Good morning, Anons.
Operating on emergency-only standby.
Can volunteer to bake later this morning or this afternoon if need be.
Not as cold as expected this morning.
Always comfy cozy on the boards, regardless.
God bless, Anons.
I hope you all have a great day.
Ph.D. here.
Fuck academia.
For clarification, ask yourself the following:
Are you a super-genius? If yes, in what field?
Consider academia. You'll land a nice cushy job somewhere down the line having ideological numpty grad students writing your papers for you. Avoid the Chinese at all costs.
Are you somewhat smart and know what you want to do? Will that land you a job?
Consider academia, but hesitate. This is four years of your life that you're not getting back and will wind up paying five-six figures for if you're not disciplined or dedicated to your field.
You don't have a field or a subject you're unnaturally brilliant with? You're "undecided"?
Dump academia. It's simply not the place for you.
That's not calling you an idiot, that's saying that thousands of people just like you will through four-five years of ideological bullshit and foreigners pretending to speak English just to hand you your receipt/diploma and a bill for $100k that rotating between three Starbucks jobs won't pay off.
Hard fucking pass.
Sign on for a trade school. The world will always need electricians, plumbers, and mechanics.
If I could take it all back, I'd have jumped into the garage with my dad and immediately started learning how to fix cars.
Instead, I know way too much about the insidious bullshit surrounding climate science and I'm miserable.
A Ph.D. will only prove to the world that you were dumb enough to put up with "smart" people whose idea of an intelligent conversation means either ancient professors toeing the party line of what the dean expects of them, grad students pretending that they're old crotchety shitbags, or undergrads who dab unironically.
Academia is a cancer, so unless you're the cure, avoid it like the plague.
Good for them.
Honestly, kudos, I mean that, that is fantastic.
Takes a rare breed of person to treat academic study like an actual job.
Means you, as a parent, did a good job.
If the Anon in question is capable of landing those grants and working while studying, then by all means he should at least consider the commitment.
Otherwise, going in without much of a plan, no real commitment (doing it just because), or doing so solely because of external pressures is a bad idea, and that's the vibe I'm getting from Anon.