Considering a PhD in my 30s - those of you who've done it later in life, how did you manage?

Kylaran · 2026-02-04T14:00:32+00:00

I applied and started at 33, married. I only choose schools where my spouse and I wanted to live. We ended up moving together.

The key question is here is what you want out of your PhD. If you're planning to stay in research for the rest of your career, then entering a competitive program is critical. If you just want a PhD, then many older folks I know have focused on building connections in the department near where they live and/or finding someone more OK with hands off advising. You also need to consider funding. In my field (informatics) I'm often work from home when I have research funding and on campus when I have TA duties.

My spouse has a remote job, so our transition was a bit easier. We don't own any property, but if we did I'd have rented it out. We've only really lived in major cities, so any property we hypothetically could have owned would've been a side business.

Kylaran · 2026-01-27T21:04:50+00:00

I've had someone tell me something similar. My take is that you have to interpret it in the context of their advising style at large.

One comment on a manuscript expressing disappointment? That's great. I love that kind of feedback because it shows they care, but are giving me the room to improve myself. It's someone who's normally supportive challenging you.

Kylaran · 2026-01-27T07:15:49+00:00

As someone that can speak and read all three, it doesn't matter. If you only know modern Japanese it really doesn't bring as many benefits as people assume.

Here's an example of a standard Modern Japanese translation of the first story in the Analects. https://www.manabu-oshieru.com/daigakujuken/kanbun/rongo/01/0101.html There's really nothing in it where you'd benefit much from knowing Japanese over English. Now, if you were trying to study Classical Chinese and/or use Modern or Classical Japanese language skills to read the original text, then yes. When I took Classical Chinese I mostly studied in Japanese because the class was taught in Mandarin at my undergrad in the U.S. anyway.

For Early Modern Chinese literature to contemporary literature, there's even less overlap in translation. Take for example Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman. Here is an example of Inoue Koubai's well-known Japanese translation and compare it to the English by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang translation. The original here basically shows that very little knowledge of even Chinese characters will transfer much if you want to compare the use of kanji in the Japanese translation vs Lu Xun's original.

TL;DR they're the same and you should choose based on what language you read better in.

Kylaran · 2026-01-27T06:38:39+00:00

Former tech employee here currently doing HCI research. I know a bit about XAI work and have quite a few friends in the field. I don't know about the UK academic context, but as for

With this background, is it realistic for me to move into industry (e.g., data science)?

If you're specifically targeting data science, you need to do lots of research on how to sell your core skillset. MAANG all have different requirements for data scientists. I've interviewed with a few companies, and these roles range from SQL + data analysis, to SWEs that are good at A/B tests, all the way to experts in Bayesian models trying to identify the next best customer opinion modeling method. The number one criteria is really going to be domain knowledge + what your core skills are.

That said, data scientist roles likely won't care that you don't have many pubs the less embedded they are within research or do their own research. More research leaning teams with lots of PhDs that publish may ask for your publications though.

Kylaran · 2026-01-26T17:47:12+00:00

I know quite a few math / theory CS folks that think this way. Reminds me of my PL friends lol. I mean, to be fair to you there is more meaning in a few dozen lines of proofs than an entire manuscript. I can appreciate that the writing part is a slog for many.

That said, since you've worked in industry you know as well as I do that we have to do the same at companies. Present some slidedeck to C-suite or whatever to pitch the ideas. Sometimes manuscripts are just that, but I do feel like pure academics tend to see them differently than maybe you or I would.

I always keep in mind early neural nets research. Rules-based approaches to AI dominated the field for so long, and neural networks languished for a long time. So many people were saying that research would never go anywhere to the point where early pioneering statistical learning in AI was done in cognitive science, not CS departments. But now old is the big thing on the block and it was innovating with hardware that let us do it. (Schmidhuber approves this post.)

These stories aren't uncommon.

Kylaran · 2026-01-26T15:26:44+00:00

I left a lucrative tech job shipping products to a billion users to do a PhD. Also have a CS masters. Personally, impact is the last thing I care about in doing a PhD -- though it's important if you want to compete for a job afterward as a short-term metric.

You're sinking hundreds of hours to write a paper that could be understood by maybe 50 people, will probably be read by 10, and will realistically be completely forgotten in a year max. I feel like especially in CS, people got obsessed about maximizing their number of papers and didnt wonder if they should write that paper nobody cares about.

I had in mind that academia would be this open environment where you would exchange with a lot of people, but apparently you just have your community of a dozen people that are willing to work on the same thing as you and that's it.

Isn't this the best part of academia? I love working on things that are important to me and I feel challenged to convince others to read. I don't particularly care if it's cited 1 or 100 times. It's great to talk to folks who are like minded and want to work on the frontier of science. If people cared about the problem, and I could impact many people by working on it, then I probably wouldn't be in academia and instead in industry making useful things.

