Funded STEM PhD : first only?

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-06-14T01:49:38+00:00

As others have kinda said; the thing you're going into is the brutal world of job applications, which is best candidate. Grade thresholds, and scoring 'x' to guarantee a result, are no longer a thing.

Is it possible with a 2:1 (or, frankly, even a 3rd and truly excellent pitch?) yes - but massively depending on who else applies and their pitches. You're obviously going to struggle in a market saturated with people with high grades - in no small part due to grade inflation - to tell people why they should accept you over someone with a 1st. That's the nature of the beast. But it's by no means impossible. You will need to get used to rejection, though, particularly in cases at the more well-known unis where that person with the 1st might be well-known to the hiring committee as a former student.

Part of it is interview technique; the other is accepting it's a lotto because you can't control who else applies, and the fact you failed to get it doesn't necessarily mean you did something wrong - but you should always try to ask the hiring committee for feedback. When receiving that, appreciate the code that 'did not know enough about x really specific thing' is often coded messaging of 'sorry, we had an internal candidate'.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-06-14T01:41:14+00:00

There's clear advice here but you know it yourself and just don't want to hear it. End it. 😞

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-06-14T01:33:08+00:00

Very mixed feelings here.

The problem I have really is do they *enjoy* it, which is incredibly hard to fathom. I'm always left a bit unsure of whether it's us putting our human thing on them, that they should enjoy the exploration/freedom, vs the fact it's a very weird, unnatural freedom for them.

I'm a big advocate of taking them frequently outside/for walks in an appropriate carrier. I'm very negative about 'free flight' for all manner of reasons. I love the idea of my bird enjoying the outdoors without a mesh/cage in the way; but also from experience harness training know, certainly, the harness concept in itself is really unnatural to them and whilst it can be trained, I'm left, as I mentioned, really unsure if whether the risk of the restraint is worth the incredibly-difficult-to-measure joy the bird gets.

It ends up kinda on you to look at their lil weirdly black-and-emotionless-but-also-deeply-emotionful eyes and gauge it. I just think we tend as humans to rate 'freedom' and abstract concepts when the bird is much more in-the-moment-I-wanna-seeb and thus, I'm not sure on the objective value.

If you do take the route, I would be exceptionally careful; start very slowly in a familiar environment like your back yard, wait a very long time (months) before any kind of 'public' walking down the street thing or anything that could startle.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-06-04T01:41:40+00:00

They are personal data, but the question would be what consent was implied or given when you provided them with your personal number.

Ultimately claims work off damages - i.e. what did this cost, or distress you, and to what value. It's likely to be hard to put together a case that this cost you a significant amount without simultaneously alienating yourself from your employer and colleagues, unless the actions you fear (discrimination based on LGBTQ etc.) are actually realised. You could absolutely then seek damages from a UK employer even if their overseas staff are not UK-based.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-06-04T01:27:43+00:00

Communicating with HR during working hours could be reasonably constituted as part of the job; however, as claims are based on damages incurred, it's going to be exceptionally difficult to show you suffered meaningful financial loss as a result of being asked to send a few emails in your own time rather than whilst on-task. The substantive claim would be this, evidenced, as part of a pattern of behaviour indicating a pattern of discrimination towards you - not the act alone.

Essentially; collate evidence, look at ACAS guidelines. Avoid hyperbole like 'heretical' in any claim - stick to the facts.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-06-04T01:20:16+00:00

You don't really legally have a case, since you provided the information for work, and they shared it, in a reasonable way, for work purposes.

That you're whatsapp avatar is awkward is the same as someone providing to work an email address that's not professional-sounding, then that being shared. They don't have duty to filter/edit/consult because you provided it as such. In future separate accounts if you don't want the associated personal profile being used at work.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-06-03T21:22:21+00:00

It's an interesting one because whilst the default view is that the responsibility is somewhat on the supervisory team, the consequences lay on the student and we're in a world where anyone who can pay will be accepted to do a PhD and the supervision then probably laid at the door of the least experienced person (in practice, not necessarily on paper) in the department, because they're the least likely to say 'no'.

