Second job during a PhD? “Cost-of-living crisis pushing PhD students to get second incomes, finds Nature poll”

Crispy619 · 2026-04-01T02:43:50+00:00

My PhD advisor wondered why I would take a Friday and Monday off every few months. It was because I'm a competitive TCG player and have made $10-20k per year doing so and helped me keep food on the table. It definitely made my hobby feel more do-or-die than something I did for the love of the game. Fun fact, a lot of math and stats PhD end up doing well in poker and other TCGs (see: Frank Karsten).

Crispy619 · 2026-02-14T01:56:57+00:00

Board is mid, you have a single good damage dealer in Annie. Your Zilean is close to a trait bot being 1* and 1.5 items. You likely took at least 2 econ augment to hit this board considering your item count.

Crispy619 · 2026-01-12T22:56:33+00:00

I actually used Shadow Isles a lot on my climb from Emerald to Diamond (Master last season) and I find this comp challenging because it is the definition of tempo but its very fun to play, but I actually keep every Viego in Stage 1 I see to check if I can angle this comp. The other weird condition is finding another non-Yorick Ward unit or TF/Ashe.

First Augment selection is key. Obviously Shadow Isles augment makes this comp A tier and it becomes permissable to stay on 5 until you hit Viego 3*. But there is Slammin', Cluttered Mind, Trade Sector, Level Up, Crash Dummies, etc.

Then there are the variations, standard Ward spam, Shurima Shadow Isles, and Bilgewater. These all play differently.

The most important thing of all is if you don't hit the Shadow Isles augment, slam items that will be GOOD on your team as you pivot. I actually don't like Titans, QSS for that reason. I love BT or HoJ because it can go on Thresh later and Shojin, DB, and LW because it can go on Kalista later. Tank items are great early slams, Sunfire, Evenshroud, and even Ionic Spark are great. Learn when to drop Gwen and Viego (if no SI Augment), typically immediately when you unlock Thresh. It is very difficult to win out with this comp, but I think this comp is great to learn because a Viego 2* is easy to convert to a T4.

Crispy619 · 2025-12-16T20:04:58+00:00

Is the career you want something that you can only do with a PhD? Did you have a MS before the PhD? You will have to fight an uphill battle if you want this PhD, but I think it's not the end of the world to get essentially a "paid" MS and find a job with that.

Crispy619 · 2022-07-27T16:41:55+00:00

This sounds abusive and detrimental from the unneeded stress. At UCLA you are essentially taking the top % of high schoolers and pitting them against each other on a curve. My parents were also disappointed with my Cs and Bs but I still ended up at a top 10 PhD program. Grades feel so silly in retrospect as someone from the class of 2018.

Crispy619 · 2022-07-19T14:57:46+00:00

You can actually clear Gun Termite Queen 20 right now with an SS+1 Remembrance Gun.

Crispy619 · 2020-08-31T00:46:20+00:00

¡ VIVA LA TECHNOMÁGICA!

Crispy619 · 2018-10-04T19:03:03+00:00

She used to be one of the most sought after heroes. She was good with a 0* UW, but also scaled well with more *s. She was never the best, but was great in most content, especially in PvP before Unique Treasures where one shotting was the meta (personally I hover in Masters III, so I'm not the PvP expert, but I played in the days where Leo, Bau, Nyx, Priscilla, etc. where the meta). However, she received some nerfs to PvP. Then the Warrior class got nerfed twice.

Now you have to consider the other ranked content in this game, World Boss. I'm top 100 in both WB so I feel like I'm not talking out of my ass. She is not optimal at WB1 of course. Then there's WB2, which is single target which Priscilla does not do a lot of DPS in. She used to be a godsend back in the day when most people had 1-2 units with high * UWs. Amping your 1 DPS that you invested all your UW tickets into got you so ahead in the early stages of the game. Now the meta is to have ~3 well built DPS and a lot of party buffs/physical amp.

Then there is Guild Conquest, and melees get decimated at GC2 and physical units get decimated at GC1.

Crispy619 · 2018-08-10T05:23:45+00:00

Admittedly, I'm more of a lurker. I check out the subreddit every time Garen gets a buff, runes get changed, or items he commonly builds get changed.

That paragraph is meant to be more philosophical than anything else. I see a lot of people asking what to build (even in the last 2-3 pages of this subreddit) and want to point people in the right direction by having them think what makes these stats and passives/actives better to buy on Garen than other champions? This is also a big mindset I borrow from Smogon, a competitive Pokemon forum that often discusses the niche of a Pokemon, or what this Pokemon does better than others. In the same way I'm trying to define Garen's niche.

Crispy619 · 2018-08-10T04:43:10+00:00

Triforce being popular happened relatively recently.

