Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with PhD

Yet another "Should I stay in grad school?" question...

apricot — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 11:04:01 -0800

...but this time there is a newborn baby! This fall I will begin my 5th year in an English PhD program. I have been ambivalent about staying in my program pretty much since the first year, but have always come down on the side of staying in, even though I long ago decided I don't want to even try to become an English professor. Three weeks ago my husband and I had a baby, and that is making me less confident I want to continue. I need some help sorting this out. My husband thinks it's just two or three more years, and that's a small amount of time to invest and have a PhD forever. I'm not convinced a PhD would help me get a job, and am unsure that I have the fortitude to write a dissertation. I have been reading for my exams and trying to draft a prospectus, but I feel like I don't have any good ideas, or at least not any that can be sustained through a dissertation.

I did earn my Masters along the way, so I at least have that. I plan on doing my exams in the fall and will then be ABD.

The good things about staying in are we have excellent health insurance that covers the whole family for very little money, the schedule is flexible which will help with the baby, I make just enough money for us to live on without incurring any debt, and I have two to three more years of funding left. We also really like the area we live in.

The bad things about staying are my husband, the MFA in poetry (I know, I know), is not currently employed and having trouble finding work in our college town (and is depressed about not finding work, making it harder), our families live across the country from us and my mom can't afford to visit, my dad has physical and financial problems too lengthy to list here so he can't visit either and is also a source of stress, and I am pretty much just sick of being a 34 year old woman living in a crappy apartment, driving a 15 year old car, making less than $20k a year, seeing our families for a week once a year, and relying on my in-laws to pay for our plane tickets to visit them. My husband is a little more complacent and less ambitious and isn't so bothered by our situation. (That is, perhaps, a whole other question.) He is on unemployment, which will last a few more months. He was working as an adjunct when I got pregnant, but was not hired on again for the spring semester.

Part of the problem is I'm not sure what I would do after leaving, or where we would go. Our families live in California, if that matters. Before going back to school I worked in admin and bookkeeping positions for about 7 years, so I have those skills and history to fall back on. I have some teaching experience, but most of my work in grad school has been as an editorial assistant for a journal. I would really like to work in a humanities institute, for a press, or some other "academic adjacent" field but am not certain about that. I do plan on going to my university's career services office later in the summer.

Finally, the questions: For those of you who have written humanities dissertations, will I be able to write one in two years? Even if I feel like a terrible writer with no ideas? I have one seminar paper I can use, but the rest would be from scratch. We are committed to staying for this next academic year, so does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do during this time to make myself more marketable if I do leave? Or ideas about what kinds of jobs I could go for? Since I'm staying for this next year, should we just stay one more year beyond that so I can finish? Another option is to leave ABD, which would allow me to finish eventually. This is what I'm leaning toward right now. What do I dooooooooo??? Can anyone think of aspects I haven't considered?

Post grad student resources - what do y'all need?

b33j — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 21:34:51 -0800

Provided those needs are cheap, and can be provided on a website run by your Faculty. I've seen this question but it's 5 years on now, and I have the fun opportunity to put together a collection of resources for Higher Degree Research Students. Some of the things the academic in charge has requested include link about academic writing, submitting to journals, creating and delivering effective presentations and ways for students to connect who won't tend meet other students in classes or across the campuses.

Other suggestions include one liners from academics - most common mistake (or mistakes I made) during PhD process, short videos of other students, just getting their experiences, ideas, feelings; a wiki of how to stuff. And useful contacts within faculty, process of PhD application etc, ethics info, uni support available (including IT, library, NESB, desk space) and so on.

One of the things I'm concerned about is there being too much information, or the information being too dense and inaccessible - students have enough to do without wading through heaps of stuff to find what they need. If there are other things you hate about resource pages, let me know.

If you have excellent links to websites for post graduate students, that would also be awesome (please include a short phrase explaining why you've included it).

If it really matters, the area of research is Education (as in pre-school, primary, middle school, high school, learning difficulties, all curriculum areas, etc).

New baby + diss defense, can this math work?

Anonymous — Tue, 28 May 2013 10:09:53 -0800

Wrapping up a pregnancy and a dissertation at the same time. Given the inherent badness of this idea, when is the least ill-advised time to schedule my defense? My second child is due in a few months… which is also about the time when, in the organic flow of things, I would finish writing and revising my (humanities) dissertation. I know that the ideal would be to defend before I give birth; but the norm of my program is to submit the completed dissertation ~1month before the defense date. That means, if I allow a minimal three-week safety buffer before the due-date (and defending at 37 weeks is still cutting things awfully close), that still I’d be trying to crunch so as to finish writing a full 7 weeks ahead of schedule. This option is not absolutely unthinkable, but at this point it falls in the “Nearly Suicidally Impossible” range, particularly with job-market stuff to accomplish as well.