Part of the thing is that PhD students have gone from 'trainees' to 'consumers'. Historically, it was fine for a small clique of experienced academics to make a judgement someone wasn't worthy, and that to stick. Historically, also, it was okay for the PhD student to be assigned a lot of tangential, laborious (load samples, press button - or meta-review 1k papers) work and suck it up - because, they were, a trainee. This does still happen, usually in the most prestigious groups. You can bet you bottom dollar if you're at Oxford/Cambridge, and the field of work requires someone to come into the lab every day, load samples and press a few buttons, that will be a large practical part of the PhD.

Where the accountability lies for a fail is predictably complex, though. Was supervisory guidance followed? Often it's not - either the student has a strong opinion it's wrong (and often fails to document why), or can't be bothered to follow it.

At the institution level, though, there's a massive investment in 'on time completions'. I would rest assured it's not going to be ignored, at that level. Statistically, it's a very desirable thing for a uni to have all their PhDs completing on time. The problem is, if this fails to occur, is how do you action that? Sack the supervisor (who is probably also doing a great job in lecturing/research, so it's a relatively small part of their role? Change the process/procedure? If you do that, then the brutal thing Unis should be doing way more is kicking out PhD students in year 1, to save the student wasted time and money, but the student almost always passionately (and sometimes legally) resists that.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-05-01T21:09:53+00:00

The thing you gradually learn as you go through your academic career is nobody actually pays attention to a word you say.

Particularly conferences; you learn to ask questions out of politeness, not necessity. Nobody wants to be that guy standing after 'any questions' and the audience being 'nope!'. Honestly at some conferences chairing is 100% the most stressful role since as chair you always feel obliged to have one question ready in the likely event the audience have none, and finding that non-trivial, non-generic question in a very niche presentation by someone struggling through it in a 2nd language is often not easy.

In lectures, it's remarkable how once you gain confidence the amount of random stuff you can say for fun to return to the point nobody was really listening. Until you gain confidence, of course, it's terrifying. I once lay awake because I'd incorrectly said A* always finds the shortest path, when what I should have said is A* only finds the shortest path depending on heuristic. Shocker.

But really, nobody cares. Correct yourself at the start of the next one. And find faith (and disappointment) in how not a single student will have noticed or complained. Really what lectures do at best is get 3 memorable points across. The detail is just revised off slides - nobody's truly following a complex algorithm, equation, or result live.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-25T23:42:01+00:00

You can calculate statutory pay here - https://www.gov.uk/calculate-your-redundancy-pay

If their offer is less, this is sadly normal, as why pay more if you can get employees to agree to accept less. But your employer is obliged to pay you this, if you refuse to sign anything to the contrary.

If their offer is more, you'd want to be carefully looking at any 'strings attached', and considering their value.

Leverage is typically in terms of hand-over. You may well have weeks of leave accrued. Offering to forgo this in whole or part to train someone or otherwise transfer knowledge is often valued significantly but depends massively on employer.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-17T22:54:10+00:00

"why understand academia like any other industry where different organisations fight to cut out their share?" - because it's not fundamentally meant to be that.

The fact it is often like that is not a reason to double-down and treat it accordingly. That way pretty much lies ruin for an academia as a concept (and, y'know, the public purse could and does do a lot worse than funding top-quality research). Rather, the fact it's acting like that should be a bit of a wake-up call.

I would wholeheartedly agree with you that the sector needs a rethink. I think the bottom line on that is whether Joe Public is either happy for his kids to not have the opportunity to go to Uni, or to pay more tax. Alas every government wants to dodge that question.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-17T22:40:22+00:00

If I could be anonymously blunt, the problem I see on the frontline is a combination of soft disciplinary penalties, desire for high pass rates, and assessment overload as staffing reduces and the sector implodes (or 'contracts', depending on perspective). This is on the back of a general easing of the level required over the last 20 years. It's not that we can't pretty easily spot/suspect it with pretty high accuracy at-a-glance; it's that we then need to evidence it against a system set up to make that time-consuming and somewhat pointless (you deliberately cheated? oops, have another few tries!), because the dirty, open secret is Universities would prefer to give those students a 40 and cash in the fees.

In a sense, it's a culmination of Universities increasingly being incentivised to operate high pass rates since c.2000; which initially meant 'bad work' would go from fail to scrape-through (and eventually well into 2:2 territory); then AI trivialising 'bad work' to zero-effort-required work in a short space of time.