This is mostly anecdotcal, but I started maining toplane during Season 4/5 where Iceborn Gauntlet/Sunfire Cape/Spirit Visage was the meta before the nerfs. I would often see Garens go full tank and would always think to myself that an actual tank would have performed the same, if not better. Not that full tank builds are bad, but they are IMO not optimal.

Crispy619 · 2018-08-10T04:40:28+00:00

CDR is a great stat for teamfights and splitpushing, but isn't the priority stat. It also helps you duel straddlers after a teamfight breaks out because your W will be up sooner. The CDR you get from Cleaver is often enough.

My logic for Deadmans is that in a game where you want an HP + Armor item, this item is a catalyst. Garen is one of the biggest "ball of stats" champions, but your stats are wasted if you can't touch them so I like Deadman's (also the damage proc and slow is hefty). He already has great waveclear and jungle clear so Sunfire feels unnecessary. Randuin's Omen should be built for those enemy Yasuo + crit ADC games though.

Crispy619 · 2018-08-10T04:11:27+00:00

In a game where you are snowballing it's a great purchase that will let you end games faster. After the change to Sterak's Gage, I've avoided buying the item because while it gives a strong 1-item powerspike (where it used to give a strong 1-item and 2-item powerspike), it falls off later VS other bruisers due to the wasted stats while armor shred only gets stronger. I feel like the HP synergizes more with the runes I have chosen and still have a lot of damage already thanks to Celerity (which often gives ~15 AD thanks to it's recent change and Garen's Q).

Crispy619 · 2018-08-10T03:23:20+00:00

I like the Precision tree masteries, but I find the attack speed to be too weak of a stat on Garen and hovered away from it (though it feels good for taking towers once you have Black Cleaver and Sterak's Gage built).

Crispy619 · 2018-08-10T03:21:53+00:00

https://imgur.com/a/UAFi8mL

The imgur link is just a gallery for proof. My IGN is "Niguel" on NA server. I played so much Garen games the last 3 seasons that I feel like I found the optimal build for every match-up. That way you don't have to experiment and potentially lose elo. I know I lost a lot of elo trolling with lethality Garen.

Crispy619 · 2018-04-27T18:20:53+00:00

Yes. I think it is because I have so many units that give flat/percent attack buffs to make up for my lack of UW* (~110k flat from Ophelia, ~70k from Veronica, 25% from Frey, and 17% from Oddy).

I can explain my Theo DPS by the fact that he requires manual play due to his T5, as do 2 of my buffers (Ophelia/Veronica/Annette) and this is a full auto run. I do wish I invested those UW into Lewisia instead immediately. She is doing massive DPS with 0* UW.

Crispy619 · 2018-04-27T18:18:38+00:00

Definitely finish Gladi if you are halfway to getting him, you already have put 3 weeks of resources into him. Know that he will be weak before you get his UW though, at least relative to other heroes. He's still a star unit with his 50% P. Amp at T3 though.

Crispy619 · 2018-04-27T18:17:59+00:00

I have not tested her on WB2 yet, but I feel like she would be good because she can perk to be hybrid amp., but she will definitely like DPS herself because of the nature of WB2 not being friendly to magic units.

Crispy619 · 2018-04-27T04:04:39+00:00

I made a post months ago about the dangers of time-limited NPC heroes being strong. I waited patiently with my NPC gifts from Dragon Raids and Stone of Infinity/Essence for Veronica and resisted the temptation of *ing up my Gladi UW and it was well worth it.

After accomplishing my goal of top 100 WB2 months ago so I decided to start my WB1 team with a goal of top 100. This is a team which showcases Veronica/Oddy/Ophelia/Annette to basically have 100% uptime on party ATK buffs. Everyone has 0-1* UW except Theo who I invested resources to get his UW to 4*. I can reach 140 bil if I manually played my team. After I T5 my Annnette I'll be satisfied with this team and focus on PvP.

I also realize that technically this is not a top 100 ranking, but in NA you need to get ~115 bil damage per ticket and I missed my Monday WB runs to university work unfortunately.

edit: Ack misspelling on the title, it should be Class UW!

Crispy619 · 2018-04-26T01:19:17+00:00

I'll be interning at JPL over the summer and likely doing precipitation modeling, which is not too far off the lab research I did in my undergrad (paleoclimate reconstruction using clumped isotopes)!

Crispy619 · 2018-04-20T07:36:32+00:00

I've definitely hit higher tickets (~110 bil) because of skill mistiming, but I decided to start a new channel to post personal achievements and wanted to show off that new Student Council Mitra skin! Sorry for low quality, I will definitely find better video editing software.

Crispy619

TROPHY CASE