So: the other option is to submit the diss just before the birth of the baby, and to plan on defending soon afterwards. My question for the more experienced, then: just how soon might this be psychologically feasible? I would think 4 weeks post-baby should be the minimum: every week thereafter would make me (with luck) more stable and marginally less sleep-deprived, but also farther from the actual work I’ve done on the dissertation, and thus less capable of defending it. The past defenses I’ve been to didn’t seem overly grueling; but then, of course, I wasn’t the one defending. It’s also been long enough since my first kid that I’ve largely blocked out the stresses of the first months, so I don’t have a great sense of how much of a basketcase I’ll be, and for how long.

Other possible considerations:
--It’s a very good grad program. Thus, while I know the defense is supposed to be a formality, I am fairly anxious about what might happen if I defend poorly. On the other hand, I am also extremely anxious about what might happen if I half-ass the final stages of the dissertation in an effort to make an early defense happen pre-baby.

--I will be primary caretaker for both kids after the birth, but I do have a partner with a flexible 4-day-a-week schedule, plus some family help nearby. So I’m not immediately concerned about getting enough rest the night before the defense or finding someone to watch the baby the day of, etc.

My advisors (while wonderful) are all single, childless men. I haven’t announced the pregnancy yet, and I already feel othered enough having to walk in all bloated and talk to them about birthin’ babies, so I expect only very limited opportunities for useful dialogue and advice from them about this timing. I suspect my best political bet is probably going to be to figure out an acceptable schedule on my own, then propose it as something I can confidently make happen, reproductive considerations be damned. How should I go about thinking through this timing? And does anyone have advice on other important factors I might be missing?

tech recruiter for a phd?

zeek321 — Tue, 28 May 2013 07:49:37 -0800

I'm lacking direction in my job hunt. Can you recommend a specific tech recruiter? I know it's supposedly a bad idea to work with a recruiter for all sorts of reasons, but, like I said, I'm lacking direction. I have a non-CS PhD and none of the hot programming languages on my resume. But I've got a computer engineering background, some impressive C++ in my github account, and past industry software experience. And I've been coding my entire PhD (mostly in Matlab ). If an employer had some patience, I could easily become productive in a machine learning or data scientist role, but I'm not sure of an efficient way to demonstrate or communicate this to employers.

Have you had excellent or acceptable experiences with a specific tech recruiter?

How can I get my advisor to set my date?

permiechickie — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:10:17 -0800

Not sure what to say to my M.S. thesis adviser (formerly my Ph.D advisor) or prospective interviewers on when I can leave academia and start a real job. Background: I've been very unhappy in an engineering Ph.D program for almost 3 years now due to a hands-off advisor, bad projects and little-to-no funding for experiments. I fantasized about leaving for years, and this January I finally told my advisor that I wanted to quit. We didn't set an end-date, but agreed that I would be out by the end of my fellowship on July 20th, because the money was already coming to me.

In the past few months my primary advisor (and my co-advisor) have been pushing me to finish my main project and publish a paper, but it's slow-going. I am trying harder than I was when I was miserable in the Ph.D, but it's still just as horrible a project as it was when I was a Ph.D student, and I'm currently stalled with some modeling code that hasn't been working. It's my understanding though, that the bar for getting a Masters isn't as high as a Ph.D and doesn't necessarily require a publication. The girl in my lab a year above me hasn't published a paper yet (because all of her experiments have failed, just as mine did before I started working on modeling) and the person a year above her didn't publish anything until his 5th year of grad school, right before he graduated. It's a terrible lab.

My current situation:

I've been applying for jobs since I told my advisor in January, and got burned on one job where they told me explicitly that they wanted to hire me, but they needed someone that could start immediately and not a few months from now. I recently got a callback for an in-person interview (one of 3 candidates) for a job that I absolutely love and would be great at. The supervisor hiring for the position wants the person to start working by mid-July at latest. In a short phone interview I had with her, I told her the gist of my situation e.g. that I hadn't set a date yet, was shooting for around July 20th, but that my advisor was reasonable and it possibly could be pushed up. The problem is that I may have miscalculated on the reasonability of my advisor, as she won't let me set a defense date.

I told my advisor about this job opportunity that I'm up for, and she expressed that she was happy for me, but when I asked her if I could defend my thesis at the beginning of July, leaving a couple weeks for revisions, she was reticent. I told her that I wanted to set a date so that I could have something to tell the company if I got another interview, and she said that if they wanted to hire me, they wouldn't care about a couple weeks. She ended the conversation without actually setting a date with me and I haven't been able to get a meeting with her since because she constantly cancels (like always).

tl;dr

I'm worried about a couple things: 1) that MAYBE she is planning to not grant me a Masters if I don't publish a paper (this doesn't seem likely since she's never said anything to this effect, but if I really can't publish the paper I have no idea) and 2) that my lack of a true defense date will hurt me with respect to this specific jobs or other jobs.

What I'm asking are these two questions:

1) if you left a Ph.D with a Masters, what were your accomplishments? Had you published a paper? I know it's different from person to person and dept to dept, but I'm interested in this generally.
2) What kinds of things can I say to my advisor (who has a very strong personality and constantly steam-rolls over my opinions) about having a defense date by the time my funding runs out? What can I say to my prospective interviewers about my situation being slightly different from what I thought it was?

another PhD drop out thread

Anonymous — Sun, 12 May 2013 09:02:05 -0800

Considering dropping out of 1st year humanities PhD program. Terrified of starving on the streets. Help? I looked through other threads on this topic, which have been helpful and reassuring, but I'm really freaking out over my specific situation and I could use hearing some feedback about it. I'd really appreciate any words of advice or encouragement or personal anecdotes or whatever else you can offer.

