7 ms·

How to graduate your PhD when you have no hope

170 points by jxmorris12 3y ago

thsksbd 3y ago
Based on my observations, marriage is the most reliable indicator of graduate student success. At least the male ones. I don't pretend to know if marriage is the cause of success or if it is merely a correlated phenomena. But I've observed it and talking among my circle, so has a top engineering researcher at a top 10 university. This is a man who has graduated scores of students placing half of them at top universities.
- silverquiet 3y ago
  What if women aren’t interested in you?
  - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
    Keep doing the things that make you into a man that women are interested in.
    - throwaway35777 3y ago
      Go into an industry that's not overly political and where you're useful enough not to be judged on arbitrary qualities like your (a)sexuality.
    - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
      > Keep doing the things that make you into a man that women are interested in. ... like making lots of money. :-D
      - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
        Just don’t pick someone that has that as one of their top 3 reasons to be with you. But money does help with almost everything.
      - Der_Einzige 3y ago
        [flagged]
        bigbillheck 3y ago
        > The consensus? He has tons of "red flags" for basically being "billy the beta" who won't excite the women who would come into contact with him. Hardly anyone is surprised that he can't get dates. Quoting one of the top comments: "his persona reads to be like a human representation of mashed potatoes with no seasoning, bland. " There's a couple people in that thread who used the term "beta" but I wouldn't call it the consensus. There's some calling him "boring", but there's also a bunch of ladies saying "maybe if I were single", and a bunch more saying "wanting kids is a dealbreaker". And in any case things seem to have worked out for him: "This profile was published in August 2022; I'm no longer single, but wanted to leave it up since it was an important document for me." (https://colah.github.io/personal/dating/ https://colah.github.io/personal/dating/) > The reality is that being a SWE or related is a massive net negative to your "SMV". We software people trade our game for our money. It's sad but it is what it is. I blame the widespread normalization of "nerds" being bullied by "jocks" in TV from the 1980s on. The cultural damage this has done is unreal. I don't think this is true at all. > Seriously - the most unrealistic thing about the movie "wargames" is the idea that a kid who looked like that doing a bunch of command line shit would have a girl who looked like that interested in him (and his computer!). Matthew Broderick ended up marrying Sarah Jessica Parker.
        dragonwriter 3y ago
        > The reality is that being a SWE or related is a massive net negative to your "SMV". Its not, but buying into the belief that it is is.
        teaearlgraycold 3y ago
        More than 90% of dating advice is overfitting. It’s high stakes and there is plenty of signal to glean, but once you know the basics of the situation the rest is up to chance. Which means if you’re being picky (and I think to should be if you can) success can take a while. In the meantime you could end up desperately pulling apart facts like a conspiracy theorist. The best advice, at least for people that aren’t super lucky, is to stop trying, do the obvious things (be healthy, happy, financially comfortable) and live a life that puts you in contact with women.
  - telmo 3y ago
    Try to find out why, and please avoid Internet "red pill" stuff. I'm not telling you this as any sort of political statement nor am I trying to fight any culture wars here. This is just the advice of a middle-age guy with perfectly mediocre / average looks, and some life experience. From what I observe, 9 times out of 10 the problem lies in personality. I know plenty of guys with no money and no looks that have no trouble attracting the interest of the opposite sex. Why? Because they have a great personality, as in, it feels good to be around them. Furthermore, people who rely only on look and status to attract a partner and do not work on themselves are unlikely to have a happy relationship in the long term. I am not blaming people for having unappealing personalities. This is usually the product of things that are outside of their control, usually some sort of trauma. Life is not fair. A lot of people are traumatized and do not realize it. This can be overcome, but you must want to overcame it and you must be able to face harsh truths. Maybe therapy can help, maybe meditation, maybe even things that are considered "woo" but that allow you to face your demons. Whatever works and clicks with you is a valid answer. All roads lead to Rome if you are courageous enough. Check out this guy, I have the impression he is particularly suited for the HN demographics: https://www.youtube.com/@HealthyGamerGG https://www.youtube.com/@HealthyGamerGG Good luck man, you can do it!
    - bckr 3y ago
      Awesome, I recommended the same channel.
    - grepLeigh 3y ago
      I also don't want to dredge up culture wars stuff, but just wanted to say it's really nice to see men warning other men away from the redpill path. Thanks for encouraging therapy and self-healing.
    - Spooky23 3y ago
      Good advice. In my observation, especially as you get out of your 20s, single guys are… kinda phone it in for various reasons. Even moderate effort makes a dude a rockstar.
    - silverquiet 3y ago
      Do you think living with my parents due to disability could be an issue?
  - bckr 3y ago
    You’ve got significant foundational work to do. I’d start with Healthy Gamer GG’s channel[] and also pick up the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. [] https://youtube.com/shorts/693UD3V1KSU?si=6IiRwP0Q1qRqErnp https://youtube.com/shorts/693UD3V1KSU?si=6IiRwP0Q1qRqErnp
    - anewhnaccount2 3y ago
      You don't know that this person has lots of work to do on themselves. These things are partially a matter of compatibility, putting yourself out there (which is a thing you do rather than a thing you become), and yes, unfortunately, pure dumb luck.
      - j45 3y ago
        Being out there a lot is the dumb luck of human propagation. Seems pretty effective.
      - bckr 3y ago
        I do know, because “what if women aren’t interested in you” is a question you don’t ask after a certain degree of development. I don’t know how long it will take to do this work. With a foundation of personal development and the right attitude, I bet you can go from “what if women aren’t interested in me” to successfully dating in under 6 weeks. If you need to learn how to develop yourself, it could take 6 months or more before you’re able to internalize the needed lessons.
    - silverquiet 3y ago
      Been through it. Never really could take any of this stuff all that seriously. Especially after the woman I ended up closest to passed away. I’m mostly wondering how the people who recommend marriage as a solution to a lot of ills (and I think it’s an issue worth exploring but I also think there’s a lot of correlation/causation mixups here) expect people to take action on that.
      - bckr 3y ago
        My heart goes out to you with regard to the death of your loved one. Do not let death and grieving pull you permanently out of the realm of intimate relationships. Human connection is foundational to all kinds of success. Taking it seriously has served me well.
  - hotdogscout 3y ago
    Newton died a virgin, averages are defined by average people, don't stress on their anecdote and don't put your value in what women think of you.
    - j45 3y ago
      It's everyone's personal choice but if Newton had some descendants, I wonder how that might have turned out.
      - hotdogscout 3y ago
        Mediocre probably. I don't think biology is the bottleneck of great ideas. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family
        j45 3y ago
        I don't think it is either, but there can be inter-generational momentum
  - j45 3y ago
    Everything is a function of the self-effort place into self-growth. Because everyone's special, and therefore no one is special, there is someone just like you who you will be very compatible with, both in the beginning and growing through the seasons of life together. It just begins with deciding how you want to look at possibility, or not. Our minds go how and where we focus.
- j7ake 3y ago
  My theory: PhD is inherently unstructured, and requires wading into the unknown without many markers to tell you where you are going. Marriage creates a structured life outside of work that gives PhDs an anchor to return to periodically. This leads to better long term and consistent progress. Stephen King describes his success in writing in part due to his successful marriage. There may be some similarities there.
  - Solvency 3y ago
    Nonsense as a general rule. Love my family. love wife and kid. Have never been less productive or efficient in my life. As a stickler guy between 20 and 34? Relentless productivity, focus, and time.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - bsdpufferfish 3y ago
      People don't typically start a Phd at 34. You're at a different level of maturity now.
    - Der_Einzige 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - gorjusborg 3y ago
        What an arrogant and reductive thing to think, let alone post publicly. I have a hunch that you are very young, very single, or most probably both.
      - hilux 3y ago
        I came to Hacker News to get away from this kind of reddit nonsense.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    No way. Family puts alot of "make money now" and "be home for dinner" pressure on you. Hardly a good environment for doing research. Not even bringing kids into the equation.
