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> When I entered grad school, I noticed that the older grad students just seemed... oddly bitter? The 6th years were living in a different world from us 1st yea
by mkl95 4y ago
> When I entered grad school, I noticed that the older grad students just seemed... oddly bitter? The 6th years were living in a different world from us 1st years
> You may need to move on for the sake of your life, but your experiments aren't working and the committee says you need one more paper to graduate. It's really hard to balance this, especially combined with the lack of money.
> Only 15% of postdocs end up being tenure-track faculty
From an engineer's point of view, working for 6 years at some organization with no significant professional growth sounds dystopian.
I can't picture why someone with above average work ethic and very likely intelligence would put themselves through that.
Downvote me as much as you want, but there is something seriously wrong in a society that tolerates these schemes.
- lapcat 4y ago> Downvote me as much as you want Protip: This kind of comment almost always becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. "Please don't comment about the voting on comments." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- michaelt 4y ago> From an engineer's point of view, working for 6 years at some organization with no significant professional growth sounds dystopian. To be fair, they do give you a masters degree after 2 years and a doctorate after 6, and expect you to spend loads of your time developing your knowledge. That's some of the most measurable and transferable professional development out there. The problem is you get paid a pittance.
- kcplate 4y ago> something seriously wrong in a society that tolerates these schemes “Society” isn’t tolerating it, it’s the grad students that are tolerating it. Society doesn’t know and wouldn’t care if they did. Your general point is spot on. Why put yourself through that?