I'm a first year humanities graduate student in a top program, fully funded. I've been having an incredibly difficult time with all the usual stuff: anxiety, isolation, self doubt, indifferent faculty, bad departmental vibes and ironically, given the heavy work load, a sense of extremely under-stimulation (sitting in front of a computer for 12+ hours makes me feel dead). And of course the tenure-track job market is horrible and as I now realize, not something I want to spend 8 years working toward at all. Due to these factors, I quickly started losing interest in the academic life and even the field itself. I've lost all motivation and this has really impacted my work. I'm finding myself missing lots of deadlines as the end of the semester approaches. Right now I can't even imagine myself making through the next few weeks and I already have some extensions from classes I couldn't finish last semester. I keep wishing I could get into a minor accident and break my arm or something just so I could get out of doing this work, which feels unbearable.

It sounds like I should quit ASAP right? Well, I want to and I don't think I'll have major regrets, but I'm terrified for my future prospects. I'm 26 and have never had a 'real job'. I've faced long periods of unemployment for circumstantial reasons and when I did get work, I only did periodic childcare/research assistance gigs. I have a humanities BA that took longer than 4 years to complete--I don't have any stats or maths or science background, although in the past I've taught myself to to use a number of design/editing programs at a level slightly above amateur, haha. Right now my self esteem is crap so I just feel like the dumbest, laziest person in the world and I can't imagine why anyone would ever hire me to do anything.

Despite constantly feeling horrible about myself, I know I'm not entirely useless. I can be smart and I do have a number of strengths (if no actual skills), even if academia is draining those qualities out of me right now. But how do I convince other people of this when my history looks so suspicious? I've invested so much time and energy building toward becoming an academic and now, barely a year into grad school, I'm failing hard at it and itching to quit. How do I explain this? These concerns make the decision about dropping out really difficult. I mean, if I could somehow survive next year, getting a terminal MA could help make up for some of my existing weaknesses right? Even if a humanities MA isn't that valuable, at least I could avoid adding one more gap to my resume and having the name of a fairly prestigious school on there probably helps in some way.

I also have some undergrad debt so I'm just completely stressed out about being unemployed and broke, and it also makes me apprehensive about taking on more debt for more school. What do you think? Should I try my best to get the MA, even if it feels almost impossible? Would it even help that much? Am I screwed for life?

Rebuilding shattered self-confidence after grad school?

zeek321 — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:12:12 -0800

So, now I've got a PhD. But I'm crippled by zero self-confidence as I start applying to industry jobs. Did you rebuild your self-confidence after a PhD? My PhD was five years of "failure," of nothing working right, of having no idea what I was doing, of feeling incredibly stupid, a grueling marathon of slow-burning anxiety and impostor syndrome, culminating in three quick successes (dissertation chapters) and a successful defense. Now I've got a few months before my funding runs out, and I'm trying to turn my mess of a dissertation into a couple publication-quality papers. And it's like those first five years all over again.

I did take a break for a few weeks. And I've only been picking apart my dissertation for a few days. But, I feel like nothing's really changed in that I have zero self-confidence in my capacity to function in the real world, I think because I've delivered so few "complete and done" things in five years. My success' have been little blips in half a decade of "failure."

Anyway, I realize this is just a feeling and not reality, it's barely even a "belief." I satisfied my committee, I'm really smart or something, etc., etc., etc. Probably lots of grad students feel this way, and then they get out into the world and input from reality re-teaches them that they actually are perfectly functional in a much-faster-moving work world of daily, weekly, and monthly deliverables.

But I don't *feel* like I'll be successful in the working world. I compare myself to the published grad students in my lab. I feel like I'll sit down and something that needs to be done in a day or a couple weeks will seem impossible to me, just like my research was "impossible" and took years--which I don't have in the workplace. And it'll be really stressful, and it'll prove I'm as thick and useless as I feel, and I'll get fired and stuff.

I'm in a great relationship, I've got friends, I've got passionate hobbies (that don't involve "deliverables"), and I can talk about this stuff openly. So I don't really think I'm globally depressed. And, I *realize* this is irrational, so I'm not too keen on doing CBT or something. But it is distressing. And it's making it hard to network and submit resumes as systematically as I'd like to be doing. (But I am doing it, in fits and starts.)

And, I've tried doing some little projects. I learned the fundamentals of JavaScript (my PhD was programming-heavy) and put a little interactive demo on the web, all in a few hours. But my relief in being able to learn something quickly and deliver was short-lived.

So, my question is, was your confidence completely, irrationally shattered by your graduate program? How did you rebuild it or how did it get rebuilt?