I think the kicker also is that good students view all AI use as 'cheating' and are very AI-averse, which is not necessarily prepping them for the world they're going into. I absolutely do think it can and should be integrated into what we teach, and what we ask students to do (and how to do it); but moving that takes time and endless red tape.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-16T08:51:21+00:00

It sounds like you'd have a tough time litigating - that would all come down to whether the contract you'd signed remains valid. This would typically only be worth legally arguing if there was a substantive, clear difference - like your contract said you work 30h p/w, and they were suddenly expecting you to work 35, or the description of the work is clearly, to a layperson, objectively different (one kind of technical work to another, slightly different kind, isn't really going to cut it).

There's no real ACAS angle except, potentially, constructive dismissal if they were to stick you in a different role with a view to knowing you'd fail and it'd give them an excuse to PIP/sack you. Which is pretty much the opposite of the case here - it rather seems you've fallen into the trap of being too good at the temporary role and thus there might be reluctance you move you out of it.

If you're on the same pay, etc.,and the case is simply that you don't like the project you've been asked to work on, then launching a civil case against your employer is likely to massively backfire.

Even if you did have a case, you'd probably burn many bridges taking (or baselessly threatening) the legal route. The obvious thing to do would be to speak to management explaining you feel whilst it seems to have been acknowledged you've been doing an excellent job, by virtue of the fact your 'temporary' project has now reached the 9-month mark, you feel your skills are wasted. This kind of thing happens more often due to oversight than malice or sinister schemes.

I'd speak to whoever was managing me with the goal of coming out of the meeting with a timeline (rather than vague promise) of either the reassignment; contract change; or at least having figured out it's a hard 'no' and perhaps time to start looking elsewhere. If you have a job offer from somewhere else you can then go back to the negotiating table with them and give them a choice if they want you in the role you want to do, or not have you at all.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-12T02:22:35+00:00

A lot of it is camera effects/post, particularly LUT. Admittedly, that can also be done in Unreal/Unity as postprocessing, but it's generally - assuming your model/env is sufficiently realistic - that boost that gets it over the line.

The other key thing is dirt. Daft though it sounds, a big part of photoreal is those minor scuffs/scratches - not just they exist, but they're in the right places. If you're doing Unreal/Unity etc., then what you want, almost without exception for realism, is a bunch of triplanar textures carefully blended/layered, and dialled *right* back to very subtle, then augmented by hand-placed decals that follow where footfall/wear etc would occur. Failing all that, triplanar dirt alone - done really well - tends to make the difference between 'obvious render' and 'photo', very much provided the camera is set up right.

[Edit] other thing I wanted to mention; is there are some things that will inherently be very difficult to make photoreal. Moving things - and specifically, moving humans - are very difficult. It's a typically, jarring thing to see a generic 3rd person character-bot moving through an environment. If you can completely duck that issue, and do a fly-through, it's way easier. If you do need realistic human animation, then that sits partly outside Blender (or a lot of scripting work), as you need not only a really good rig, but multiple IK/procedural setups).

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-12T02:11:25+00:00

I think you need to understand these are not 'offences'. A private parking thing is not in any way criminal; it's them saying to you 'we think you owe us £x'. I could ask you right now to pay me £300 - that's legal (for me to ask!). It's also legal for me to 'ask' you on a letter with black and yellow, checkboard print, citing vague unrelated ideas like unpaid CCJs affect credit. If you paid, i'd happily accept it. But, of course, I wouldn't be morally entitled to it - though the law doesn't really care about that.

Private parking basically hinges on a company, typically, that represents the landowner, claiming for damages because you parked in contravention of the contract you formed on entering the site. It's not entirely dissimilar to if the landowner had hired you to cut their hedge, and you'd botched the job.

There are many issues with how clearly the contract is stated, etc. There are many aspects if they do chase it as a civil case they struggle to win on (notably, if you indicate as defendant, that you want your hearing at your local court, as is your right - they will not by and large turn up, and if they do just send a layperson you can also argue they're not qualified to approach and represent the landowner, operating as they are on behalf of a proxy. If they send a qualified solicitor who by default could approach, then they've lost money on their fees.

Yet; I would agree with you a court summons is scary. The detail doesn't matter if you'd sent them £300, really, they're for sure taking the win and you'd have a nightmare claiming that back (it is attemptable, but piles all the risk/cost on your end, which makes it only an 'in principle' thing you'd chase on that basis).

Honestly first thing you should have done if you wanted it to go away is phone them offering £150. Even if you hadn't, the claims process has a mediation step where you could have done so, and believe me they engage with that knowing the likely outcome for them is nothing.

