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
Posts: 650
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 12:04 am

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
Posts: 650
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 12:04 am

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.

:)

dropoutretire
Posts: 74
Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2017 11:11 am
Location: Portland Oregon
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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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