- Cloudef 3y ago
  If that's true, the future doesn't look good for male. Honestly though, marriage and having children come with financial stability and good life balance.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  Marital status is also correlated with age. Students who enter the PhD having spent a few years working following their undergraduate degree are often a bit more motivated and experienced (though I've had successful students take both paths.)
  - VeninVidiaVicii 3y ago
    Likewise people with bigger feet are better at math. Well actually that’s just because infants have tiny feet and are notoriously terrible at math.
    - wholinator2 3y ago
      Well that depends on our definition of bigger. If we're saying bigger is "larger than baby feet" then okay but i think a better definition is "larger than the mean/median". Would baby feet drive down the mean/median that much?
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > Based on my observations, marriage is the most reliable indicator of graduate student success. At least the male ones. At least in math, I would rather say that marriage is a counterindication that a great PhD thesis come out at the end, for the simple reason that being married means that math is only your second love, while writing a great PhD thesis in math requires the topic of your PhD thesis to be your nearly only love for the duration of your PhD studies.
  - wholinator2 3y ago
    Ya know, that makes sense and all. But I'd want to be careful about subtly implying that doing nothing but your research and forgoing personal relationships in favor of work is _better_ than having a life and a little worse thesis. Most of a career in research happens after the PhD anyway, is it possible those "This is my life" people do worse later on, when their potential contributions to fields would be maximizing? Having a life is an okay thing to want, if for no other reason than the people who are really crazy for it and want nothing but math research aren't going to listen to anyone about relationships anyway. If you find yourself seriously considering turning it down a little bit to find other avenues to personal fulfillment then you might not be one of those crazies and i think that's okay, maybe even better
  - thsksbd 3y ago
    My sister is in a relationship with a top, young, number theorist. Ill have to let her know the damage she's doing :D
- brandall10 3y ago
  Generally it seems both are grad students, or at the very least, met in school and the relationship has an academic foundation. Imagine having a partner to wade through such an experience who can relate, is pushing you, helping you see your blind spots, quelling your doubts/fears, and in general cheering for your success. And then the clarity you get for doing the same for them. There's also the extra level of responsibility that marriage entails, that forces one to 'grow up', for want of a better expression.
  - j45 3y ago
    Not just grow up, but one of the easiest cheat codes to prioritize and increase effectiveness.
- polygamous_bat 3y ago
  There are two factors to this. 1. If your partner is not in a PhD program themselves, then you can rely on them during what I call “crunch time”, and there are a few of those in every PhD when you’re doing 16 hour days 7 days a week just to get something out of the door. Single students don’t get that luxury and thus inevitably have to be miserable during that period. 2. Secondly, successfully navigating a relationship/marriage takes a lot of the same skills as successfully navigating a PhD. A good PhD at the end of the day is built on a lot of compromises: between your vision and your advisors’, the fields’, your collaborators, and if you’re interning, your industry partners. A relationship teaches you how to navigate that without burning bridges, which may not be true for a headstrong “I’m gonna change the world but I don’t know how” PhD students.
  - Beldin 3y ago
    > A good PhD at the end of the day is built on a lot of compromises: ... Don't forget "your skill level". Recognising your own limitations as a researcher is rather important for a PhD student.
- analog31 3y ago
  My observation is that the married students had a real fire burning under them to get done and out. They had a real tangible motivation. Disclosure: Married to another PhD student. Also, somebody to drive you to the hospital when your experiment explodes. Fortunately, she wasn't seriously injured.
- richrichie 3y ago
  Marriage solves the problem of sex. Especially for male phd students. This is a huge factor at that age, and for the species types that are found in phd programs. Takes the edge away, saves time and energy, etc. Not fashionable to talk about it in such terms. But it is a factor.
  - Der_Einzige 3y ago
    God if only. Unfortunately, they call it the ol "ball and chain" for a reason. Most men would happily sleep around with many women as they could if they had a "pass" from their partner. I wouldn't even be surprised if more than half of all married men would describe their sex life in terms like "mediocre" or worse. Marriage is supposed to solve that issue, but I claim that among other things, falling marriage rates indicate that increasingly large numbers of (usually men) are prioritizing sleeping around over settling down.
    - richrichie 3y ago
      Most phd students are not the bar hopping pick up artists. And female students in campuses don’t exactly hunt phd students to sleep with either. Marriage works. I am not talking about over 10 or 20 years. But during this period, it solves the problem of sex.
      - Der_Einzige 3y ago
        Significant swaths of Ph.D students would abandon all of their scholarly endeavors if they could go bar hopping and be pick-up artists. "Female students not hunting for Ph.D students" is evidence that, especially for men, getting lots of education is straight up "unattractive". Why should I even want a Ph.d if all it signals to the other sex is that I'm not just a nerd, but a nerd with a poor ability to calculate ROI. At least a lot of the "jocks" ended up with a good ROI job in finance that they got from their frat brothers rich dad.
        fwip 3y ago
        > Why should I even want a Ph.d if... I dunno dude, why do you do literally anything in life? Surely your life doesn't revolve around finding a wife.
- hilux 3y ago
  Checks out - Feynman was married.
- fromMars 3y ago
  Didn't work out for me. I was pursuing a PhD and got married and shortly after had a child. I could no longer comfortably subsist on the salary of a Research Assistant. So I left academia to make more money. I could imagine marriage helping if one doesn't have kids and the cost of living where the school is located isn't too high or if one's spouse has a successful career. The advantage of being married is that you don't have to spend as much energy dating and other social activities.
dmarchand90 3y ago
I did a phd and really enjoyed it, a lot of my friends did as well and hated it. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter: Note this advice is only if you're average or feel average. If you're a superstar and you know it please disregard (but in that case you're probably not reading this anyway). 1) I had a professor who was very strong in the field and could point me to high impact work and steer me clear of useless activities. 2) I got a good stipend. I do not recommend borrowing money or living wretchedly for a phd. 3) My professor hit a good balance between pushing me to work harder and puling back when I felt I was going to hard. 4) I avoided doing much work as a TA as much as possible. I did the minimum amount that delivered reasonable value to the class and the students. 5) I avoided working weekends and the evenings. Conversely I put a lot of pressure on myself to do work during work hours. 6) I would occasionally work holidays and weekends (this only applies to European phds which get 5+ weeks of vacation. Do not go below three weeks vacation. ) 7) I did not try to be "a hero " I didn't do crazy ideas without discussing with my professor first. I didn't take more than the minimum amount of classes and select material that seemed extremely relevant. 8) I worked a job first (2 years). This made me really appreciate my phd a lot more and gave me a lot of much needed time management and interpersonal work skills. 9) i avoided reinventing the wheel at all costs. 10) I learned to say no and said no often 11) I always yes to social activities 12) I did hiking on the weekend and running during the week. 13) I prepared for a non academic career often. 14) on special occasions I would disregard all the above and work really hard on something. I cannot say how often this happens and it's kind of a spiritual question. Probably no more then 3-4 times a year is sustainable and sometimes not even every year. My goal the whole time was to be a 'forgettable' student. Forgettable in that I tried to avoid being memorably good and avoided being memorably bad. Of course there were genius peers I worked with and worked the weekends and evenings. I think this was right for them as the act gave them joy and they were producing great results. Conversely some people ground too hard and still didn't have very much to show. If in doubt and you're freaking out do less. If you're not in doubt and you're getting complacent do more.
- ghaff 3y ago
  >I worked a job first (2 years). This made me really appreciate my phd a lot more and gave me a lot of much needed time management and interpersonal work skills. I went back to school after a few years to get an MBA. I've never actually managed anyone to this day but it was sort of a prereq for a lot of the types of jobs I was interested in at the time. It helped that the coursework was easier for me than the engineering degrees I had. But I think there was also discipline and process that came from having been in the working world that definitely helped me do really well in the program.
