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"The thing about grad school is that everyone else is at least as special as you, and most of them are more so. They all had 4.0 GPAs, they all have gone throug
by timr 13y ago
"The thing about grad school is that everyone else is at least as special as you, and most of them are more so. They all had 4.0 GPAs, they all have gone through life in the same insulating cocoon of praise, they all really, really love history. Hell, some of them shoot rainbows out of their butts and smell like a pine forest after a spring rain--and they mostly aren't going to get jobs either."
Oh man, does this ring true. If I had a nickel for every snotty remark by an arrogant first-year grad student about how they're not going to have trouble finding a professorship, I think I'd have enhanced my earning power more than the actual degree. In academia, everyone is a unique snowflake.
If you ever interview for a PhD program, you may notice that the people at the recruiting party are all first or second year students. There are many reasons for this, but a big one is that there are very few students past the second year of a PhD program who are under any illusions about their specialness in the order of the academic world. These are not the people you want recruiting new grist for the research mill.
- pekk 13y ago> In academia, everyone is a unique snowflake. and in startups, everyone is a 10x ninja. Guess that's an invariant.
- Domenic_S 13y agoSame for corporate life. "But I'm super smart and work really hard!" Congrats, you're not fired.
- grecy 13y agoCongrats, you're not fired, today.
- wisty 13y agoYou know what happens to the programmers who aren't 10X ninjas? They get paid a good salary. Unless they are totally incompetent, and even then they don't all do too badly.
- fancyketchup 13y ago> If you ever interview for a PhD program, you may notice that the people at the recruiting party are all first or second year students. When I read this, it struck me that I had a very different experience. In my department, the SOP was to wine and dine both the recruits and the graduate students (free steak and all the booze you can drink in one night goes a long way when you're earning 20k/year). But the trick was that not everyone was invited, and, of course, it wasn't very hard to figure out that the best way to be invited back for another round was to forget to mention all things you didn't like about the university (and how long you'd been there).
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]