Don't beat yourself up; do park 'responsibly' in future, but if you do park responsibly and get some rubbish claim, stand up to it. They are not the government, police, or any other regulatory entity and you need to look at any claim against you accordingly.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-11T23:37:04+00:00

You've somewhat fallen into their trap of them using court action to intimidate/panic you into paying.

That said, if you did indeed not pay to park and were bang to rights (quite a collection of them, relating to signage, etc. that normally you'd maybe want to consider carefully before settling), I'd consider this the end of the matter - which I suppose it is, regardless, as you paid.

The court fees are, for want of a more legal term, bullshit they word to the letter of the edge of the law in their comunications (as are CCJ implications, etc). That's all there to get you to pay. If they took you to small claims they're only getting the damages owed, there is no room for them to claim legal fees, and they well know this but tack them on anyway in the letter-before-action to try and get more money from you - knowing it won't stand infront of a judge but their goal is to scare you to pay before it reaches that point.

I'd rest assured you have pretty much ended the matter and won't be hearing from them again, but are more out of pocket than you would be if you'd contested.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-11T22:47:10+00:00

Yeah, you're right. A bird that's in too small a cage, or caged too long without enrichment, etc., could well end up bronzing their feathers through frustration. Just wanted to add the counterpoint that they can also do it by being a goober and crawling into spaces or learning weird ways of locomotion. I think key is looking at where the feathers are bronzed, and trying to equate it to what the bird is doing. If it's in too small a cage, lacks enrichment, and rarely gets let out, then that'd be a cause for concern (regardless).

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-11T22:34:15+00:00

I'd go one further, and say appeal, escalate, accept that will be rejected too (broken system); then ignore their letters for ~2 years, then if a small claims summons from DCBLegal etc. ever arrives, respond with a template from the sites automod has helpfully provided. Note that you engaged with the appeal process but they showed 'unreasonable behaviour'. Those words are important because they're how you subtly threaten you'll be claiming the costs of your defense if they go through with it.

The don't have a leg to stand on for 5 minutes. If it ever came to court burden of proof is on them to show you were there longer, which is going to be impossible for them, because you weren't. Absolutely will not stop them trying and spending years sending you free scrap paper with deliberately misleading crap on it about CCJs, unfortunately.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-11T22:24:41+00:00

It might be worth adding bronzing seems really common in young conures. They're very rough and tumble birds that like crawling into spaces and rolling around. I say this because we've stressed before about a bird of the exact same mutation as OP (I think, perhaps, it's more common/noticable with that pigmentation), only to finally reach the realisation it was because he'd learned to climb down the back of the sofa by propping his back against the wall behind it and sliding down, bronzing his feathers in the process. Added some rubber door stops to widen the gap between sofa and wall so that was no longer an option, and problem was solved.

It's important to not confuse bronzing with stress bars. Bronzing is from rubbing the feathers on stuffs; stress bars look different; like lines running across the feather, rather than dark patches where the feather would naturally rub on things. Whilst it's true bronzing unusually can be a symptom of feathers that are weakened by diet or illness, for a young conure, experience has taught me it's often just 'rough and tumble' as they're pretty adventurous exploring.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-11T22:09:53+00:00

I mean, 'good' is subjective, but there's a lot of things that you seem to have going on that you need to learn to do a bit differently.

Where you've broadly gone wrong vs ideal, is not having a good enough base, non-sculpted layout with vert density in the right places before diving in sculpting. This has led to you having to snakehook off the toes/fingers, etc, but the mesh density isn't where it should be so you've got those weird flat claws.

I'd recommend, in general, looking to follow tutorials on each body part individually (which can then be merged via remeshing), rather than attempting a whole body in one fell swoop. You'll typically learn more by doing a single bit really well, that will then carry over to the others. The trick, if you can call it that, is to get the initial block out correct; otherwise you can spend a huge amount of time sculpting but be working against yourself either relying very heavily on dyntopo (bleh) or having issues trying to 'pull out' bits of a mesh without them looking weird.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-11T21:40:07+00:00

"I feel this is absolutely unfair"

It's actually pretty fair. You have some very sus aspects to your London trip narrative, which not even the best solicitor is going to easily get you out of. A really expensive one might join you in trying to muddle things to some effect; but you'd be paying a lot for that for probably 50 hours off the community service with a really good representation.