bckr 3y ago
I love this advice for activities outside academia as well. Solve the problems in front of you that you can make progress on. Don’t spend time trying to weigh the value of the problem based on perceived prestige.
mo_42 3y ago
From my experience, I strongly do not recommended You and Your Research. When I started my PhD I read this text as well. Of course I was very motivated of doing only important research. After some time I even found a nice research topic and worked on it for over two years. Even my advisor pointed out that it was a very novel and foundational idea. At the same time, a colleague published three papers in top conferences. Their approach was basically to look at publications from the previous conference, apply some delta that they had an advantage over other teams and publish this in the next round. Reviewers were happy because their publications already got cited and they understood the topic well. Whereas my topic used an algorithm from the seventies that reviewers had to revisit. My topic didn't fit so well into the overall conference trend and so I still have way less citations than those incremental works. When someone asks me if it's worth doing a PhD I tend to say that you need to like the direction in which science is going. If you don't like it and are rather rebellious, it's better to start a company.
- maayank 3y ago
  Interesting take, thanks
- antegamisou 3y ago
  What about pursuing a PhD if you aren't planning to stay in academia? Would its lack bar you from industrial R&D positions? Assuming we're talking about a Computer Science/Engineering discipline.
  - yodsanklai 3y ago
    I would say it really depends. There are certainly specialized area where a PhD is important, but it's hit or miss. For instance, my team (in a big tech company) has people with very diverse backgrounds. Some tasks require more expertise, but most of the work will fit a generalist profile. Some teams who are more "researchy" have probably more PhDs. I feel doing a PhD gave me more time to learn things, while my current position is more fast paced and I can't afford to spend 2 weeks just learning new things. Financially, it didn't make sense to do a PhD. It's not even super clear what I learned is helpful now but I'm glad I've had this experience. It gave me a bit more perspective and culture of the field. I don't regret doing it. However, I regret going into academia. Being a professor didn't suit me for many reasons. I'm happier in industry.
bsdpufferfish 3y ago
"have no hope" actually means someone at the department refuses to sign your papers. I have never been treated with so little respect in industry.
quantum_state 3y ago
Like everything else, it’s a journey of exploration combining idealism and pragmatism with curiosity at the core. As some of the humble examples Feynman provided, when one digs into them, one would see the connection, intrigued and enlightened … and it would become an enjoyable and fruitful journey …
bradrn 3y ago
Key sentence (quoted from a letter of Feynman’s): > The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. A problem is grand in science if it lies before us unsolved and we see some way for us to make some headway into it.
Cheer2171 3y ago
A problem with marriage during the Phd is the inevitable two body problem. Academia privileges being itinerant. One reason I quit my PhD program for industry was because I saw how those ahead of me who wanted to stay in the same region were seen as failures or not serious. I was excited for my friend who got a postdoc in another prof's lab in the same department, who didn't have to move across the country with his wife and newborn child. And my advisor taught me to pity him instead, "he could have gone to MIT if he applied, but now everyone will assume he couldn't get a postdoc anywhere else". If you "win" then you have to move for a postdoc, then to "win" again means moving again for a faculty position.
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
  That kind of thinking is such self-defeating misery. If you have something to contribute, it doesn't matter where you go. You go to the University of Nowhere In Particular and make it a center of the new hot subject in research. If you can't do that, then it doesn't matter if you go to MIT or TIM or whatever, because that's just a way to earn renown from the work of others, rather than your own.
  - lostdog 3y ago
    Most people become closer to the average of their colleagues. Very very few people are so strong by themselves that they can raise the level of a place just by being there individually.
    - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
      > Very very few people are so strong by themselves that they can raise the level of a place just by being there individually. If you are not at least a person who might have this property, you likely aren't PhD material.
      - Ar-Curunir 3y ago
        Everybody at the target institution also has a PhD; that’s the minimum bar to cross.
javajosh 3y ago
I've often felt that there is something inherently unwholesome about PhDs and the modern academic effort. As if we could create research factories, and that the quality and quantity of discoveries would scale with input (money). I'm not a historian of science, but I do know that many of our greatest scientists were not professional researchers, doing the work essentially in their spare time on the side (Einstein, Newton) or more typically, because of the support of a wealthy patron. Contributors self-selected for passion and talent mixed with a juicy problem. It makes sense to park people with passion and talent but NOT a juicy problem into a teaching position until that problem ripens. But instead you get careerist, low-impact papers - even negative-impact papers if you taken into account the impact on signal-to-noise ratio such papers have. Consider that one of the more important papers in CS in the last 20 years was "Attention is all you need", which was a side-effect of the authors day jobs. Or the many contributions of open-source which are 99% hobbyists. There is some sort of perversion that happens when you "fund research" - it removes the spontaneity and changes the selection criteria from something "natural" (passion and time and results) to something "synthetic" (grant application). It would seem to me a more sensible approach to become a car mechanic or programmer and do your original science on the side.
- bglazer 3y ago
  It’s telling that your examples are theoretical physics, math, and computer science. You should visit a lab that does actual experiments. I don’t think anyone is doing cryo electron microscopy in their spare time. Most science just takes a lot of time and money. No way around it. Also, most research is incremental, and thats’s totally fine. People lionize the “great men” like Einstein who have these earth-shattering discoveries, but those aren’t really worth anything without the decades of exploration and hundreds of scientists testing theories and figuring out their consequences and implications.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- dmarchand90 3y ago
  I mean option one is always going to be there. I'm sure there are plenty of neo-aristocrats who can do science if they want. The problem, honestly, is an ancient one. In plato's republic he complains about a lack of state funding for geometry : " Then take a step backward, for we are out of order, and insert the third dimension which is of solids, after the second which is of planes, and then you may proceed to solids in motion. But solid geometry is not popular and has not the patronage of the State, nor is the use of it fully recognized; the difficulty is great, and the votaries of the study are conceited and impatient. Still the charm of the pursuit wins upon men, and, if government would lend a little assistance, there might be great progress made. " https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm
eslaught 3y ago
I had my own "oh shit" moment in my PhD, which I wrote about among other things, here: https://elliottslaughter.com/2024/02/legion-paper-history https://elliottslaughter.com/2024/02/legion-paper-history I'll just add one more comment: it's entirely possible to feel like everything you're doing is worthless, when in fact you are on the brink of accomplishing something worthwhile. That's not to say that every research project is worthwhile, but "how I feel right now" is maybe not the best indicator of how you are actually doing.
gtmitchell 3y ago
As a counter example, I will offer my own experience in graduate school. I was one of the few married students and observed that nearly all the successful graduates students had the following in common: 1. They had competent PhD advisors 2. The advisors had stable funding sources 3. They were single Of those three, #1 and #2 were by far the most important. Certain professors just knew how to run a good lab and were able to shepherd their students through the program efficiently. As for the impact of #3, I found as a married student I had to balance my research and teaching responsibilities with the needs of my spouse. It added a level of mental and emotional stress my single colleagues didn’t have to deal with. Ultimately, my balancing act was unsuccessful. I eventually dropped out of my PhD program and ended up divorced. So yeah, based on my anecdotal (N=1) experience, being married doesn’t not help you to be successful in graduate school.
- gogobio 3y ago