Big life changes and feeling unsettled

brambory — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:49:56 -0800

Do I need professional help or just time? I've been feeling anxious and stressed for the past three months, and I'm having a hard time parsing if this is due to this being an exceptionally...erm...challenging point in my life or if some sort of anxiety or depression has settled on me. In short, in the past 3 months I've: redecorated and put our house on the market, moved overseas, started living with my in-laws, submitted my PhD, possibly bought a house here (dependent on the bank finally sending the money), and started a short-term consultancy position. Midway through all of this, my husband developed a quite serious infection and spent a week in the hospital (although he's better now). Currently, we're living in my in-law's house, and it's generally going ok, although it's been a bit of a shock to go from living in our 3-bed house to having just one bedroom in a house that's not ours. Oh, and we also have a 1 year old son. (And two cats, though they require considerably less work).

For the past few months, I've felt run down and struggled to be my 'normal' self. I feel like crying often, and would love to sleep and do....something, though I'm not sure what. I feel lonely and like my reserves are all gone. I'm having a hard time feeling any enthusiasm for the future. Since the PhD has been submitted, I've had some time to do relaxing things (dinner with Mr. Brambory, a morning of sketching, some sewing), but the feelings haven't really lifted. Part of me is excited to start this new phase in life, but it's fighting against a much larger beast of concerns, worries, and exhaustion.

I've been putting this down to the all-nighters I put in to finish my PhD, the stress of moving, and everything else listed above, but I also have a history of mild anxiety and depression (though only partially dealt with professionally). Also, I've had a week since my PhD was submitted and a very nice morning on Sunday all to myself, but still this unwanted cloud is here.

So, how much of this is a normal reaction and how much of this screams, 'find a doctor'?

Recommend me an app to organise my PDFs.

FuckingAwesome — Wed, 01 May 2013 07:48:37 -0800

I'm a PhD student and a typical day involves downloading and reading through lots of journal articles and eBooks. I store these locally on a MacBook. I am looking for something akin to the native Finder app, but which offers separate columns for "Author", "Title", "Year" and so on, as well as tags (very important). I have dabbled with Papers2 and Endnote, and a couple of "Finder"alternatives, but these either (A) duplicate the PDF files and save them elsewhere, or (B) don't offer the author/title/year etc. columns. Is there anything that will do what I'm looking for?

PhD thesis woes - what do I tell my supervisor?

Anonymous — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 10:37:24 -0800

I am in the final year of my PhD. I suffered from many months of depression and an inability to get my writing done in a timely fashion. I am now playing catch-up. I have a telephone appointment with my supervisor next week, and wonder if and how I should disclose the difficulty I faced, and am still facing. I don't want to burden her with my personal issues. How do I, or should I, discuss this? How do I regain her faith in me? I am currently in the 4th year of my PhD in the humanities (at a British institution), and am about a chapter and a half away from completing a first draft of my dissertation (I still have to write the intro and conclusion, as well). I plan to submit in November. I moved back to my native country two years ago, as I was hemorrhaging money in the U.K., and moving home was a means to save money as I write the dissertation. My supervisor was supportive. My issue is that I suffered from (undiagnosed because I cannot afford therapy) depression for about 8 months after an awful breakup and general dissatisfaction with my chosen topic and career path. I could not work. I don't know how to explain what I felt or thought, other than I felt like it was impossible, that I had no clue what I was doing, and that I was a complete failure. I would try, to no avail. Months and months went by, and the anxiety grew and grew, and I could not face up to my project. I could barely even open the files on my desktop. I felt nauseous and anxious and so very overwhelmed. In many ways, I still do.

After the holidays, my supervisor got in touch with me as she was worried about my progress. She mentioned how important it was to stay on track and not get behind. Something snapped inside of me, and after much crying and the crushing realization of the situation I have put myself in, I made a promise to myself to right this wrong.

I now feel as if I've woken up from a long, sad nap. I have been getting up early every morning, and making it a point to write 500-1000 words a day. I am looking out for conferences, fellowships, post-docs. I feel re-engaged. But the guilt of my prior laziness haunts me. I feel so overwhelmed, I feel as if I wasted so much time, that I am lazy and incapable of completing this project. I am currently in a lot of debt from undergrad-Phd, and I think about this constantly. It keeps my up at night. I sometimes feel as if I have ruined my life, with debt and potentially no job prospects. I have yet to publish, and this worries me so much. I cannot fall asleep at night without a distraction, my anxiety levels sky-rocket at night.

I have a telephone appointment with my supervisor next week to discuss the work I have recently submitted to her. Though we've been in frequent touch via email, this will be the first time I have spoken to her in months. I don't want her to think I am difficult to work with, or incapable of finishing this project, or a burden. I worry, or strongly suspect, that she already feels this way. How do I convey the trouble I went through to her? Do I even bring it up? I know apologizing is not the correct tactic, after all I am (for the most part) only hurting myself, and my career. I'm not quite sure if I should even bring up the trouble I went through in the summer and fall. Won't it just sound like making excuses? And if I don't bring it up, will she not wonder what my problem is? I worry she has already lost faith in me, and rightly so.

