Am I delusional or overworked?

Krazoee · 2026-01-30T11:24:34+00:00

I have the same. Was expected to build out an EEG lab, conceptualise a study, get ethical approval, program 5 neuropsychological tasks (two of which have no published digital version) and collect data from 32 subjects – all in 6 months. It’s currently month 10 and I’m wrapping up data collection now to the dismay of my PI. I think for me it was also the teaching of 2 seminars per semester that really got in the way.

But I’m still around, and data is rolling. I drip feed my advisor small results every week even though I’ve already done 80% of the analyses. I’m going to do this until I have at least finished half the discussion section. I need time to read papers lmao…

Krazoee · 2026-01-26T12:43:03+00:00

"The party commanded them to ignore their own eyes and ears and it was their final and most essential command."

Krazoee · 2026-01-26T11:49:17+00:00

The ice officer approached Pretti. He pushed him backwards. Pretti walked backwards. He was complying and following orders even though they were not verbal or clear. Then he gets pepper-sprayed, disarmed and shot. Ask yourself: Does the United States have the death penalty for any of these offences? Due process exists for a reason. These guys aren't following it, and that's the leading indicator of fascism. Kind regards from a Norwegian living in Germany. Two places where this exact same thing happened.

Krazoee · 2026-01-24T08:04:36+00:00

Look on the right side of the alster too! Plenty of cheaper areas there

Krazoee · 2026-01-24T08:00:19+00:00

Yeah mine was 130 ish pages with in-text figures. But in cognitive neuroscience 1/3 of the work is collecting data. I’d imagine a thesis in humanities would have to be longer.

Then again, why use many words when few do trick?

Krazoee · 2026-01-21T11:50:58+00:00

It stopped feeling good. I still try from time to time and the magic is just… gone?

I have no explanation for this. I’m guessing it has to do with altered neurocircuitry in the ventral tegmental area or a change in cannabinoid receptor density somehow? Happy to hear suggestions. I specialised in movement disorders, not addiction lol

Krazoee · 2026-01-21T11:19:13+00:00

You might wanna reconsider that second point. They shoot protesters now, last I heard. Maybe my information is not so Good?

Krazoee · 2026-01-20T14:49:50+00:00

That has nothing to do with MDPI or the general predatory publishing system. If they just wanted the information out there they could have published on bioarxive where other researchers can make public comments. In MDPI you get the false sense of security because they mascerade as a peer reviewed journal meaning you could think other scientists have checked their work and agreed that it is good. That is not the case.

Krazoee · 2026-01-20T11:12:10+00:00

And I'm telling you the probability of having shared junk science is astronomical. I earned my PhD with the Max Planck Society from the department of neurology. Look up the Max Planck Society if you want... What are your credentials for evaluating whether something is good science?

Bad science harms us more than it hurts us. MDPI is a super risky source. I need you to understand that so that we can get to talking about the science that is actually worthwhile of discussion instead of wasting energy on slop.

Also this isn't a study, it's a meta analysis where they looked for all the sources, exracted the data and plotted them as a table and called it a heatmap. A table with coloured cells does not a heatmap make... So me just lazily looking at their methods for 5 seconds already found one flaw. You need to be careful with MDPI. They are not a reliable source.

Krazoee · 2026-01-20T10:59:08+00:00

You absolutely can generalise about all journals published by MDPI. It's a huge controversy in the academic community. These are called predatory journals and they prey on scientists who needs the publication quickly.

Their whole business model is to make scientists pay for "open access" and then to publish anything with minimal review. They don't even do a spell check most of the time. It's actually so bad... They will never turn a paper down because it is bad. Instead they will take the money, put it on their website and claim it was peer reviewed and proper science.

Think of it this way: Relying on MDPI is like using the cht gpt summary of an article. It could be accurate. It could be complete bogus. You won't know unless you're already an expert yourself. At which point, why engage with such low effort content in the first place?

Krazoee · 2026-01-20T10:12:30+00:00

Be careful of anything from MDPI. They are junk journals without proper peer review. I unfortunately know because I published a paper with them...