  To be honest, I found the exact opposite to be true. I agree with the author regarding the happiness during grad school being directly related to being married. As a matter of fact, I don't think I would have finished my PhD had my wife not supported me mentally, economically, and in spirit. I've observed our single students struggle, complaining about having to do chores after classes, clean, cook, look after themselves. Whereas my spouse was supportive and understanding, she took a colossal load off my shoulders - I could concentrate on my studies and had little to no worries outside of school. We both worked, but she worked full time to support us and got a master's degree, so she knew all too well that grad school isn't peanuts. I think it's more so about having a good spouse who is understanding and supportive, who can meet you halfway.
  - bachmeier 3y ago
    I wrote my response while you posted, but it basically supports what I was saying. > I think it's more so about having a good spouse I wouldn't say it's about a "good" spouse. It's tough, and if it's too much for the spouse, maybe the grad student should consider dropping out. Nobody knows how it's going to work until they do it. This is especially true if they moved far from home for grad school.
xqcgrek2 3y ago
Unfortunately, these days science (to get jobs and research money) is all about hype, networking, or big collaborations. Very few people are trying to do work that is not incremental or something without hype potential in the next 3 years.
Upvoter33 3y ago
This was a pretty wise article from a young person. The PhD path can be tough, and there are always low points, even for people who are doing well. The one thing I always thought about was the old joke about medical school. Q: "What do they call the person who graduates medical school with the lowest GPA in the class? A: "A doctor"
- JoeAltmaier 3y ago
  Same in the military. "What do the sergeants call the last-place graduate of West Point? Sir."
chriskanan 3y ago
I read the book "Getting what you came for" before starting my PhD and took that to heart for graduating. It basically argued one does not need to do their best work during their PhD as that's the start of one's career. What made me sad was after I realized my area wasn't one anyone was hiring for faculty for (deep learning and AI by around 2011), and that the people who did get interviews had an astronomical number of papers (in AI generally but nobody cared about neural networks). I fortunately got a faculty job after applying to 30 universities in 2013 where I got one offer and was their third choice. I got lucky, deep learning exploded, and my career took off. Many people tried to steer me away from AI and especially neural nets, including some of my committee members for the latter. Regardless, another factor in my success was having a somewhat crazy officemate who would work 30 hours straight and then sleep 13 hours, 7 days per week (we are still good friends and he is now a well known deep learning theory professor). I couldn't do that, but the zeal with which he pushed himself motivated me a lot (although he also gave me imposter syndrome since we took some proof heavy courses where he would be done in a couple hours what would take me days to do the same assignments). I definitely don't recommend having kids during a PhD, as I've seen many students and peers struggle tremendously. A partner is great, especially if they are equally busy (mine was in medical school across the country), because one isn't going to really get a lot of nights and weekends if you are really pushing yourself. My advisor never pushed me, but I pushed myself very hard. Still, if one just wants a PhD, what one needs is a good advisor who can steer one towards problems that are tractable given the student's abilities, stable funding (most programs worth doing are reasonably stable), and not trying to think one must do the most amazing work of their lives during their PhDs. It is a lot of work, but a career in research and the privilege of cultivating the next generation is really what makes me feel self-actualized. I try to find low-hanging fruit research projects for my PhD students in their first few years to build up their confidence and then have them pursue harder problems, where if the harder ones don't work out they still hopefully have enough stuff to form a dissertation. I often find myself needing to be more of a cheerleader for my students nowadays, though, since my field exploded and reviewers seem much less competent. Rejected papers for good work hurts mental health.
photochemsyn 3y ago
A PhD program is an investment of years of your life with an uncertain outcome - and as with other investments, due diligence matters. Researching the program you're entering and the PI you'll be working for (not 'with', for) are critically important steps. When interviewing for a lab, pay particular attention to their anti-fraud procedures (data retention, lab notebook policy, etc.). Read everything they've published - is it coherent, or obfuscated? Secondly, you have to have an income, meaning a stipend that allows you to lead a normal-ish life, and if the only way you can get paid is to teach classes, then your time for doing research will be cut in half. Likewise a decent PI will be looking for certain characteristics that make investing in you a good idea - intelligence, diligence, tenacity, etc. The vast majority of grad students won't publish anything very significant as a grad student, so don't worry about that so much. Something like 75% of published papers don't get a citation count > 10, and that's often just the PI citing their own umbrella of work. This may appear like wasteful use of resources, but the significant research can be so valuable to society and industry that even a 5% success rate is worth the societal investment. As far as careers, social networking is the academic game, but skill development is what counts more in industry, and most grad students don't go into academic research careers (as production of PhDs >> open academic positions). Teaching skills are undervalued in the USA, incidentally. P.S. being happy half the time is good enough; trying to be happy all the time tends towards manic behavior, and often eventual nervous breakdown.
epstein 3y ago
Easy. Just redefine hope. Problem solved.
pbj1968 3y ago
Go get a PhD and then spend your prime years of family making as a post doc with a $60k salary. It’s ludicrous and the system only works if your family is wealthy or your spouse has a better paying job.
- sieste 3y ago
  phd and academia is a terrible career choice of you want to be wealthy. even most "rich professors" could make much more in industry. this career only makes sense once you factor in the value of working on your own interesting and diverse problems, being surrounded by curious and intelligent people, while enjoying the freedom of developing your research into whatever direction you please. and this starts as a phd student. if, as an academic, you ever feel like you don't have most of these benefits, while not making enough money to get by, you should leave.
  - pbj1968 3y ago
    Yeah, that’s a nice load of bibble babble “we punish you for doing things you find interesting” crap. I didn’t say “make them rich” I am arguing that we need to make this financially viable if we expect our objective best to pursue it. $80k? $90k? Those would be a good start.
runeblaze 3y ago
Just want to put out here that being neurodivergent is an easy route to lose hope. Most people / professors are neurotypical and they guide you through their neurotypical lens, as they have previously found success doing.
Two4 3y ago
I have a friend who coaches all kinds of postgrads through their theses/treatises (masters all the way to postdoc) - the number one thing that keeps her in business is shitty supervisors and the soul crushing grind of academia. PhDs (and masters theses) are primarily about project management, with time, money and morale being the primary resources dealt with. Almost invariably, morale runs out first, and then time, because the work isn't being done. Managing morale is as important as managing your time and money, and supervisors almost never impart that skill.
Joel_Mckay 3y ago
Depends on the faculty, but in most cases you are still indentured unless fully sponsored with a grant or bursary. Most people project their own esoteric interests on what they think the world should care about, but almost all are wrong most of the time. Research institutions are like hermit-crab populations, and "science advances one funeral at a time" as some observed... One finds competitive sociopaths tend to do very well in such political climates. Ones instincts likely tell you my opinions must be ill informed, but that was also predictable given the decades of training. ;-)
lsuresh 3y ago
Most researchers do not do their best work during their PhD, but after it. The PhD is simply the training you need for a research career. It's an easy path to disillusionment when PhD students don't realize this (often because advisors don't do a good job helping the students set reasonable expectations and goals). It's good to be ambitious in problem selection. But a huge part of the training is to learn how to break down hard problems into reasonable increments that you can attempt to solve, one at a time.
paraknight 3y ago
I had no hope during mine and completely changed research area in my final year. All my publications became irrelevant and I did a complete rewrite of my already mostly written thesis. My thinking was that I have nothing to lose since I'm going to fail anyway. That freedom allowed me to put together something good that I actually care about in a short time and pass my viva very easily, despite none of my new work being published. I wrote about this here https://yousefamar.com/memo/notes/my/views/phds/ https://yousefamar.com/memo/notes/my/views/phds/ My number one bit of advice would be to stop listening to your advisors and do what you think is right. They're the ones that led you to the point of no hope despite your efforts. If I could go back in time, I would go straight to founding instead of wasting some of my sharpest years on a PhD, but I would never have known that had I not done it.