*I am looking into counseling to deal with my anxiety and possible lingering depression. I know my supervisor cannot help me with these issues. I'm just unsure how much I should disclose about how this has affected my work. I know I should have brought this up, dealt with it sooner. I wish I had, and that is part of the issue, part of the guilt and anxiety I now feel.*

Two more points to mention 1) She has been very kind about my writing (and slow progress) and writes things such as "I'm sorry you're having trouble with your writing," "Please let me know if you are stuck and need help." Furthermore, on the work I have sent her, she has exclaimed "This is fascinating!" "Very well written," "Reads like a book," etc. etc., in addition to constructive criticism and additional questions. However, I feel as if these exclamations aren't true; that she is just anxious for me to finish this thing up already and so is simply trying to push me along so she doesn't have to work with me anymore.

2) I have been working part-time with a non-profit as a consultant for the entire duration of my studies. This has of course delayed my writing. Because this was not academic work, my supervisor hasn't said much, or did not appear supportive when I mentioned working for them for a few months one summer in order to make ends meet. And so, I have not brought it up since, even though it often does explain why I have not progressed as far as I would have liked at this point. I know that it is not as if I have nothing to show for, in regard to my time spent as a phd student. I have won a number of national fellowships, as well as two fellowships at research institutions in foreign countries. My supervisor is always very supportive in writing letters for me. I know my c.v. is not abominable.

TL;DR-- Should I tell my supervisor about the depression and anxiety I've been dealing with that has dramatically halted progress on my thesis? The writing is flowing now, but I don't know how to explain the slow progress. How do I (or should I) talk to her about how I messed things up? And if so, *what do I say?*

So very thankful for any input.

Finished PhD; informally meeting with a prof in a different field?

zeek321 — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:29:29 -0800

Just got a PhD, don't have a new position lined up, meeting a prof, no obvious goal for conversation, have questions. I have just finished an engineering PhD, and I'm going to be with my lab for a few more months to submit some papers from my diss. (I have no publications, yet.)

Since forever, I've been interested in "X" and "Y" though I didn't know that's what they were called. While following my interests wherever they led, I came across a prof at a nearby institution who studies these things, and she has agreed to meet with me to chat.

I'm trying to figure out how to get the most out of this interaction. At minimum, I'm hoping I can tell her a little bit about my interests and get recommendations for interesting stuff to read that I didn't already see from reading her publications. At maximum, I would like a mentor who would hire me as a postdoc and help me become competitive for a tenure track position.

As for the minimum, this is a highly productive full professor, and I am an amateur, armchair enthusiast, and I'm concerned about wasting her time.

As for the maximum, it doesn't seem like this is likely to be in the cards. She doesn't seem to have a major grant based on my searching the NSF and NIH databases, though I think she's funded through various private institutions. And, she's not advertising for a postdoc or anything.

But, between those two extremes, I'm wondering if there might be an opportunity for me. She and her collaborators do a lot of combined research and outreach in the community, and it seems like there might be ways they could use extra manpower for analysis, statistics, and writing. But, I have to be thinking about a career track that's somewhat commensurate with my educational investment, at least in end-game. So I don't know if I should even pursue this if there's something available.

My advisor is nudging me towards research scientist positions and industry, but I want to make sure I explore some non-obvious and serendipitous stuff, too.

So, I guess my question is:

Were you a newly-minted PhD, and you didn't know what you wanted to do next? And you were clearly not ready for a tenure track position, if ever, and were sort of blah about a wide range of obvious jobs and careers? But, you were self starter with lots of eclectic interests--and you managed to create a career out of nothing, based on conversations with kind but ultimately indifferent people in positions of power?

How did you do this? What happened?

I'm reading through her recent publications and trying to figure out where she's heading next. And I'm thinking about how to frame my diss work in a way that would be attractive to her goals. And I'm preparing to ask lots of questions about what she and her collaborators are doing. I'll have my diss defense talk ready to go in the slight chance she wants to hear about it.

Anyway, I'm going to treat this like an informational interview while simultaneously portraying myself positively.

Am I missing anything in how I should think about this and how I should prepare? This is definitely going to be a shot in the dark. I'd like to have fun but be respectful and make the most of it.

PhD dropout

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:13:54 -0800

I'm dropping out of a PhD program in a social science with only a masters degree. I need a real job. I am in a top 15 PhD program in my field. I was an average/mediocre grad student by that standard - I did complete a publishable first project, but had a very hands off advisor and I figured out how to do the work too late to stay on track to finish in a reasonable time with my sanity intact. I didn't fit into the academic culture and have no desire to be a professor anymore. I'm taking the masters and leaving at the end of this summer.