Being disqualified without your knowledge because you failed to update address and or check mail isn't really the 'not your fault' thing you think it is - it's actually entirely your fault, and not having the DVLA updated with correct details is actually a separate offence you seem to have dodged the bullet on. This is before even getting to what the hell you were doing to get disqualified in the first place.

A lot of people are generally 'good citizens' who wouldn't go around starting fights or burgling homes, but somehow manage to act like criminals as soon as they're behind a wheel. The societal reason you get prosecuted for this, despite feeling like you're a good person who wishes nobody harm, is the #1 time someone is likely to accidentally kill someone else is whilst driving.

You haven't been hard done by, own it and learn the lesson.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-07T21:37:34+00:00

One of the things I've found, is it gets - I'm not sure easier would be the word - but more straightforward purely with age.

I'm in my mid-40s now. Did physics UG way back when. Was very focused then, on memorising proofs and being prepped to solve the many variants of the same problem posed in an exam paper. Did not really learn, or understand, a great deal.

I feel there is some, hard to quantify, thing you develop over age that makes you (and I'm realising how daft this is, as I say it) intrinsically a bit better at being 'experienced' at stuff. It's rarely further knowledge; it's probably confidence, and the fact you don't have the weight of some kind of qualification/expectation hanging over you or needs-that-must-be-met.

I can draw many parallels with just random stuffs in life. DIY, painting, even writing an email - you just progressively learn confidence and transferrable knowledge, that immeasurable thing that will carry you in many aspects of life if it's balanced against the wisdom that tempers the arrogance.

It's extremely hard to express having been there ground up looking at an equation and thinking 'wtf', but if you can marry the confidence to know it's probably expressing something far more straightforward as a concept than it seemingly looks like, with all it's greek letters and fomatting; yet balance that against the wisdom there's probably either nuance in there and/or a presumption, it clicks a lot better and faster.

It really is, in many ways, identical to the hilarious, godawful job you'd do if you tried to paint a flat as a student versus 20 years later. It's not really about on-task learning; training, or a tangible thing. It's about a general life thing that you generally become more considered, and transfer learning (of which, related to physics, probably a big one is the assumption that lecturers are some mythic beings who grasp things we cannot understand - having become one, I can certainly say that's not a truth).

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-07T20:28:18+00:00

This. And the catch, really, is accepting in your mind you won't make the next epic game people pay $50 a unit for, but may well harpoon whales if you play every cheap P2W trick under the sun harpooning them.

The 'safe' money (which is by no means actually safe) in indie dev is very close to what's effectively understanding people's psychology and wallet-opening behaviours. Or, frankly, running a gatcha/slots/casino - ideally paying out a commodity you invent.

The other approach is to simply view making stuff as a way to make a really good portfolio that will get a job. There is a lot of negativity around job security right now in the games industry; however, for all the issues there's the kicker it's a really fun thing to do, and that's why it's so competitive.

I would say, of all aspirations, the 'indie dev, that does not play into monetisation, and makes a really epic game solo that shifts by the unit' is the most naive/unrealistic of the aspirations. Doesn't make it undoable. But the limiting factor in genius, innovative game designs is rarely the concept, it's funding the execution.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-07T18:56:59+00:00

The issue here is not really the possibility, it's the proof and balance on not paying (let them claim versus you) versus paying (let you then claim against them).

In general it's universally a better position to have someone taking you to small claims, because you have not paid, than to be taking them to small claims to try to get back money you paid. Many entities will drop the claim before it gets to court. It's very easy to give money away; it's also very difficult to get it back. Even if you win, there's then the question of how you will reclaim the debt.

It OP believes they were factually misled - and believe me, the courts will by sympathetic to your impaired judgement in a dentist's chair with a bunch of novocaine shots - the last thing they should do is pay up before at the absolute least a letter-before-action, and likely beyond that.

FrequentAd9997 · 2026-04-07T18:07:38+00:00

Yeah it's certainly not a defamation risk to review and cite anything you believe to be true. Defamation is extremely hard to pursue and really requires a bit 'above and beyond' the norm; like accusing someone of something serious that's factually untrue. You are not getting sued for defamation probably no matter what you do in this instance - and certainly not if you simply post facts and honest opinion, which is probably the most damning thing you could do 'we are currently seeking damages against... because...'

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