170 points by jxmorris12 3y ago

Based on my observations, marriage is the most reliable indicator of graduate student success. At least the male ones. I don't pretend to know if marriage is the cause of success or if it is merely a correlated phenomena. But I've observed it and talking among my circle, so has a top engineering researcher at a top 10 university. This is a man who has graduated scores of students placing half of them at top universities.

silverquiet 3y ago
What if women aren’t interested in you?
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  Keep doing the things that make you into a man that women are interested in.
  - throwaway35777 3y ago
    Go into an industry that's not overly political and where you're useful enough not to be judged on arbitrary qualities like your (a)sexuality.
  - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
    > Keep doing the things that make you into a man that women are interested in. ... like making lots of money. :-D
    - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
      Just don’t pick someone that has that as one of their top 3 reasons to be with you. But money does help with almost everything.
    - Der_Einzige 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - bigbillheck 3y ago
        > The consensus? He has tons of "red flags" for basically being "billy the beta" who won't excite the women who would come into contact with him. Hardly anyone is surprised that he can't get dates. Quoting one of the top comments: "his persona reads to be like a human representation of mashed potatoes with no seasoning, bland. " There's a couple people in that thread who used the term "beta" but I wouldn't call it the consensus. There's some calling him "boring", but there's also a bunch of ladies saying "maybe if I were single", and a bunch more saying "wanting kids is a dealbreaker". And in any case things seem to have worked out for him: "This profile was published in August 2022; I'm no longer single, but wanted to leave it up since it was an important document for me." (https://colah.github.io/personal/dating/ https://colah.github.io/personal/dating/) > The reality is that being a SWE or related is a massive net negative to your "SMV". We software people trade our game for our money. It's sad but it is what it is. I blame the widespread normalization of "nerds" being bullied by "jocks" in TV from the 1980s on. The cultural damage this has done is unreal. I don't think this is true at all. > Seriously - the most unrealistic thing about the movie "wargames" is the idea that a kid who looked like that doing a bunch of command line shit would have a girl who looked like that interested in him (and his computer!). Matthew Broderick ended up marrying Sarah Jessica Parker.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        > The reality is that being a SWE or related is a massive net negative to your "SMV". Its not, but buying into the belief that it is is.
      - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
        More than 90% of dating advice is overfitting. It’s high stakes and there is plenty of signal to glean, but once you know the basics of the situation the rest is up to chance. Which means if you’re being picky (and I think to should be if you can) success can take a while. In the meantime you could end up desperately pulling apart facts like a conspiracy theorist. The best advice, at least for people that aren’t super lucky, is to stop trying, do the obvious things (be healthy, happy, financially comfortable) and live a life that puts you in contact with women.
- telmo 3y ago
  Try to find out why, and please avoid Internet "red pill" stuff. I'm not telling you this as any sort of political statement nor am I trying to fight any culture wars here. This is just the advice of a middle-age guy with perfectly mediocre / average looks, and some life experience. From what I observe, 9 times out of 10 the problem lies in personality. I know plenty of guys with no money and no looks that have no trouble attracting the interest of the opposite sex. Why? Because they have a great personality, as in, it feels good to be around them. Furthermore, people who rely only on look and status to attract a partner and do not work on themselves are unlikely to have a happy relationship in the long term. I am not blaming people for having unappealing personalities. This is usually the product of things that are outside of their control, usually some sort of trauma. Life is not fair. A lot of people are traumatized and do not realize it. This can be overcome, but you must want to overcame it and you must be able to face harsh truths. Maybe therapy can help, maybe meditation, maybe even things that are considered "woo" but that allow you to face your demons. Whatever works and clicks with you is a valid answer. All roads lead to Rome if you are courageous enough. Check out this guy, I have the impression he is particularly suited for the HN demographics: https://www.youtube.com/@HealthyGamerGG https://www.youtube.com/@HealthyGamerGG Good luck man, you can do it!
  - bckr 3y ago
    Awesome, I recommended the same channel.
  - grepLeigh 3y ago
    I also don't want to dredge up culture wars stuff, but just wanted to say it's really nice to see men warning other men away from the redpill path. Thanks for encouraging therapy and self-healing.
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    Good advice. In my observation, especially as you get out of your 20s, single guys are… kinda phone it in for various reasons. Even moderate effort makes a dude a rockstar.
  - silverquiet 3y ago
    Do you think living with my parents due to disability could be an issue?
- bckr 3y ago
  You’ve got significant foundational work to do. I’d start with Healthy Gamer GG’s channel[] and also pick up the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. [] https://youtube.com/shorts/693UD3V1KSU?si=6IiRwP0Q1qRqErnp https://youtube.com/shorts/693UD3V1KSU?si=6IiRwP0Q1qRqErnp
  - anewhnaccount2 3y ago
    You don't know that this person has lots of work to do on themselves. These things are partially a matter of compatibility, putting yourself out there (which is a thing you do rather than a thing you become), and yes, unfortunately, pure dumb luck.
    - j45 3y ago
      Being out there a lot is the dumb luck of human propagation. Seems pretty effective.
    - bckr 3y ago
      I do know, because “what if women aren’t interested in you” is a question you don’t ask after a certain degree of development. I don’t know how long it will take to do this work. With a foundation of personal development and the right attitude, I bet you can go from “what if women aren’t interested in me” to successfully dating in under 6 weeks. If you need to learn how to develop yourself, it could take 6 months or more before you’re able to internalize the needed lessons.
  - silverquiet 3y ago
    Been through it. Never really could take any of this stuff all that seriously. Especially after the woman I ended up closest to passed away. I’m mostly wondering how the people who recommend marriage as a solution to a lot of ills (and I think it’s an issue worth exploring but I also think there’s a lot of correlation/causation mixups here) expect people to take action on that.
    - bckr 3y ago
      My heart goes out to you with regard to the death of your loved one. Do not let death and grieving pull you permanently out of the realm of intimate relationships. Human connection is foundational to all kinds of success. Taking it seriously has served me well.
- hotdogscout 3y ago
  Newton died a virgin, averages are defined by average people, don't stress on their anecdote and don't put your value in what women think of you.
  - j45 3y ago
    It's everyone's personal choice but if Newton had some descendants, I wonder how that might have turned out.
    - hotdogscout 3y ago
      Mediocre probably. I don't think biology is the bottleneck of great ideas. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family
      - j45 3y ago
        I don't think it is either, but there can be inter-generational momentum
- j45 3y ago
  Everything is a function of the self-effort place into self-growth. Because everyone's special, and therefore no one is special, there is someone just like you who you will be very compatible with, both in the beginning and growing through the seasons of life together. It just begins with deciding how you want to look at possibility, or not. Our minds go how and where we focus.
j7ake 3y ago
My theory: PhD is inherently unstructured, and requires wading into the unknown without many markers to tell you where you are going. Marriage creates a structured life outside of work that gives PhDs an anchor to return to periodically. This leads to better long term and consistent progress. Stephen King describes his success in writing in part due to his successful marriage. There may be some similarities there.
- Solvency 3y ago
  Nonsense as a general rule. Love my family. love wife and kid. Have never been less productive or efficient in my life. As a stickler guy between 20 and 34? Relentless productivity, focus, and time.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - bsdpufferfish 3y ago
    People don't typically start a Phd at 34. You're at a different level of maturity now.
  - Der_Einzige 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - gorjusborg 3y ago
      What an arrogant and reductive thing to think, let alone post publicly. I have a hunch that you are very young, very single, or most probably both.
    - hilux 3y ago
      I came to Hacker News to get away from this kind of reddit nonsense.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  No way. Family puts alot of "make money now" and "be home for dinner" pressure on you. Hardly a good environment for doing research. Not even bringing kids into the equation.
Cloudef 3y ago
If that's true, the future doesn't look good for male. Honestly though, marriage and having children come with financial stability and good life balance.
matthewdgreen 3y ago
Marital status is also correlated with age. Students who enter the PhD having spent a few years working following their undergraduate degree are often a bit more motivated and experienced (though I've had successful students take both paths.)
- VeninVidiaVicii 3y ago
  Likewise people with bigger feet are better at math. Well actually that’s just because infants have tiny feet and are notoriously terrible at math.
  - wholinator2 3y ago
    Well that depends on our definition of bigger. If we're saying bigger is "larger than baby feet" then okay but i think a better definition is "larger than the mean/median". Would baby feet drive down the mean/median that much?
aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> Based on my observations, marriage is the most reliable indicator of graduate student success. At least the male ones. At least in math, I would rather say that marriage is a counterindication that a great PhD thesis come out at the end, for the simple reason that being married means that math is only your second love, while writing a great PhD thesis in math requires the topic of your PhD thesis to be your nearly only love for the duration of your PhD studies.
- wholinator2 3y ago
  Ya know, that makes sense and all. But I'd want to be careful about subtly implying that doing nothing but your research and forgoing personal relationships in favor of work is _better_ than having a life and a little worse thesis. Most of a career in research happens after the PhD anyway, is it possible those "This is my life" people do worse later on, when their potential contributions to fields would be maximizing? Having a life is an okay thing to want, if for no other reason than the people who are really crazy for it and want nothing but math research aren't going to listen to anyone about relationships anyway. If you find yourself seriously considering turning it down a little bit to find other avenues to personal fulfillment then you might not be one of those crazies and i think that's okay, maybe even better
- thsksbd 3y ago
  My sister is in a relationship with a top, young, number theorist. Ill have to let her know the damage she's doing :D
brandall10 3y ago
Generally it seems both are grad students, or at the very least, met in school and the relationship has an academic foundation. Imagine having a partner to wade through such an experience who can relate, is pushing you, helping you see your blind spots, quelling your doubts/fears, and in general cheering for your success. And then the clarity you get for doing the same for them. There's also the extra level of responsibility that marriage entails, that forces one to 'grow up', for want of a better expression.
- j45 3y ago
  Not just grow up, but one of the easiest cheat codes to prioritize and increase effectiveness.
polygamous_bat 3y ago
There are two factors to this. 1. If your partner is not in a PhD program themselves, then you can rely on them during what I call “crunch time”, and there are a few of those in every PhD when you’re doing 16 hour days 7 days a week just to get something out of the door. Single students don’t get that luxury and thus inevitably have to be miserable during that period. 2. Secondly, successfully navigating a relationship/marriage takes a lot of the same skills as successfully navigating a PhD. A good PhD at the end of the day is built on a lot of compromises: between your vision and your advisors’, the fields’, your collaborators, and if you’re interning, your industry partners. A relationship teaches you how to navigate that without burning bridges, which may not be true for a headstrong “I’m gonna change the world but I don’t know how” PhD students.
- Beldin 3y ago
  > A good PhD at the end of the day is built on a lot of compromises: ... Don't forget "your skill level". Recognising your own limitations as a researcher is rather important for a PhD student.
analog31 3y ago
My observation is that the married students had a real fire burning under them to get done and out. They had a real tangible motivation. Disclosure: Married to another PhD student. Also, somebody to drive you to the hospital when your experiment explodes. Fortunately, she wasn't seriously injured.
richrichie 3y ago
Marriage solves the problem of sex. Especially for male phd students. This is a huge factor at that age, and for the species types that are found in phd programs. Takes the edge away, saves time and energy, etc. Not fashionable to talk about it in such terms. But it is a factor.
- Der_Einzige 3y ago
  God if only. Unfortunately, they call it the ol "ball and chain" for a reason. Most men would happily sleep around with many women as they could if they had a "pass" from their partner. I wouldn't even be surprised if more than half of all married men would describe their sex life in terms like "mediocre" or worse. Marriage is supposed to solve that issue, but I claim that among other things, falling marriage rates indicate that increasingly large numbers of (usually men) are prioritizing sleeping around over settling down.
  - richrichie 3y ago
    Most phd students are not the bar hopping pick up artists. And female students in campuses don’t exactly hunt phd students to sleep with either. Marriage works. I am not talking about over 10 or 20 years. But during this period, it solves the problem of sex.
    - Der_Einzige 3y ago
      Significant swaths of Ph.D students would abandon all of their scholarly endeavors if they could go bar hopping and be pick-up artists. "Female students not hunting for Ph.D students" is evidence that, especially for men, getting lots of education is straight up "unattractive". Why should I even want a Ph.d if all it signals to the other sex is that I'm not just a nerd, but a nerd with a poor ability to calculate ROI. At least a lot of the "jocks" ended up with a good ROI job in finance that they got from their frat brothers rich dad.
      - fwip 3y ago
        > Why should I even want a Ph.d if... I dunno dude, why do you do literally anything in life? Surely your life doesn't revolve around finding a wife.
hilux 3y ago
Checks out - Feynman was married.
fromMars 3y ago
Didn't work out for me. I was pursuing a PhD and got married and shortly after had a child. I could no longer comfortably subsist on the salary of a Research Assistant. So I left academia to make more money. I could imagine marriage helping if one doesn't have kids and the cost of living where the school is located isn't too high or if one's spouse has a successful career. The advantage of being married is that you don't have to spend as much energy dating and other social activities.