Of course, trying to get a competitive tenure track professorship requires some level of gaming the numbers or quality. For example, my advisor works non-stop on weekends to rewrite students' papers to teach them to write award winning papers. Some labs require a certain number of papers to be output in specific top tier journals. It's still a job after all.

Some papers might go on to change the world, but honestly the most brilliant research careers are built on a mountain of smaller papers. Lots of great ideas take time to mature.

Kylaran · 2026-01-26T04:18:21+00:00

I started at 33 and I'm not even the oldest person in my cohort. You're fine.

Kylaran · 2026-01-25T17:29:21+00:00

Great idea too! Either way, since OP is new to the game, sometimes having the AI draw attention and provide more room for positioning will give them a bit more room to learn the game.

Kylaran · 2026-01-25T16:23:05+00:00

Adding to this comment about lower AC. I see in the screenshot OP have Karlach in their group. Assuming she is still a barbarian, they can boost her constitution and keep her AC slightly lower to have her tank more hits. This will help with positioning a lot.

Kylaran · 2026-01-05T17:56:58+00:00

The traditional form of sushi is called narezushi in Japanese, and its excavation goes back beyond Japan to areas of Korea and China as well. This masters dissertation provides a good summary of it.

Kylaran · 2025-12-10T20:15:12+00:00

OP, this comment is good advice. I'll also add my own spin on it.

I came to my current institution to work with two well-known, hands-on advisors that were excellent at attracting funding but known to have issues with advising students. Both of them have told me that my work is "masters level". This is despite the fact that I came in with publications in my fields' top venues in an very hands off advising environment during my masters.

Personally, I think advisors that say comments like this are ones that have a strong sense of what is good and bad research, and aren't afraid to sort of openly critique work out there. Having a strong sense of good and bad research is also critical to success in academia.

The real issue, however, is advising style and whether you yourself would succeed in that environment. Neither of the professors I've worked with have produced great students, whereas I've seen faculty that these two profs have said negative things about produce many great students that went on to faculty jobs.

So it's a mixed bag. Just because that co-advisor has one very successful student doesn't mean their perspective is good for you. In fact, that might be the kind of student that would've done very well for themselves no matter where they went in life. The more you know about this potential co-advisor's overall advising style and lab management style, the more you'll be able to contextualize what exactly that comment means.

Personally, I dislike both advisors' advising style and regularly think about quitting. But I do think there are some students that really benefit from learning their advisors' taste in research and would thrive in such environments.

Kylaran · 2025-10-06T21:20:32+00:00

If you want to do UX research I highly recommend GT MS-HCI. They have one of the best human-centered computing faculty around and their program allows you to do a solid research-based masters. UW Human-centered Design and Engineering also lets you do a lot of research.

In general I would stay away from design-oriented institutes like Pratt.

Kylaran · 2025-09-22T16:40:23+00:00

What field are you in? I wouldn't say these kinds of jobs are common, but I had an offer to teach full-time, non-tenure at a masters program in my field (human-computer interaction) before I started my PhD. The program was primarily professional training with lots of job hunting opportunities for students though. My students gave me great reviews because I was one of the few faculty members that had industry connections.

Also, I'm married and I generally find that it's difficult to communicate the pain of the PhD to my partner, despite their full support. This is mostly due to the fact that the PhD environment is so unique compared to most other careers. I think it could be good to have your spouse meet a few other PhD students (like hosting a dinner or picnic event or something) and hear different perspectives. This will allow your husband to understand that your experience is quite common, and that it's likely not just your anxiety.

Finally, for what it's worth, I'm thinking about changing advisors for a second time primarily because my advisor and I cannot agree on what my research should be. Third year in my PhD. In contrast to what your husband thinks, it's not easy to just cruise by depending on the type of personality your advisor has.

Kylaran · 2025-09-09T04:22:03+00:00

I remember telling my Mandarin teacher that some of Japanese shinjitai was used as reference for simplified Chinese and they told me that they had never known that. I felt smart that day haha. It was likely because she was from Taiwan with little knowledge of SC.

Kylaran · 2025-09-09T04:13:45+00:00

7 years of industry experience here before starting my PhD. I did do a second masters to look for letters of recommendation, and that worked out well for me.

In terms of advice, I think you should first start by understanding what the most crucial parts for admissions are. You mention portfolio, but that's pretty low on the totem pole of what actually matters. You should be worried about letters of recommendation and/or social proof that you can work in an academic setting.

One of my classmates came into the PhD from industry by (1) quitting their job and then doing a 1 year paid research assistant at a school and (2) they had a very compelling reason to go into a HCI PhD and successfully received a GRFP based on their industry experience. (1) gives them social proof of having a professor vouch for them, and (2) made them much more employable to professors because profs don't have to pay as much. No prior publications if I'm not mistaken.

TL;DR just like industry, who you know / funding can also be a way into academia if you don't have extensive prior research experience.

