5 ms·
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 wa
by 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 agoThat 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 agoMost 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 agoEverybody at the target institution also has a PhD; that’s the minimum bar to cross.