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by sgibson12 6556 days ago
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. Especially for the incite into the world of academia. Minor aside, being able to post comments like this on our website is on our TODO list. Placing your comments here in the meantime was the best option. The fact that you had to do so will bump that up in priority. ;)
1 comments
mechanical_fish 6556 days ago
Yeah. I noticed that it seemed to be a wiki, and was tempted to try it out... but I'm sure you can understand why I was reluctant to paste this giant glob of opinions all over your outline page. :)

Incidentally, no discussion of this topic is complete without an administration of the Greenspun test. Read the link I posted here, and the comments:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117378

If your partner can read all that and still be sure that he wants to be a professor... he needs to at least try going to grad school, because he's truly in love. ;) But I still recommend SF over Indiana, despite the fact that I grew up in Ohio and should really be sticking up for the Midwest...

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bkovitz 6555 days ago
Thanks for the passionate rant. I'm the guy who's about to make the big decision.

Something I found especially interesting was your point about unfashionable research not getting respect (and funding) in academia, even if it works out. I used to work at Caltech, and the biggest surprise for me was how much time the P.I. I was working for had to spend on grant proposals--and doing the political work to get people excited about his stuff. It struck me as pretty similar to entrepreneurship, actually, but with money coming from a very different source than happy customers.

I'm going to spend today and tomorrow acting as if I canceled my admission this year. Then I'll see how I feel on Friday.

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mechanical_fish 6556 days ago
Oh, and I almost forgot! An important book to read is A Ph.D. is Not Enough! A Guide to Survival in Science:

http://www.amazon.com/PhD-Not-Enough-Survival-Science/dp/020...

It's a bit dated, but it's quite valuable.

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sgibson12 6556 days ago
Cool.. that's all very helpful. Especially the links and extra reference material. That's all we do these days is pass books back and forth. haha.
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