y ago
Marriage is not all its cracked up to be. My divorce 1 year aniversary is this month, after being loyal and faithful for 12 years, I left due to abuse. I am now raising our child alone and I am so much happier now than I ever was while married. Marriage is societal cancer.
- carlosjobim 4y ago
  There exists no society at all without marriage. The reason marriage is absolute central in all cultures and civilization is not because it's been forced onto people by bad men or because people think it's better, the reason is that cultures or people who don't practice marriage die out quickly.
  - rsaesha 4y ago
    Which culture died quickly due to not practicing marriage?
    - carlosjobim 4y ago
      All of them. They couldn't establish themselves enough to leave any important traces in history and are effectively erased. Sexual liberation is not a new idea, the reason why it's not traditional is because it is unsustainable and can never grow to a tradition
      - krapp 4y ago
        You do realize people can have sex, procreate and raise families without marriage, right? "Sexual liberation" doesn't negate sex, it only negates the proscription of involuntary sex and gender roles through patriarchy. Also: >All of them. All of whom? Surely you can give us specific examples. Your certainty must based on solid archaeological and anthropological evidence, right?
      - flangola7 4y ago
        We complain about ChatGPT making brazenly false statements with complete confidence, yet we have humans out here saying things like this.
afpx 4y ago
As universal as divorce Meaning, the "validity" of marriage is built into the power hierarchy. The same power hierarchy that determines whether a couple should stay together. People are going to get together. Wouldn't it be better if they could just be together without the need for an authority?
BillyTheMage 4y ago
People have children and live their lives together all the time without involving the government or their personal deity. Marriage is a hierarchical construct rooted in male supremacy and heteronormativity.

sicp-enjoyer 4y ago

I have noticed that Phd holders usually advise buckling down and dealing with whatever abuse or bureaucratic nightmares are required to finish. I think I agree with 1 year out, but I would be surprised if this hasn't been going on for longer.

ncr100 4y ago

@ianai: The POSTER is talking about being under-prepared for integrating their emotions into their lives, and NOT in the "life goal" sense. "[I am a] broken pile of glass" != "[I need to hear about the] job market" kind of situation. As I read their posting, it's more of a "help me develop my emotional intelligence."

ianai 4y ago
Which still sounds pretty normal for a last year of phd. Freedom and autonomy from the burden await past the degree. Deep psychological work is going to take longer than a year, cost $$$$, could be fleeting, and clearly not going to finish the degree in a year. Or quit the program and start a new life. But I’d strongly advise OP first honestly discuss that with their mentors. Life absolutely will go on and the market will find a place for OPs work in either direction.
- ncr100 4y ago
  I see. Makes sense. And for me it's sad for me to see a person, the OP, being / complaining of overwhelmed by the tall wave of their goals competing with their significant emotional trauma .. their psyche is pretty unhappy.

spywaregorilla 4y ago

You seem to be arguing that marriage is a dumb legal thing, ergo relationships are not important. Even if the premise is true, your conclusion is unrelated. With empathy to the OP, this sentence > Plus if someone is bailing on you when you’re finishing a degree they definitely weren’t going to be there for you in actually troubling times - like an illness or your house burning down Is also kind of fucked up. There's no particular reason to suggest their partner left because they were unwilling to support a partner through a tough time. Maybe it is the case. But that's a very aggressive assumption that implicitly strips the lost partner of any individual autonomy.

dennis_jeeves1 4y ago

>Marriages are fundamentally just a societal complication of a relationship - complete with dubious legal consequences and a not a sure thing that can end. (Plus if someone is bailing on you when you’re finishing a degree they definitely weren’t going to be there for you in actually troubling times - like an illness or your house burning down.) Excellent observations.

kubbity 4y ago

> Marriages are fundamentally just a societal complication of a relationship - complete with dubious legal consequences and a not a sure thing that can end. Depending on how you see the marriage. Did people or God[1] invent it? TBH, I'm wondering if you are / were married or just talking. - Marriage is not about finding the right person, but rather BE the right person. - Don't expect a not perfect person to fulfill your desires, but rather try to be there to support the other. - Don't try to change the person. You fell in love in the end with that person. Why change her/him? [1] I know that this might not be popular on HN. I can accept that.

eschewingmycud 4y ago

> Forget the outside stuff. ... Feeling like a failure or success is almost a worthless concern as you’re clearly nearly done with a huge life goal. ... Marriages are fundamentally just a societal complication of a relationship ... Ungenerous translation: That thing that's been really important to you for four years -- just forget about it. If you stop feeling bad about it that you'll stop feeling bad about it. Also marriage is objectively a silly institution. Sounds like you'd like to get married. Maybe that makes you silly. Getting a PhD though -- that's going to change your life forever! You'll be proud! If you're not proud because you don't like your sub-field, well ... maybe that also makes you silly! To the OP: Sounds like stuff's really hard right now. I'm sorry for that. Grad school is damn hard some times and relationships are too. If find the above advice reassuring or helpful, great! If not, try to brush it off and read other more supportive comments. I hope things get better for you soon.