dmarchand90 3y ago

I did a phd and really enjoyed it, a lot of my friends did as well and hated it. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter: Note this advice is only if you're average or feel average. If you're a superstar and you know it please disregard (but in that case you're probably not reading this anyway). 1) I had a professor who was very strong in the field and could point me to high impact work and steer me clear of useless activities. 2) I got a good stipend. I do not recommend borrowing money or living wretchedly for a phd. 3) My professor hit a good balance between pushing me to work harder and puling back when I felt I was going to hard. 4) I avoided doing much work as a TA as much as possible. I did the minimum amount that delivered reasonable value to the class and the students. 5) I avoided working weekends and the evenings. Conversely I put a lot of pressure on myself to do work during work hours. 6) I would occasionally work holidays and weekends (this only applies to European phds which get 5+ weeks of vacation. Do not go below three weeks vacation. ) 7) I did not try to be "a hero " I didn't do crazy ideas without discussing with my professor first. I didn't take more than the minimum amount of classes and select material that seemed extremely relevant. 8) I worked a job first (2 years). This made me really appreciate my phd a lot more and gave me a lot of much needed time management and interpersonal work skills. 9) i avoided reinventing the wheel at all costs. 10) I learned to say no and said no often 11) I always yes to social activities 12) I did hiking on the weekend and running during the week. 13) I prepared for a non academic career often. 14) on special occasions I would disregard all the above and work really hard on something. I cannot say how often this happens and it's kind of a spiritual question. Probably no more then 3-4 times a year is sustainable and sometimes not even every year. My goal the whole time was to be a 'forgettable' student. Forgettable in that I tried to avoid being memorably good and avoided being memorably bad. Of course there were genius peers I worked with and worked the weekends and evenings. I think this was right for them as the act gave them joy and they were producing great results. Conversely some people ground too hard and still didn't have very much to show. If in doubt and you're freaking out do less. If you're not in doubt and you're getting complacent do more.

