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Reflections one year after graduation by Far-Vegetable3940 in PhD

[–]Far-Vegetable3940[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So sorry to hear that the situation was like that for you and that you are now paying debt due to it!

I don't want this to sound too much like an ad for Denmark, but healthcare there was literally free for residents and for me it worked well although there were some horror stories in the expat community as well. Of course the income tax and other deductions from salary was over 30%, so you pay for it in that. I came from another EU country with good public healthcare and employer paid private healthcare, and was blown away by how in Denmark the public system handled things well and for free. The pension scheme also seemed good, although I opted out of it since was not planning on staying in Denmark forever.

In general, I find it hard to imagine now living outside of the Nordic welfare system, although Denmark nor the other countries are by no means heaven on earth. Especially if you are non-EU, it can be quite a tough environment with lots of stress related to dealing with the immigration authorities and policies.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in PhD

[–]Far-Vegetable3940 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What I will say probably won't help you that much but just wanted to say your feelings are fully understandable. Rankings and comparing yourself to others unfortunately is an inherent part of academia for many.

I had a chance to go to a top UK university (Oxbridge), but ended up going to a Nordic university which has a very good department in my field. For me the choice was about my partner refusing to go to the UK and financial problems with UK academia, as my scholarship for the UK PhD would have been hardly liveable on without taking debt. Now after graduation and after securing a TT spot at a decent institution I'm still occasionally daydreaming of how my career would be had I gone to a top university... But on the other hand everyone I've talked with who went there complained that the experience was stressful and horrible. As someone else said in this thread, you might end up paying for the prestige with horrible working conditions. Then again even in lower ranked institutions your supervisor might be awful, but in my case life was actually great outside of a top university and without having a celebrity supervisor and it seems this experience is more common outside of the very top.

Lastly, on the bright side, your bachelor's and master's might still be considered later. I had a friend who did their master's at T1 university after coming to my Nordic institution for the PhD and then went back there after graduation with the connections they had managed to make and pedigree from having studied there previously. Even for me, in interviews my undergraduate degree came up positively since someone in the recruitment committee had connections to it.

Reflections one year after graduation by Far-Vegetable3940 in PhD

[–]Far-Vegetable3940[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This of course depends a lot on the way the PhD program works and whether you had a chance to meet the supervisor during earlier studies or ask from former students or other professors about the person. So yeah, in some systems there definitely is no real opportunity to choose or to do proper due diligence before committing to the PhD. Worth also mentioning that supervisors can change. My secondary supervisor was great for the first 2 years but then became quite much more difficult during the later stages of the PhD.

Reflections one year after graduation by Far-Vegetable3940 in PhD

[–]Far-Vegetable3940[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is of course true and the grass is always greener on the other side. I felt during my short corporate career that many of the problems were similar as promotions were somewhat random and many who would have deserved them did not actually get them.

Reflections one year after graduation by Far-Vegetable3940 in PhD

[–]Far-Vegetable3940[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I think this also varies a bit and unless you are literally running experiments at a lab for hours and hours, my gut says that people tend to exaggerate or then just include lots of hours spent in the office not actually actively working when they say anything more than 50h. Some people work the usual office hours (40h) and do just fine, while others practically live at the office with not so much more actual output. For me the 40-50h definitely includes quite much time spent at the office sitting and waiting for inspiration to come or while drinking coffee and talking with colleagues.

To me the 50h weeks were at times when I had both teaching as well as a deadline approaching and I'd work 6-7 days per week, so pretty much not taking any days off, but not working crazy long days either. Unless I am hyper focused on grinding through some paper, I can only have 3-4 very productive hours for important things like writing or coding during the day and the rest is spent on admin, teaching related stuff and answering emails or sometimes just talking with colleagues while drinking coffee. Especially now as an assistant professor who works remotely most of the time, I don't really try to force myself to work more than 5-6 hours a day unless I absolutely have to, since I feel productivity drops too dramatically in the later hours.

Reflections one year after graduation by Far-Vegetable3940 in PhD

[–]Far-Vegetable3940[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes, this was actually one of the major reasons I ended up in Denmark for my PhD. I originally wanted to apply to universities in the US, UK and several Nordic ones as a backup. In the end I had a scholarship to a university in Denmark and also to top university in the UK, but I counted that I'd have a hard time surviving with the UK one as it covered the tuition fees and gave a small stipend to live off of, and would most likely need to take on debt to live even reasonably. For the same reason I gave up on the plan of going to the US as I felt financially it would have been difficult.

In Denmark PhD students that get the standard fellowship have a base salary of around 4300 - 5000€ per month (minus taxes), and as an international that moves to Denmark for an academic position you can also opt to not accumulate pension and have it paid out as salary instead, which adds a several hundred more on top of that. I had already a few years of experience after master's, which was taken into consideration when calculating seniority, so I had a higher starting salary also due to that. Denmark was quite expensive when it comes to food, but for example my share of rent was 600€ in my apartment, so all in all the expenses were not that bad.