5 ms·

There are plenty of those. Here's one: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html There's also, I believe, a CMU compute

There are plenty of those. Here's one: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html There's also, I believe, a CMU computer science "guide to graduate school survival" out there. I don't think that this (somewhat self-deprecating) graduate school literature is unrealistically negative. Academia is pretty awful. Life-wise, graduate school is a pretty negative experience. If you enjoy the subject matter and have an almost obsessive need to dive into it, it's a great time in that regard (and you will be spending 60+ hours per week on your work) because you can really study without having to deal with the bullshit that professors have to fend off (committees, tenure politics, grant-writing). The rest of your life will be somewhere from mediocre (if you don't care about the academic game, already dead-set on leaving post-PhD) to awful (if you try to play for keeps); even successful and happy graduate students experience this. The upshot of graduate school is that, except for the money and low status-- and those aren't issues for everyone-- it's actually better than being a professor. You don't have to serve on committees or sweat tenure decisions or disciplinary hearings for cheating undergraduates, and you have a 5- to 7-year period where geographic moves under adverse circumstances won't happen.

Xcelerate 13y ago
> Life-wise, graduate school is a pretty negative experience. I don't think grad school is like that for everyone. My undergrad had such a huge workload that I rarely had time for any kind of fun. Grad school so far is like the college that I didn't have, except I also get to work on research that's really exciting to me. I'm also kind of young for a grad student so I can hang out with undergrads just fine. It's a win-win.
- kedean 13y ago
  As a whole I think graduate school is a good thing, but moment to moment it's pretty negative, by my experience and the experience of all of my classmates. I just ended my first year of masters study, and I couldn't name one person I know within the program who didn't seriously debate dropping out numerous times over the first year. On the other hand, most of us have overall gained good experiences and knowledge, and I do not regret staying.
shardling 13y ago
Probably worth pointing out that this particular poster has an extremely negative view of many of their life experiences! (e.g., look for their comments about working for Google.)
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  Actually, my year of graduate school was pretty positive, as far as things go. No complaints. I did look ahead and realize that academia was not the best deal in the world. Also, you're a douche for bringing up irrelevancies like that.
  - shardling 13y ago
    I think that, if someone asks for a level-headed analysis of grad school, it is totally worth pointing out that an anecdotal response is from someone that has highly charged and divisive opinions about many things, especially institutional culture! Also I'm pretty sure I've seen you say that you're proud of the fact that your perspective on life isn't typical -- so at least own that fact here.
  - hyperbovine 13y ago
    Really? I find that to be entirely relevant. Subtract the bias to get an unbiased estimator...
- nostrademons 13y ago
  Ad hominem alert! FWIW, much as I get annoyed by Michael's constant negative comments about Google (experiences which are fairly foreign to my own experience there), they are still his experiences. Take them with a grain of salt, but take everyone's experiences from the Internet with a grain of salt. Also FWIW, I have a number of friends who are generally shiny happy people who were basically ground down into dust in their Ph.D programs. They stayed for the whole time and not just the first year, but around year 4-6 even the most mentally stable and cheerful of them start saying things like "My life is miserable. I just want this to be over."
  - 13y ago

Xcelerate 13y ago

> Life-wise, graduate school is a pretty negative experience. I don't think grad school is like that for everyone. My undergrad had such a huge workload that I rarely had time for any kind of fun. Grad school so far is like the college that I didn't have, except I also get to work on research that's really exciting to me. I'm also kind of young for a grad student so I can hang out with undergrads just fine. It's a win-win.

kedean 13y ago
As a whole I think graduate school is a good thing, but moment to moment it's pretty negative, by my experience and the experience of all of my classmates. I just ended my first year of masters study, and I couldn't name one person I know within the program who didn't seriously debate dropping out numerous times over the first year. On the other hand, most of us have overall gained good experiences and knowledge, and I do not regret staying.

shardling 13y ago

Probably worth pointing out that this particular poster has an extremely negative view of many of their life experiences! (e.g., look for their comments about working for Google.)

michaelochurch 13y ago
Actually, my year of graduate school was pretty positive, as far as things go. No complaints. I did look ahead and realize that academia was not the best deal in the world. Also, you're a douche for bringing up irrelevancies like that.
- shardling 13y ago
  I think that, if someone asks for a level-headed analysis of grad school, it is totally worth pointing out that an anecdotal response is from someone that has highly charged and divisive opinions about many things, especially institutional culture! Also I'm pretty sure I've seen you say that you're proud of the fact that your perspective on life isn't typical -- so at least own that fact here.
- hyperbovine 13y ago
  Really? I find that to be entirely relevant. Subtract the bias to get an unbiased estimator...
nostrademons 13y ago
Ad hominem alert! FWIW, much as I get annoyed by Michael's constant negative comments about Google (experiences which are fairly foreign to my own experience there), they are still his experiences. Take them with a grain of salt, but take everyone's experiences from the Internet with a grain of salt. Also FWIW, I have a number of friends who are generally shiny happy people who were basically ground down into dust in their Ph.D programs. They stayed for the whole time and not just the first year, but around year 4-6 even the most mentally stable and cheerful of them start saying things like "My life is miserable. I just want this to be over."
- 13y ago