There’s a lot more to your potential than what you get paid to do. Personal growth takes a lot of dimensions our academic background encourages us to neglect.

FWIW, the year after I defended I couldn’t get hired in academia for anything beyond an adjunct role, couldn’t get a job in my field, took a lowball offer doing something else because I needed the health insurance. Hardest year or two of my life. Probably took a decade off of it if I’m being honest.

wow way to go polar cop on us

You JUST GRADUATED into a collapsed labor market, give yourself some grace. Takes some of us a few years to find our footing.

Ah, sorry to hear that. That’s really disheartening.

I think it really depends on where you end up. There are good and bad work environments everywhere, and even the good ones are not perfect. Choose your people wisely, I guess.

PhD student, right?

You’ll get there - even if you just end up an industry rando like me and you mostly just publish conference papers. I know it seems near-impossible now, but hang in there.

I got bumped to acknowledgments a couple of times and was not happy. Now I take care to aggressively credit everyone on my programs and I don’t give a fuck how long the author list is.

Nah, it just means [prominent scientist] isn’t a physicist, because that would be irresistible

I think the proportion of NTs in physics and engineering is significantly lower than in the general population.

Yes, just snacks. They know their customer base.

omg I would LOVE garage project supplies as gifts…I think I’m slowly turning into my father and I’m ok with that

They’re a pretty quiet couple in their late 20s/30s. Fluent in English (as they’re leaving the US), proficient in French, fascinating conversationalists, really some of the coolest folks you’ll ever meet.

This is an argument, but I can also understand an eyeroll akin to “GMO is bad!” - too broad a statement to be useful. Replacing all the art/animation with AI would be egregious, but using it to generate a snippet of code or NPC dialogue or something is less so

Or pharmacist suicides

That was 10 years ago. Lasers are cool but I still miss chemistry.

My wife went to that school 😂

Yes, that route works GREAT on paper!

I’ve stayed at a few with glass doors and I DO NOT LIKE THEM. If my tiny hotel rooms in Japan could fit a door, you sore as hell can in the US!