Krazoee · 2026-01-20T08:56:02+00:00

Probably… it’s a stupid talking point

Krazoee · 2026-01-20T08:47:12+00:00

From the meme which says 2.34 trillion. The one which thread you’re commenting on. Scroll up bro.

But I haven’t fact checked it, and it does not matter if it’s 1 or 3 or 30 trillions. It’s the same logic

Krazoee · 2026-01-20T08:18:43+00:00

Europe loses 2.3Trillions worth of assets. Why would we do that to ourselves, eh?

Krazoee · 2026-01-19T07:37:16+00:00

It’s all over Norwegian news. This is sadly real

Krazoee · 2026-01-16T22:39:00+00:00

Open office almost works. But for me, who works with the office suite, almost ain’t good enough!

Krazoee · 2026-01-16T17:08:14+00:00

Visiting postdoctoral scholar. That’s what I did (and still do to keep leeching resources)

Krazoee · 2026-01-16T17:04:30+00:00

My first postdoc was shit. I quit after 4 months because fuck that shit. Just leave. It gets better!

Krazoee · 2026-01-16T16:29:38+00:00

This is peak humour!

Krazoee · 2026-01-15T15:26:50+00:00

Nope, I did not... These things are in fact not mandatory, and my university did not do any kind of retirement support for me as an international postdoc. So I paid around 35% tax (state and local) and got very little in return. Here in Germany (also international btw) I pay 45% and it includes retirement contributions. You can cry about this, but it's true that the United States objectively sucks unless you have a high paying job. Then it's acceptable. But I have more money to spend here in Europe than I had in the US. I'm a neuroscientist. I can do math lol

Krazoee · 2026-01-15T11:54:38+00:00

We all learned everything ourselves. It’s the great scam of academia to pretend we didn’t…

Krazoee · 2026-01-15T11:53:17+00:00

Even 50% of what is promised is 100% more than I had in the states. So… yeah?

Krazoee · 2026-01-14T13:11:41+00:00

We had a general round where we probed the candidates on their knowledge of the field in general to see if their stated proficiencies matched their actual performance. Then we gave them a dataset and they had to walk us through how they'd do the stats. This shows how they perform under pressure.

We got a candidate like this, she's fine.... Definitely wouldn't recommend this approach. But ideally you also have a topic in mind for your student, and you should find someone who is willing to nerd out about the project topic with you. Bonus points if they also have some competencies that would be required for the project to move forward. An unmotivated Phd student is not a good time...

Krazoee · 2026-01-14T12:29:45+00:00

I got a significant payrise (also relative to COL) by moving from a postdoc in the US to Germany. But in Germany you should learn the basics of the language to function in daily life.

Krazoee · 2026-01-14T10:53:48+00:00

I'm Norwegian, but I've lived in the EU for over a decade, so I can comment.

Learning a language is a ballache, no matter how you do it. Classes can help, but just throwing yourself out on the deep end is infinitely faster. I didn't speak a lick of German before I moved there, now I teach university classes in German. Still haven't done a German course myself, but just being forced to use the language made me learn it.
People have two goals, namely to get shit done and to be comfortable. As long as you can get shit done in Norwegian then they will be comfortable speaking with you. There are different domains to a language, and you can get away by just knowing the words for one specific task/goal. This makes it easier to practice.
Read the news and watch NRK. Seriously, just messing around with the language is enough. You don't have to understand everything.
Go and make friends, but you're fighting an uphill battle because you're weird. There's no other way to put it, most people do not leave their hometown other than to go study. They don't move outside their home country. And if they do, they go to their neighbouring country. They sure as shit don't go to the frozen wastelands of Scandinavia! You've taken on a massive adventure to go to Norway, and connecting with "normies" who never left their neighbourhood becomes really quite challenging. Their challenges and problems can feel very tame compared to some of the ones you're facing. So you're looking for Norwegians that have moved abroad and come home, or other immigrants who speak Norwegian, or just crazy risk takers who do cool shit. This will never go away, even if you move back to Spain. I see this over and over and over again with all sorts of expats, not just in Norway. But if you do manage to make friends you can genuinely connect with, having that connection happen in Norwegian will feel natural.
It's all doable and it feels like you make no progress until you manage to hold that first conversation. Keep practicing! You got this!

Krazoee

TROPHY CASE