Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Anything to do with the traditional world of get a degree, get a job as well as its alternatives
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TheWanderingScholar
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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

@jacob: Yeah, that is what is going over in my mind. I don't feel like going up into upper level management of Environment GIS Analyst(reason I love to work just an analyst position), so a PhD would not work be all that useful for me unless I go into specialization of a region such as sub-saharan Africa or SE Asia.

@polaran: Most of my career paths I want to go into are quantitative, GIS, and the environment so a Master's degree is pretty essential it seems.

And by the why, I am looking at domestic graduate schools however there are a couple international universities I want to look at, mainly Canada and Netherlands. Any experience, with either? I am reusing this thread to keep the forums clean.

FBeyer
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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by FBeyer »

I needed an account of my PhD working style for my journal, but it relates to the discussion here so I've cross-linked the two:

viewtopic.php?p=116149#p116149

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TheWanderingScholar
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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

Thanks, Fbeyer.


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TheWanderingScholar
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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

@jennypenny:

Hey, thank! I was going actually look through this thread just yesterday, thinking about updating my current situation and future about doing a PhD.


Reading through the article, some of things written there seems to be faults and problems with US academic culture. Several points contrast with my experience here in Estonia:
Differences:
Funding:
My mind is rusty however, here the PhD student automatically get a PhD allowance when accepted to the program from August to September (i.e. year round) as long as maintain eligibility. Above minimum wage (Amazing Right! :lol: ) however as there is not tuition fee so I do not have to worry about living.

Little to No Career Guidance:
Yeaah....one of our professor's (before he passed away tragically the weekend after he gave this lecture), straight up told us that the academic career path is highly competitive, and when most of us were not planning to go into the PhD program, he did not really judge us. Hell, most of us chuckled when we saw none of us raise our hands for the academic position.

However another thing that I notice with this program and from other programs from my university; there is a large connection of the academic, private, and public sector, which is very strange in comparison. And I mean HIGHLY interwoven; maybe it is because Estonia is such a small society with very little "verticiality" to their hierarchy, if any, or maybe because the need for high cooperation between these various pillars of society to work together.

Anyways back to my point; the career guidance aspect is heavily interested. The professor's really push us to go study abroad, which a majority of us did except for this dumbass ;), our work placement is help us with our thesis, and see what career's work for us. Here there seems to be little nose up in the sky, ivory tower academia that seems to exist in the US. Which continues onto another point:

View of Non-Academic Career as Failure
Another aspect that does not exist, as while yes many of the academia does seem to be a focus, the various aspect to seems be a focus on more practical aspects.

Commonalities:
Uncertainty and Underpay
Yeah, I wish my scholarship was guaranteed for the entire program as it would be useful for my entire program. I wish had more than just 350 EUROS as it could make my life so much easier and less stressful. However at least I do not have to work while studying, at least not yet. Currently trying to apply for an Estonian Governmental Scholarship.

Workload
While I do not work 6 or 7 days a week, 10+ hours a day, it seems like a lot of my life revolves around university work. And during last and this semester, we seemed to have certain days in which we stayed at the computer lab until 20:00/21:00. Which thankfully has not happened as much as last semester, especially November *fuck* that month in-particular.

Social Life
Tartu is really fucking boring for college students. AND I HAVE A STATISTICAL PROOF THAT IT EXIST ACTUALLY! Seriously, the city/town becomes sleepy during the weekend, at least for college students.

But that is my perspective from a guy contemplating to do a PhD with a different perspective from what people usually do.

@ZAFCorrection:
Can I ask what country are you from? I am curious.

ZAFCorrection
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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by ZAFCorrection »

@TWS:

The United States. It is my understanding that things are bit more relaxed in Europe. But my experience has definitely been confirmed across multiple departments at my current and undergraduate institutions. I also have second-hand information that it is the same at most other universities in the US. I guess every once in awhile you end up with a relaxed PI who can also mentor students towards completion in a reasonable time frame, but that seems to be pretty rare.

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TheWanderingScholar
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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

@ZAFCorrection:

I see. Yeah, things in Estonia are much more relaxed than US from what I have heard. And Estonia is relatively rigorous in its homework requirements honestly. And it help I am in a geography department, from which it seems to have much more relaxed and "academic family" atmosphere than other groups.