I am trying to figure out what jobs I will be qualified for. My degree does not come with a skill set that is directly applicable in industry, but I have sub-PhD level skill in research and statistical analysis. I am open to pretty much any job where I can use some of those skills. I do not want to go back to academic research unless it's in a very different role. I would entertain almost any other idea at this point. Yes, I am asking my university career center and those few people in my department who still want to help, but at this point my only firm criteria are the following:

1) pays $25K a year or more
2) does not require much additional training; I've had enough of school, but I would take additional classes this summer or get some kind of certification if necessary, but no more grad school for now
3) does not require a special skill set other than research, writing, and statistical analysis. I don't know any programming languages well enough to use them on the job right now, but grad school involved constant technical self-teaching as needed.
4) I don't want to teach my subject at the high school or community college level

I would like to leverage the additional degree for whatever it's worth, but it doesn't seem to have any obvious value since it is not a practical professional degree, and it looks like I'm going to be competing for entry level jobs with a crop of 22 year olds with fresh bachelor's degrees. Is this correct? What can I do? phd.dropout.2013@gmail.com

What programming language should I learn in order to freelance?

MisantropicPainforest — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:51:50 -0800

This Fall I will be starting a PhD in the social sciences. Because of my research interests/subfield, I will have to know the ins and outs of statistical software like R, Stata, and SAS. Can this knowledge enable me to freelance for some supplemental income or should I being learning another programming language? I already have a MA and know a required real-life language, so I won't have too much coursework or requirements other than my comprehensive examinations. I also won't have to travel too frequently for my research. Freelance part-time programming will pay better than adjuncting during the dissertation research phase, and makes me more employable if and when I have trouble finding a postdoc or a tenure track job.

So, can I make some freelancing with my SAS, R, or Stata knowledge or should I try and pick up another language like Python or Java?

Also, I may defer my admission for a year, so I may have plenty of time before school starts to get my skills in gear.

I have no programming experience other than dabbling in high school and college.

Day in The Life of a professor or research scientist

marsbar77 — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 07:11:40 -0800

I'm wondering if anyone can shed some light on the daily experience of a university researcher in either psychology or the basic sciences as well as a meta-review of the job as a whole. Specifically:
What was the path to employment like for you?
What skills- both practical and interpersonal- would you say are important to doing your job well? What factors contribute to your success?
What are some challenges or drawbacks of life as a PA? ( Please be specific if at all possible)
What opportunities would you say there are for growth/advancement?
These are just general guidelines. Feel free to ( and in fact I would ask you to) to speak to your individual experience and add whatever two cents you may have. This started as an assignment, yes, but I'm also genuinely interested in making an informed decision about my future. Thanks everyone!

Online Work Tracking Solutions for PhD student writing buddies?

zresearch — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 10:55:55 -0800

There seems to be huge number of online work/project tracking/logging programs out there, but they are mostly designed for small businesses and freelancers (e.g. focussed on invoicing) and charge by the month. I've seen a few that look OK like Toggl and Slimtimer but none that seems ideal for my needs yet. Can anyone recommend ones (ideally free and with the ability to track different tasks & share that tracking/logging) that are easy to use, have decent functionality, and would be good for 2 friends working on writing their PhD theses and would like to try and help each other keep track of how much work they're doing? We've already tried using a simple shared spreadheet on Google Docs - we're looking for something with a bit more functionality!

Thanks for any tips!

Looking out from the ivory tower

corn_bread — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:46:23 -0800

I am a 5th year PhD student in Pharmacology. In two years or less I (universe willing) will graduate, with a good handful of first author papers. I also have an MS in biochemistry and two years of lab manager/technician experience in a university setting. I want to know (exactly) what jobs are available to me post graduation that meet the following requirements: 1.) 45 hours a week or less; 2.) 65k a year or more; 3) health benefits and reasonable vacation time. Please respond with as much detail as possible.

Economics Grad school?

Geppp — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:03:27 -0800

What are my chances of getting into a decent economics grad program with a math degree with a "meh" GPA (3.2ish), a law degree with a pretty good GPA (3.7+), and a high GRE quantitative score (790)? Also, how much does the prestige (rank) of grad program matter in the economics field? I've decided that I want to get a PhD in economics after I complete law school (I don't want to be a lawyer, just an economist and an academic). Here are my credentials:

1. If all goes well, I should graduate law school next spring with a pretty decent GPA of at least 3.7. The school itself is not the best, though (ranked in the 50s).

2. I graduated college with a degree math in 2010, but my overall GPA was not terribly great, hovering a little over 3.2. My math grades varied depending on what classes I took, with A's linear algebra, all the calcs, and real analysis, but with B's/C's in the more theoretical classes, like combinatorics and set theory (I was a little out of my league there).

3. Prior to graduating college, I took the GRE and got a 790/560 quantitative/verbal. I sort of want to retake the GRE to get that perfect quantitative score, and probably significantly up my verbal as well.

4. While I technically don't have any formal economics background, I figure my understanding of economics is at least as good as your average college economics graduate (I spend 90% of my free time studying economics at this point).

With the above (especially my middling GPA), I feel that I'm probably out of the running for the top of the top of grad schools (your Chicagos, Harvards, and Yales). But what are my chances of getting into a less awesome, but still probably pretty good program (top 25, the Johns Hopkins and Dukes maybe?). Also, if my ultimate goal is to be an academic, how important is school prestige? Is it worth it to get a PhD from a 2nd-tier, or even lower ranked, school? Any other insights and personal experiences are also greatly appreciated

PhD that keeps on giving

carolinaherrera — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 10:54:27 -0800

Did you do a PhD that you are proud of? That you loved working on? That has helped you in your career going forward? How did you get there?

