The Ivory Tower

9:46 AM

What about you @Wrzlprmft? Any regrets doing a PhD?

The PhD experiences from the different OPs on Academia.SE seem overwhelmingly negative that it scares me from applying to schools.

@D.Hutchinson Nope.

@D.Hutchinson Well, that’s because if everything goes well, you don’t get questions to ask on Academia.

I see @Wrzlprmft

true @Wrzlprmft

»My PhD advisor is kind and helpful and I really like what I am doing. What shall I do about it?«

hahah good point

Massimo Ortolano

10:21 AM

@D.Hutchinson For instance, my students are used to directly ask me most of the questions that we get here about PhD, publications etc.

10:53 AM

i really love academic air

i hate staying outside acadeia; this makes me feel like being in a wild place

11:11 AM

@CaptainBohemian - me too

I love academia too

@D.Hutchinson happy to hear so

@MassimoOrtolano, interesting - is it nearly as bad as what it seems, based purely from reading Academia SE questions? Just from reading alone, I get the sense that Academia, starting from the PhD level, say, is a ruthless game of unethical, cutthroat behavior - unethical editors, reviewers, PIs, never-ending conflicts.

i often hear the eavesdrops from street saying they don't like academia; i just wonder how they don't like it.

me too @CaptainBohemian

i don't feel any workplace better than academia

11:16 AM

I agree @CaptainBohemian

I just feel only in academia can I see the hope, the promising feeling because people there ceaselessly improve knowledge

right @CaptainBohemian

most of other works focus too much on making money so that they don't really have time improving knowkedge; they just keep using the same known skills to make money.

yeah, @CaptainBohemian, and with that comes with a real sense of hollowness at the end of one's career, I bet

wealth, without much meaning

but academia life just sounds so scary, based on the detailed questions that are asked on Academia SE

yea, I think money should be used to support what one really likes. Taking making money as end is so hollow.

11:24 AM

and the questions are consistently dramatic and mostly show that the PhD student / early career professor have little-to-no control over their success outcomes

yes, @CaptainBohemian

Massimo Ortolano

@D.Hutchinson Those who ask questions here are usually those who have issues and cannot solve them by themselves: for each one of them there are probably several who are happy about their work or who simply solve their issues and move on. In any workplace there are troubles: most of my closest friends are in industry and it's not that they have less conflicts or less workload, the issues are just different.

I see, @MassimoOrtolano

i am looking for phd now. my master advisor is a person who takes the measure of completely disregarding.

@CaptainBohemian, as in, disregarding your application process?

he just doesn't care what you do. this may sound like his students have great freedom. But it simultaneouly causes trouble because we master students, who never had research experience, just didn't know where to start working toward a thesis.

well, he doesn't tend to give advice regarding any issue, whether sicience or career, even you ask him.

11:40 AM

sorry to hear, @CaptainBohemian

i don't know if this counts as an issue; I don't know if there have been people posting this kind of issue.

most of issues I see are too harsh advisors.

actually there are not many principal investigators working on the fields in my master advisor's fields, so after graduation it's really not easy to find new advisor.

12:39 PM

About the paper I am reviewing. I read it a few more times, and I have a problem with the introduction (actually, I have several, but I would like to talk about this one): they spend a quarter and a bit of the introduction discussing papers completely irrelevant to their work, only because
- they are in the same "macro-field" (something along the lines of "logarithms are important, since they have been used in these papers, and we use them as well")
- and they were published in the journal I am reviewing for

What do you say?

@Federico I would not jump to any conclusion but just remark the issue you have.

@Wrzlprmft ok, I see your point

Also consider the following: 1. Could this be a case of the authors self-citing? 2. Could this be a case of the journal inflating its own citations? If yes, the editor may not be the person whom you need to tell this. 3. You do not happen to be from pure mathematics or some other field that doesn’t do proper introductions?

1. in one case the third author seem to be the same, but no other connection
2. I have reasons to think this is a first submission, and not an editor-induced addition
3. aerospace, but I used an example from another field to try being understood/less connected to the paper. I don't know what you mean by "field without proper introductions", but I can tell you that I have to spend more time on the introduction than the rest of the paper, to clearly show where my work remains w.r.t. the state of the art, why is relevant, why is a contribution, etc.

@Federico I don't know what you mean by "field without proper introductions" – It is quite common in pure math and even in applied math to have papers whose entire introduction is: “We consider the problem of X.”

12:53 PM

@Wrzlprmft ah, I don't read many papers from pure math :D

@Federico Here is a typical example.

I am now mildly jealous

4 hours later…

Pon pon holla mon

5:16 PM

Guys I just heard from the Dean, he said that one bad course might not endanger my VISA.. also asked me to be strong on the next semester..