ghaff 3y ago
>I worked a job first (2 years). This made me really appreciate my phd a lot more and gave me a lot of much needed time management and interpersonal work skills. I went back to school after a few years to get an MBA. I've never actually managed anyone to this day but it was sort of a prereq for a lot of the types of jobs I was interested in at the time. It helped that the coursework was easier for me than the engineering degrees I had. But I think there was also discipline and process that came from having been in the working world that definitely helped me do really well in the program.

bckr 3y ago

I love this advice for activities outside academia as well. Solve the problems in front of you that you can make progress on. Don’t spend time trying to weigh the value of the problem based on perceived prestige.

mo_42 3y ago

From my experience, I strongly do not recommended You and Your Research. When I started my PhD I read this text as well. Of course I was very motivated of doing only important research. After some time I even found a nice research topic and worked on it for over two years. Even my advisor pointed out that it was a very novel and foundational idea. At the same time, a colleague published three papers in top conferences. Their approach was basically to look at publications from the previous conference, apply some delta that they had an advantage over other teams and publish this in the next round. Reviewers were happy because their publications already got cited and they understood the topic well. Whereas my topic used an algorithm from the seventies that reviewers had to revisit. My topic didn't fit so well into the overall conference trend and so I still have way less citations than those incremental works. When someone asks me if it's worth doing a PhD I tend to say that you need to like the direction in which science is going. If you don't like it and are rather rebellious, it's better to start a company.

maayank 3y ago
Interesting take, thanks
antegamisou 3y ago
What about pursuing a PhD if you aren't planning to stay in academia? Would its lack bar you from industrial R&D positions? Assuming we're talking about a Computer Science/Engineering discipline.
- yodsanklai 3y ago
  I would say it really depends. There are certainly specialized area where a PhD is important, but it's hit or miss. For instance, my team (in a big tech company) has people with very diverse backgrounds. Some tasks require more expertise, but most of the work will fit a generalist profile. Some teams who are more "researchy" have probably more PhDs. I feel doing a PhD gave me more time to learn things, while my current position is more fast paced and I can't afford to spend 2 weeks just learning new things. Financially, it didn't make sense to do a PhD. It's not even super clear what I learned is helpful now but I'm glad I've had this experience. It gave me a bit more perspective and culture of the field. I don't regret doing it. However, I regret going into academia. Being a professor didn't suit me for many reasons. I'm happier in industry.

bsdpufferfish 3y ago

"have no hope" actually means someone at the department refuses to sign your papers. I have never been treated with so little respect in industry.

quantum_state 3y ago

Like everything else, it’s a journey of exploration combining idealism and pragmatism with curiosity at the core. As some of the humble examples Feynman provided, when one digs into them, one would see the connection, intrigued and enlightened … and it would become an enjoyable and fruitful journey …

bradrn 3y ago

Key sentence (quoted from a letter of Feynman’s): > The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. A problem is grand in science if it lies before us unsolved and we see some way for us to make some headway into it.

Cheer2171 3y ago

A problem with marriage during the Phd is the inevitable two body problem. Academia privileges being itinerant. One reason I quit my PhD program for industry was because I saw how those ahead of me who wanted to stay in the same region were seen as failures or not serious. I was excited for my friend who got a postdoc in another prof's lab in the same department, who didn't have to move across the country with his wife and newborn child. And my advisor taught me to pity him instead, "he could have gone to MIT if he applied, but now everyone will assume he couldn't get a postdoc anywhere else". If you "win" then you have to move for a postdoc, then to "win" again means moving again for a faculty position.

YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
That kind of thinking is such self-defeating misery. If you have something to contribute, it doesn't matter where you go. You go to the University of Nowhere In Particular and make it a center of the new hot subject in research. If you can't do that, then it doesn't matter if you go to MIT or TIM or whatever, because that's just a way to earn renown from the work of others, rather than your own.
- lostdog 3y ago
  Most people become closer to the average of their colleagues. Very very few people are so strong by themselves that they can raise the level of a place just by being there individually.
  - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
    > Very very few people are so strong by themselves that they can raise the level of a place just by being there individually. If you are not at least a person who might have this property, you likely aren't PhD material.
    - Ar-Curunir 3y ago
      Everybody at the target institution also has a PhD; that’s the minimum bar to cross.

javajosh 3y ago

I've often felt that there is something inherently unwholesome about PhDs and the modern academic effort. As if we could create research factories, and that the quality and quantity of discoveries would scale with input (money). I'm not a historian of science, but I do know that many of our greatest scientists were not professional researchers, doing the work essentially in their spare time on the side (Einstein, Newton) or more typically, because of the support of a wealthy patron. Contributors self-selected for passion and talent mixed with a juicy problem. It makes sense to park people with passion and talent but NOT a juicy problem into a teaching position until that problem ripens. But instead you get careerist, low-impact papers - even negative-impact papers if you taken into account the impact on signal-to-noise ratio such papers have. Consider that one of the more important papers in CS in the last 20 years was "Attention is all you need", which was a side-effect of the authors day jobs. Or the many contributions of open-source which are 99% hobbyists. There is some sort of perversion that happens when you "fund research" - it removes the spontaneity and changes the selection criteria from something "natural" (passion and time and results) to something "synthetic" (grant application). It would seem to me a more sensible approach to become a car mechanic or programmer and do your original science on the side.

bglazer 3y ago
It’s telling that your examples are theoretical physics, math, and computer science. You should visit a lab that does actual experiments. I don’t think anyone is doing cryo electron microscopy in their spare time. Most science just takes a lot of time and money. No way around it. Also, most research is incremental, and thats’s totally fine. People lionize the “great men” like Einstein who have these earth-shattering discoveries, but those aren’t really worth anything without the decades of exploration and hundreds of scientists testing theories and figuring out their consequences and implications.
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dmarchand90 3y ago
I mean option one is always going to be there. I'm sure there are plenty of neo-aristocrats who can do science if they want. The problem, honestly, is an ancient one. In plato's republic he complains about a lack of state funding for geometry : " Then take a step backward, for we are out of order, and insert the third dimension which is of solids, after the second which is of planes, and then you may proceed to solids in motion. But solid geometry is not popular and has not the patronage of the State, nor is the use of it fully recognized; the difficulty is great, and the votaries of the study are conceited and impatient. Still the charm of the pursuit wins upon men, and, if government would lend a little assistance, there might be great progress made. " https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm

eslaught 3y ago

I had my own "oh shit" moment in my PhD, which I wrote about among other things, here: https://elliottslaughter.com/2024/02/legion-paper-history https://elliottslaughter.com/2024/02/legion-paper-history I'll just add one more comment: it's entirely possible to feel like everything you're doing is worthless, when in fact you are on the brink of accomplishing something worthwhile. That's not to say that every research project is worthwhile, but "how I feel right now" is maybe not the best indicator of how you are actually doing.

gtmitchell 3y ago

As a counter example, I will offer my own experience in graduate school. I was one of the few married students and observed that nearly all the successful graduates students had the following in common: 1. They had competent PhD advisors 2. The advisors had stable funding sources 3. They were single Of those three, #1 and #2 were by far the most important. Certain professors just knew how to run a good lab and were able to shepherd their students through the program efficiently. As for the impact of #3, I found as a married student I had to balance my research and teaching responsibilities with the needs of my spouse. It added a level of mental and emotional stress my single colleagues didn’t have to deal with. Ultimately, my balancing act was unsuccessful. I eventually dropped out of my PhD program and ended up divorced. So yeah, based on my anecdotal (N=1) experience, being married doesn’t not help you to be successful in graduate school.

gogobio 3y ago
To be honest, I found the exact opposite to be true. I agree with the author regarding the happiness during grad school being directly related to being married. As a matter of fact, I don't think I would have finished my PhD had my wife not supported me mentally, economically, and in spirit. I've observed our single students struggle, complaining about having to do chores after classes, clean, cook, look after themselves. Whereas my spouse was supportive and understanding, she took a colossal load off my shoulders - I could concentrate on my studies and had little to no worries outside of school. We both worked, but she worked full time to support us and got a master's degree, so she knew all too well that grad school isn't peanuts. I think it's more so about having a good spouse who is understanding and supportive, who can meet you halfway.
- bachmeier 3y ago
  I wrote my response while you posted, but it basically supports what I was saying. > I think it's more so about having a good spouse I wouldn't say it's about a "good" spouse. It's tough, and if it's too much for the spouse, maybe the grad student should consider dropping out. Nobody knows how it's going to work until they do it. This is especially true if they moved far from home for grad school.

xqcgrek2 3y ago

Unfortunately, these days science (to get jobs and research money) is all about hype, networking, or big collaborations. Very few people are trying to do work that is not incremental or something without hype potential in the next 3 years.