I've decided to finish my PhD. I've been stumbling around on topics, and not sure what kind of topic would be best. I know that I don't want to stay in my field (of social science), but I'm going to get the credential and then move onto something else.

If you were happy with your PhD, how did you choose your topic? Why was it a good fit? Why are you proud of it now? How has your topic helped you going forward?

Advice, from people at all stages (during PhD, post-doc, faculty, PhD and in industry, PhD and unrelated field, etc.) would be much appreciated.

Tips for staying motivated in Grad School

Archibald Edmund Binns — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 08:42:22 -0800

Two years into a Ph.D. program in the biological science (in the US) and I am in a lab doing research. The lab I'm in takes a hand-off approach to our research, so much of the motivation to do projects must come from me. Unfortunately I'm the kind of person who needs deadlines and strong guidance, and without these two things I've begun to drift a little. Any tips for keeping my eyes on the prize and staying immersed in my field? I've tried instituting 'do nothing but read literature Friday' and 'new experiment Monday' but I quickly revert to doing the bare minimum. I care about what I'm doing, but if I'm not working hard on something I start to care less about it. I don't want to be here for seven years! My PI is supportive and relatively easy to get a hold of, but he's also very busy with other things.

Is there a good way to list an ABD instead of a PhD on a resume?

lostguy — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:36:09 -0800

About a decade ago, I had a quarter-life crisis and decided to drop out of grad school in science... how do I deal with that now? I went to an Ivy League university and then a very prestigious grad school for chemistry. I spent about 3 years earnestly working towards a PhD, but the work seemed to become unrewarding and my prospects in academia looked bleak (I hit that 3rd year wall... really hard). I was mentoring an undergrad who was applying for grad schools and he came to me one day with a letter of recommendation from our PI -- and it was not glowing. It was actually the opposite of glowing. I was shocked. (This undergrad had gotten a "backup" letter of recommendation from another professor and used that one... but wanted to let me know what my own advisor thought of our work together.)

That was the data point in my mind that made me think that I really needed to quit and do something else. (Other grad students in this lab had quit before me, and I heard I wasn't the last one to quit after I left, either.)

So I've been at a couple of jobs now, but I haven't really built a "career" in my mind. I may still be stuck in a mindset that I don't have any credentials to show that I'm a PhD-level employee. I don't really regret my somewhat rash decision to quit a PhD program (and I quit it totally, without getting the consolation master's degree). But I've take jobs so far, where I haven't needed to really demonstrate an advanced degree. And now I think it's time to try to move forward a bit more career-wise.

I don't want to go back to school for anything. I just want to start exploring my employment options more, but I still haven't sorted out how to explain this non-PhD on a resume. Do I leave it off entirely? It's only 3 years of a PhD, after all. Is a 3 year gap right after college a no-no? Or do I leave it on my resume (and even list the publication that actually has my name on it, even though I didn't finish that work...)? How do I really explain the quitting to an interviewer in a way that doesn't sound like I'm blaming my advisor or that I'm prone to making rash decisions? (I wouldn't even call it a rash decision because I really did actively decide to quit my PhD program for the sake of my best emotional well-being at the time.)

Hive-mind, let me know if there's a way to sweep this under the rug now that it's a decade old... or help me figure out a way to explain my situation that.. presents me in the most favorable way to someone who doesn't know me at all.

Thanks in advance.

P.hD. problems

munyeca — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:49:59 -0800

Everyone says "get out while you can!" RE: Ph.D.s in the humanities. But really, what else can I do? Difficulty level: somewhat debilitating emotional dysregulation & student debt. Snowflakes inside. I have a B.A. and an M.A. in English, both from great institutions. My oral exams are coming up in a few months. I hate what I am doing. Other skills? A tiny bit of experience at literary magazines, a good deal of administrative experience (now all in the distant past).

Reasons I haven't left: I have $40,000 in student debt that is happily in forbearance for my entire Ph.D. If I left, I would immediately need a (somewhat lucrative) job. I've already used the 6 months of "free" forbearance or whatever that is. I have enough in savings to live in my city for maybe one month.

I also have pretty poor job-having skills, insofar as my emotional dysregulation problems are intermittently pretty rough. (My symptoms haven't responded very well to any of the medicines I've tried with my very smart, wonderful psychiatrist, but we keep tweaking and tweaking. For the record, am in regular (CBT) therapy, have done a DBT skills workshop, do yoga and meditate, etc.). In short, there are many days when I feel too anxious/sad to get anything done. In grad school, this is sort of acceptable behavior! In real jobs, I don't think it is!

So, really, what am I even capable of doing?

tl;dr What does one do with limited practical skills, massive student debt, and little ability to show up for work, if work is somewhere you have to actually physically be?