So yeah honestly it might be a difference in academic culture between Europe and US. Of course, that being said PhD's aren't walk in the park by any means so not knocking of anyone's degree.

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Sclass
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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by Sclass »

My experience is a mix and match of what others have written here.

Like all things in this forum, it depends.

Here’s a crazy thought, find out who the co authors of your soon to be thesis adviser are, contact them and ask the same questions. Use the Internet, you’ll find the other senior grad students in your group. Ask them. A second idea, find out when the department has its beer social...the one the grad students go to, and just show up and start talking. You’ll get better answers there. Hitchhike there if you have to. You’re about to make a huge investment of your human capital...do some research.

Of course diving into the unknown is fun and can have some great long lasting consequences. So there is something to be said about going in blind and naive.

now it all looks like a silly game. It’s one of many paths a young person can take.

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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by jacob »

I've dealt with grad school in one field in three different countries. OTOH, I also know other grad-studs in other fields in other countries; very well. Whenever you specialize, your world gets real small, real fast!

My conclusion is that the grad school experience is defined by your field, your supervisor, the [institutional] culture, and your country---in that order(*). Research at the top level is extremely cosmopolitan. There are simply not enough people locally to avoid making research an international business. To wit, for each 1 person you can find within the 7.6B human population to do string theory research, you can prob. find 100+ people who can do random science; 1000+ who can do techmology, and 10,000 people who can do business-studies(**),

(*) So likely, the tougher the field, the stronger this effect is felt!

(**) Yeah, so I sound like an ass here. However, just because someone is harder doesn't mean that it's more useful or relevant.

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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by Jean »

After an egineering degree, i went to grad school, mostly because I couldn't find a job in the industr, but quited after 2.5 years
My subject was already solved, I found it very frustrating to get new approach published, and my supervisor was in an other university, 3 hours away, so I only saw her twice during my whole time there.
It resulted in me wanting to cut every public funding into academia, seeing how ineficient it was. My impression was that academia only existed to spend money, and that academics' only activity was to ask for money and go to conferences to get drunk. Nearly no one seemed to do actual research.
To give you an idea, for swiss citizen, I spent 427 days in military, and it didn't result in such a feeling. I only wanted to cut funding for vehicles.

ZAFCorrection
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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by ZAFCorrection »

@Sclass

Getting intel before joining is kind of hit or miss in my experience. I did all the things in terms of pumping the senior grad students for information and it was not particularly informative. Some weird code of silence. On the second run I was able to get accurate information from friends of friends.

For a newbie it is probably better to join a place that allows rotations in the first year. Another thing to keep in mind is if you join a new professor, they really need their first student to work out or there is a good chance they will run out of money and not get tenure*. So if they are smart the working conditions should be slightly more tolerable.

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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by jacob »

ZAFCorrection wrote:
Sat Apr 07, 2018 9:17 am
I did all the things in terms of pumping the senior grad students for information and it was not particularly informative. Some weird code of silence. On the second run I was able to get accurate information from friends of friends.
It's basically due to a conflict of interest. The senior grads or postdocs have nothing to gain from telling random strangers how they really feel beyond some kind of misguided moral altruism. After a couple of instances where I told prospects what to realistically expect from the gradschool/postdoc experience, I was taken off the tour.

The general rule in physics is to never go with an untenured professor. They'll work you like a dog because they need those precious four publications per year to get tenure. Some [smart] departments won't even allow untenured professors to supervise phd students. What can [easily] happen is that the professor gets a better offer elsewhere (like industry) and decides to quit leaving the grad students behind to find a new supervisor (and a new thesis). This happened to DW.

The best supervisors are IMHO associate professors. At this point they have established a solid research program with multiple collaborations and probably run a significant number of postdocs and other gradstudents. They might even have a research professor attached (which is gold!). Full professors have tons of connections (and grant money) but they rarely have much time for actual research being bogged down in administration. Assistant professors tend to be busy securing grant money, etc. and don't have that many people in the group yet. Thus Associates are the goldilock seniority.

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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by ZAFCorrection »

@Jacob

Ya, they will definitely work you like a dog, but they need reasonable papers to come out of the effort. One of the big failure modes I have seen in grad school is PIs, through busyness or favoritism, letting some of their students labor pointlessly for months and years. An assistant professor who wants to keep their job is going to fight against that happening. Though, you are right an assistant professor is a lot more likely to bail, or they might turn out to be a horrible manager of people (which I have seen).