Upvoter33 3y ago

This was a pretty wise article from a young person. The PhD path can be tough, and there are always low points, even for people who are doing well. The one thing I always thought about was the old joke about medical school. Q: "What do they call the person who graduates medical school with the lowest GPA in the class? A: "A doctor"

JoeAltmaier 3y ago
Same in the military. "What do the sergeants call the last-place graduate of West Point? Sir."

chriskanan 3y ago

I read the book "Getting what you came for" before starting my PhD and took that to heart for graduating. It basically argued one does not need to do their best work during their PhD as that's the start of one's career. What made me sad was after I realized my area wasn't one anyone was hiring for faculty for (deep learning and AI by around 2011), and that the people who did get interviews had an astronomical number of papers (in AI generally but nobody cared about neural networks). I fortunately got a faculty job after applying to 30 universities in 2013 where I got one offer and was their third choice. I got lucky, deep learning exploded, and my career took off. Many people tried to steer me away from AI and especially neural nets, including some of my committee members for the latter. Regardless, another factor in my success was having a somewhat crazy officemate who would work 30 hours straight and then sleep 13 hours, 7 days per week (we are still good friends and he is now a well known deep learning theory professor). I couldn't do that, but the zeal with which he pushed himself motivated me a lot (although he also gave me imposter syndrome since we took some proof heavy courses where he would be done in a couple hours what would take me days to do the same assignments). I definitely don't recommend having kids during a PhD, as I've seen many students and peers struggle tremendously. A partner is great, especially if they are equally busy (mine was in medical school across the country), because one isn't going to really get a lot of nights and weekends if you are really pushing yourself. My advisor never pushed me, but I pushed myself very hard. Still, if one just wants a PhD, what one needs is a good advisor who can steer one towards problems that are tractable given the student's abilities, stable funding (most programs worth doing are reasonably stable), and not trying to think one must do the most amazing work of their lives during their PhDs. It is a lot of work, but a career in research and the privilege of cultivating the next generation is really what makes me feel self-actualized. I try to find low-hanging fruit research projects for my PhD students in their first few years to build up their confidence and then have them pursue harder problems, where if the harder ones don't work out they still hopefully have enough stuff to form a dissertation. I often find myself needing to be more of a cheerleader for my students nowadays, though, since my field exploded and reviewers seem much less competent. Rejected papers for good work hurts mental health.

photochemsyn 3y ago

A PhD program is an investment of years of your life with an uncertain outcome - and as with other investments, due diligence matters. Researching the program you're entering and the PI you'll be working for (not 'with', for) are critically important steps. When interviewing for a lab, pay particular attention to their anti-fraud procedures (data retention, lab notebook policy, etc.). Read everything they've published - is it coherent, or obfuscated? Secondly, you have to have an income, meaning a stipend that allows you to lead a normal-ish life, and if the only way you can get paid is to teach classes, then your time for doing research will be cut in half. Likewise a decent PI will be looking for certain characteristics that make investing in you a good idea - intelligence, diligence, tenacity, etc. The vast majority of grad students won't publish anything very significant as a grad student, so don't worry about that so much. Something like 75% of published papers don't get a citation count > 10, and that's often just the PI citing their own umbrella of work. This may appear like wasteful use of resources, but the significant research can be so valuable to society and industry that even a 5% success rate is worth the societal investment. As far as careers, social networking is the academic game, but skill development is what counts more in industry, and most grad students don't go into academic research careers (as production of PhDs >> open academic positions). Teaching skills are undervalued in the USA, incidentally. P.S. being happy half the time is good enough; trying to be happy all the time tends towards manic behavior, and often eventual nervous breakdown.

epstein 3y ago

Easy. Just redefine hope. Problem solved.

pbj1968 3y ago

Go get a PhD and then spend your prime years of family making as a post doc with a $60k salary. It’s ludicrous and the system only works if your family is wealthy or your spouse has a better paying job.

sieste 3y ago
phd and academia is a terrible career choice of you want to be wealthy. even most "rich professors" could make much more in industry. this career only makes sense once you factor in the value of working on your own interesting and diverse problems, being surrounded by curious and intelligent people, while enjoying the freedom of developing your research into whatever direction you please. and this starts as a phd student. if, as an academic, you ever feel like you don't have most of these benefits, while not making enough money to get by, you should leave.
- pbj1968 3y ago
  Yeah, that’s a nice load of bibble babble “we punish you for doing things you find interesting” crap. I didn’t say “make them rich” I am arguing that we need to make this financially viable if we expect our objective best to pursue it. $80k? $90k? Those would be a good start.

runeblaze 3y ago

Just want to put out here that being neurodivergent is an easy route to lose hope. Most people / professors are neurotypical and they guide you through their neurotypical lens, as they have previously found success doing.

Two4 3y ago

I have a friend who coaches all kinds of postgrads through their theses/treatises (masters all the way to postdoc) - the number one thing that keeps her in business is shitty supervisors and the soul crushing grind of academia. PhDs (and masters theses) are primarily about project management, with time, money and morale being the primary resources dealt with. Almost invariably, morale runs out first, and then time, because the work isn't being done. Managing morale is as important as managing your time and money, and supervisors almost never impart that skill.

Joel_Mckay 3y ago

Depends on the faculty, but in most cases you are still indentured unless fully sponsored with a grant or bursary. Most people project their own esoteric interests on what they think the world should care about, but almost all are wrong most of the time. Research institutions are like hermit-crab populations, and "science advances one funeral at a time" as some observed... One finds competitive sociopaths tend to do very well in such political climates. Ones instincts likely tell you my opinions must be ill informed, but that was also predictable given the decades of training. ;-)

lsuresh 3y ago

Most researchers do not do their best work during their PhD, but after it. The PhD is simply the training you need for a research career. It's an easy path to disillusionment when PhD students don't realize this (often because advisors don't do a good job helping the students set reasonable expectations and goals). It's good to be ambitious in problem selection. But a huge part of the training is to learn how to break down hard problems into reasonable increments that you can attempt to solve, one at a time.

paraknight 3y ago

I had no hope during mine and completely changed research area in my final year. All my publications became irrelevant and I did a complete rewrite of my already mostly written thesis. My thinking was that I have nothing to lose since I'm going to fail anyway. That freedom allowed me to put together something good that I actually care about in a short time and pass my viva very easily, despite none of my new work being published. I wrote about this here https://yousefamar.com/memo/notes/my/views/phds/ https://yousefamar.com/memo/notes/my/views/phds/ My number one bit of advice would be to stop listening to your advisors and do what you think is right. They're the ones that led you to the point of no hope despite your efforts. If I could go back in time, I would go straight to founding instead of wasting some of my sharpest years on a PhD, but I would never have known that had I not done it.