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I completed the game the same way I completed real life. I left early with a MS instead of a PhD. Based on my experience, there needs to be a chance that your

I completed the game the same way I completed real life. I left early with a MS instead of a PhD. Based on my experience, there needs to be a chance that your advisor is a narcissistic child who pushes you repeatedly to spend your entire PhD either fixing the mistakes in their own PhD thesis (without changing anything they did) or doing unpaid unpublishable production work for their half-assed startup. And hobbles your attempts to establish connections outside of their control. And also does a lot of things that could be termed "fraud" and "embezzlement" if the university cared to investigate when you and others before and after you complained about it. And probably some more mess involving petty politics with post-docs and competing professors. I loved grad classes and research, but I hated academia.

jacurtis 3y ago
> I loved grad classes and research but I hated Academia Truer words have never been spoken. I went back to get a PhD after a solid career where I was in a prominent leadership position at a respectable tech company (in my mid-thirties). I was bored, not motivated with work anymore, and wanted to do something that really pushed me and motivated me in ways that I hadn't felt in years. I also wanted to truly learn some advanced concepts through Grad classes. I really loved the grad classes (although they were much much much easier than I expected). That is why I moved into research, to really stimulate myself and do something interesting to me in my specific area of expertise. I really enjoyed doing the research too. I was personally motivated and curious on the topics I was researching. It gave me a lot of new-found motivation in life and I really flourished. But academia: the drama and games you need to engage in to do such simple (arguably trivial or non-important) tasks is ridiculous. I succeeded in my business career because it was results driven. If you produce results, people don't care how you got there exactly. But in academia I felt like it was a board game of "chutes and ladders", mixed with Risk and Monopoly where you had to own parts of the board that other people deem important, you hit chutes that set you back for no apparent reason, you were constantly collecting personal referrals and clout from other professors so you could get their blessing or IOUs. There's a lot of favors and ceremony around trivial tasks and the actual produced value often gets overlooked or forgotten about because you didn't march to the same drum as someone else.

jacurtis 3y ago

> I loved grad classes and research but I hated Academia Truer words have never been spoken. I went back to get a PhD after a solid career where I was in a prominent leadership position at a respectable tech company (in my mid-thirties). I was bored, not motivated with work anymore, and wanted to do something that really pushed me and motivated me in ways that I hadn't felt in years. I also wanted to truly learn some advanced concepts through Grad classes. I really loved the grad classes (although they were much much much easier than I expected). That is why I moved into research, to really stimulate myself and do something interesting to me in my specific area of expertise. I really enjoyed doing the research too. I was personally motivated and curious on the topics I was researching. It gave me a lot of new-found motivation in life and I really flourished. But academia: the drama and games you need to engage in to do such simple (arguably trivial or non-important) tasks is ridiculous. I succeeded in my business career because it was results driven. If you produce results, people don't care how you got there exactly. But in academia I felt like it was a board game of "chutes and ladders", mixed with Risk and Monopoly where you had to own parts of the board that other people deem important, you hit chutes that set you back for no apparent reason, you were constantly collecting personal referrals and clout from other professors so you could get their blessing or IOUs. There's a lot of favors and ceremony around trivial tasks and the actual produced value often gets overlooked or forgotten about because you didn't march to the same drum as someone else.