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TheWanderingScholar
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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

Hey guys thanks for all the advice.

The weird thing about my situation is that possible PhD will be the same place as my Msc, which really puts me in a bind for a couple reasons:

1) I am going to have to deal with the same people for six years. Which really makes me kind of worried.
2)I really hate staying the same place for a long-time unless I have a valid reason. By the time I finish my Msc., it will be longest time I stayed in the same city since I left home. I can already feel my bones aching to move around and see somewhere new.

@jacob:

My main worry is that I am still trying to figure out who my possible PhD advisor will be so I can get a bead on how they will react.


Honestly, the way I am looking at my PhD is just glorified training and training of my abilities so I can put it on my resume.

And to be blunt, the only reason I am looking at my PhD is I am not sure about my chances about getting a job in the privates sector, even though I have basic knowledge and experience in R, Python, with me trying trying to add SQL to it next semester.

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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by jacob »

TheWanderingScholar wrote:
Sun Apr 08, 2018 12:08 pm
Honestly, the way I am looking at my PhD is just glorified training and training of my abilities so I can put it on my resume.
In that case, 4 years of relevant industry experience will make you more valuable [to employers] than three letters after your name. There are professors who hire MSc's for grad-student wages in return for a useless degree at the end. These graduates are called "glorified technicians"(*). Search the forums for more on that.

(*) They basically don't have the skills to do independent research and will never go anywhere in academia. If that was never the plan anyway, then they just wasted 4 years working for 1/2-1/3 wages compared to industry.

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TheWanderingScholar
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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

@jacob:

....Honestly thanks for the advice. I do have initiative and come up with ideas that I find interesting, however that being said.
  • I don't want to work 50 to 60 hours a week on some fucking project for shit pay.
  • I want to have time to actually visit friends.
  • I want actual money coming so I can off my student loans ands start saving money.
  • I don't want to stay connected to the same place for four years
To put it simply, I honestly going to focus on just getting a job a business analyst, work on whatever project I want on the side while I save up money. Because I really don't want to leave Europe, and with it my friends...

But if push comes to shove, I need to be willing to leave, don't I?

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TheWanderingScholar
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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

@Ponderosa:

Thanks for the response.

Yeah my response at the time seemed drastic because I was doing my work placement during the Spring semester equivalent of November, where shit hits the fan all at the same time, and stress levels increase. And did not help that both of group members were more or less MIA half the time, making my stress half of the fucking time. Seriously, whose great idea was that having 90% of the coursework being team work was great.

Thankfully the bullshit part is done, and the next bullshit part (writing down our plans for the Msc. Thesis, like timeline, the actual introduction, etc, which is due in about a month), is something I can manage and I am doing it solo so I don't have to ask everyone is everything is acceptable.

Basically everything was horse shit, and I was poor bastard who had to shovel it all with occasional help.


But yes my job prospects are not really terrible; I have several friends around the EU who work in the same field as me, so if I can't find something Estonia, I shall look at the other Baltic countries, if that does not work go Nordic, and if that...well you get the idea. But I feel fairly confident about my resume at this point, as I am aiming at trying to get some contract work done next semester for extra money and

And I am working on my speaking skills, preparing a presentation that about a niche topic in my studies, which I will try to present at two possible conferences or public speaking events.

For my PhD, if I do it, I am going back to my roots with physical geography and focusing on biogas and biomaterial production policy and infrastructure, looking at what possibly technologies could be used to have a more internalized energy production in the Baltic States, and possibly Eastern Europe.

I have brought it up with a couple professors, and they said that the Uni has a policy of adding another 400 EUROs on top of the increase of the PhD students pay bump nationwide, bringing up my potential income to 1,00,0 which is near the national average. Not only that but I don't have to do a dissertation; just publish three papers and a capstone project about your topics which you will defend and that is that.

So while not easy (obviously, as I still need to do research and teach courses and work in research groups), it is not a dissertation level of shittery.

And considering I get to leave a year during the program, I am going to take that opportunity and role with it, probably to someplace warm like Italy where they also do work on small scale biogas.

So yeah, my mental state is much better now that I got the gorilla off my back.

:)

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Re: Graduate School: Lifestyle and Hours?

Post by dropoutretire »

I would dropout !!!!! Its far easier and far more cost effective !!!! Its more important to beat inflation.

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