grad_student_

Re:Ask HN: Is a phD a good way to focus & motivate you? on Monday August 02, 2010 @04:02PM (#1568848)

Summary: do it if you want to become a career researcher, but if you want to do creative hacking than cut out the middleman and just do it. Gradschool is the hotbed of timewaste and procrastination so don't do it to get yourself focused. If anything, taking some undergrad courses in some topic that is new to you could be much more useful that way.

Even if you want to get into research, leave all ideals and preconceived notions behind. As others have said, doing a phd is depressing as hell. You will have smart people to hang out with every day, but especially if you are thinking of real world applicability of things, you might have a hard time connecting with most of them.

Re:Ask YC: How to survive grad school? on Thursday October 30, 2008 @03:46PM (#349077)

Europe, not-so-high salaries, high taxes, social equality, long payed holidays, etc. etc.

Re:Ask YC: How to survive grad school? on Thursday October 30, 2008 @02:33PM (#348970)

Already my comment is lost among the many replies... I can't express how useful and motivating some of the advice is, so I'd really like to thank to all those who are taking the time to answer.

Ask YC: How to survive grad school?

Posted by grad_student_ on Thursday October 30, 2008 @11:48AM
from the self-post dept.

I've been amazed how helpful people have been here to career advice questions earlier, so as I feel I have hit rock-bottom today, I give it a try myself (I am a regular poster, but anonymous this time). I guess others might be in similar situation, so discussing this might be helpful.I have always dreamed of becoming a scientist. I always loved maths, sciences, puzzles, theory but also...

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