How to get into academia later in life?

mary8nne — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 07:53:55 -0800

What possible avenues are there to get 'back' on an academic career path in your late 30s? Are there any unusual paths that I have not considered? Details / Context:
- Living in London UK (partner working in London).
- Bachelor degree (w/ hons) in Maths / Philosophy in Australia.
- Interested in pursuing Philosophy / Economic Theory / Political Theory
- Worked in mindless finance office job for 10 years.
- Currently unemployed /casually employed and spending days trying to 'catch-up' on some texts/theory at home.

Ideally... I'd manage to snag a PhD (w/ funding) at a Uni in London somehow and without having had to pay to do a Masters (which is expensive especially as a 'foreign student'). That would cover the next 3 -5 years.... after that...hmm.. well something will come up.

Or at least find some way of moving into a more theoretically interesting and thoughtful career. Income potential is not really that important. (ie Median wage would be adequate)

Research career post-PhD?

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 06:08:20 -0800

Defending and depositing my engineering dissertation by end of April. Strained relations with advisor and distant relations with committee. What next, and how? Please advise. A part of me wants to continue in research. I definitely don't want to do consulting, finance, or software development. (But I would do the latter two, if I have to. I did software for a couple years before grad school.)

I'll have a nice job talk by that time, but no publications. (My program and my advisor do not require publications for graduation.) My advisor is interested in keeping me around until August, to submit papers from my dissertation and to ensure transfer of knowledge to another couple students. My dissertation is a nice story, and is a real advance in its own little way, but it's nothing sexy or groundbreaking at all. (Think signal processing on bio data.)

My relationship with my advisor is non-sabotage-y but quite strained. Maybe it's passive-aggressive. Discussions have led to near-shouting from both of us, and we interact as little as possible. It's difficult for me know what would end up in a letter from him. Another couple of committee members have, in the last few months, have been supportive and really willing to meet regularly and dig into details of my work with me. My work got off to a realllllly halting and slow start. It's taken this long for things to coalesce significantly and interestingly. So I also have no idea what would go into letters from them, either.

Because of advisor issues, general lab non-structure, lack of data, lack of well-defined projects, and so forth, it was difficult for me to know whether I liked research. But, as the tiny p-values have started lining up, as the story started coming together, as a real dialogue with the literature began, and as testable hypotheses for future work began lining up, research has been stimulating to me in a way nothing else ever has. But the last four years have been hell, and I don't really want to continue on this line of inquiry. Well, I wouldn't mind for a few years as a transition, but it's not sexy enough for grants, I think. At least, that's what my advisor and committee members think.

The questions:

1. What systematic behaviors do I need to engage in for the next 3-6 months if I want to leave the research door open?

2. I'm on the border between engineering and medicine. I am quite curious about nanotech (which I have an excellent *distant past* pedigree for) and clinical psych (which I have the stats background for but zero relationship with my research or education history). What behaviors might I engage in to open these doors wider and also figure out if I wanted to go in these directions?

3. Are there research-y industry jobs? How do I locate these?

4. I am in my early thirties and poor. No debt. What would you do if you were me and why?

5. So I have a clear pattern of massive issues with authority going back to birth. I've done a lot of therapy but never focused specifically on this. I am disciplined, smart, conscientious, organized, future-oriented, and a self-starter, to a rare degree (really), at least as far as I can tell. Does that matter cf. the above? I keep eyeing startup-land because of my software and executive skills, but I might value my relationship with family and girlfriend too much to risk jeopardizing either. But maybe I'm still too naive about what any of this entails.

Authority figures, as long as I've been subjected to them, while gritting their teeth, have consistently and explicitly praised my "rare," "creativity," "originality," "bold thinking," "scientific mind," etc., (and unprofessional, disrespectful, bad attitude). I really want to make a difference and not perpetuate the status quo. And, as a member of the teeming masses of unique snowflakes, maybe I will, as intelligently and un-self-destructively as I can. But, help?

Thank you for reading and answering.

Humanities PhD in Australia - advice and suggestions!

geek anachronism — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:27:07 -0800

In March I will be starting my PhD (humanities - gender, fan culture and writing) but I have been out of academia for a long time. I finished my Honours in 2002, completed a Masters but since it was coursework (librarian coursework at that) it doesn't really count as far as the rigours or the demands of a PhD goes. I've started trawling Jstor and a couple of other databases I can access through the State library while I ease into it all and I was wondering: what are some of the crucial humanities texts that I've probably forgotten/missed in the past ten years?. The ones that are expected to be referred to in any thesis about gender, writing and identity, or humanities in general. I'm building my reading list/book list but don't have uni library privileges yet so I'm stuck with online/non-academic library access - unless it's something I should buy (aka Strunk and White, Judith Butler etc).

PhD students: Where, when and how do you study?

FuckingAwesome — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 07:49:18 -0800

PhD students: Where, when and how do you study? Hi everyone, I've just started a PhD at the University of Greenwich London and am getting into the swing of things, trying to do put in 8 hours of work a day (9-6 or 11-8).

I am currently working from my girlfriends place and occasionally in the British Library as both are closer than my university library and I am in the process of moving.

I was wondering, out of interest, where other PhD students work? Also tell me a bit about your work routine / regime.

Cheers,