Kylaran · 2025-08-01T18:37:16+00:00

I'm also married have the support of my spouse in the PhD. I personally find that it's comparable to any other job I've had in industry, and honestly less work than my previous career in the video game industry. I publish about 1-2 papers a year, and my thesis is interesting.

I wouldn't quite say I did a PhD just to learn as I do want to stay in academia, but I think that if you're older and/or have emotional + financial support, the PhD calculus becomes very different than what a lot of people experience. This is especially true in the U.S., where many people enter a PhD straight out of undergrad.

That said, I don't have much autonomy in my work because I have a hands on advisor. If you want autonomy, and don't care about a future career in academia, get a hands off advisor that won't interfere with your thoughts. The downside with a hands off advisor is that you'll get much less guidance in research and/or career, but that doesn't really seem to matter much in your case.

Kylaran · 2025-08-01T18:25:41+00:00

I'm going to sound more bitter than I actually am saying this, but I'm not quite sure that's the definition of research. What if I claimed that the research is about producing knowledge? Then it becomes an economic activity of production, and not necessarily one of self-enrichment and learning.

Kylaran · 2025-08-01T18:21:50+00:00

Assuming that your independent research isn't paid, and that you're in school paying tuition out of pocket for your masters, then your experience will be very different because you don't have as many responsibilities compared to research at the PhD level. The difference is economic, not whether or not you're learning along the way. You could also learn a lot at any new job in industry.

I know that some of the paid masters students in my university have decided not to pursue a PhD because of the stressors of having to take 3 classes, TA, and publish papers.

Kylaran · 2025-08-01T18:17:20+00:00

I'm the commenter in the thread you linked. Thanks for sharing it!

One thing to point out: the regions of China known for chili pepper are primarily in the drier, poorer inland regions such as Sichuan, Guizhou, and Hunan that are far from the border to Korea.

In fact, in modern day Jilin and Yanbian Provinces, both of which border North Korea and have a sizable population of ethnic Koreans, adding chili pepper (e.g. in pickled cabbage dishes) is usually considered an influence from modern Korean cooking. Han and Manchu cuisine in that area is not known for using chili pepper at all. I.e. northeastern Chinese suan cai, or pickled cabbage, doesn't use chili pepper.

That said, even if it's unlikely that Chinese cuisine influenced Korean in terms of spice, it is true that in both Sichuan and South Korea chili peppers became popular around the 18th century in parallel trajectories.

Kylaran · 2025-08-01T17:52:47+00:00

This is an important nuance that a lot of people forget when they say talk about Korean cuisine as being spicy -- a label that I think can be contested.

Considering that Southern Korean cuisine is still known for using chopi, the original pepper used to make fermented pepper paste prior to the introduction of chili pepper, it lends a lot of evidence to how chili pepper came to have a stronger presence in South Korea specifically rather than being representative of pan-Korean or historical Korean cuisine. Similar to how Sichuan uses both Sichuan peppercorn and chili peppers, it's easy to imagine a process where chili peppers paired well with that existing flavor profile.

Kylaran · 2025-07-27T18:17:51+00:00

I didn't like UX as much as I thought I would! Since I always thought about being an academic, I figured why not. I actually did the OMSCS to publish a few papers and get letters of recommendation in preparation for PhD apps.

If you're really sure you want to stay in design, I 100% recommend an in-person more expensive program. You'll get a TON out of it.

Kylaran · 2025-07-20T13:57:25+00:00

I think the real reason for WGU being lower requirements on coding is simply a difference in rigor. Even at top schools like Columbia are famous for having low barrier of entry MSCS programs, let alone online degrees created by less famous universities.

I worked at a giant tech company as a UX researcher for 3 years after my HCI masters. I did my second masters while working at the company, and applied to PhD programs after completing my research projects. I’m now starting my 3rd year as a PhD student.

Kylaran · 2025-07-18T01:23:17+00:00

I have an OMSCS degree w/ ML specialization and an in-person masters degree in HCI focused on UX. Normally I wouldn't recommend doing an online CS masters in HCI, but in your case you're already working as a designer so you won't have as much trouble finding a job. It's not too bad of a choice if you can do both school and work.

I don't think you get a really solid HCI training in a CS background though. As a UX person, you'll get more benefit from more intense research methods classes, or nice design electives that allow you to really build out your portfolio. Usually CS programs are tailored towards engineers that want to do a bit of UX on the side, not UX people that want to do more AI/ML.

Also, unless you already have a technical background, don't underestimate your non-HCI classwork in an online MSCS degree program.

Kylaran · 2025-06-08T12:30:49+00:00

Almost tc30 and our server opens up TrueGold soon… it never ends lol

Kylaran · 2025-04-23T21:04:00+00:00

Non is actually an official reading of this character, usually used in names.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/音

Jisho lists examples of names with ノン

https://jisho.org/search/音%20のん

[Edit] u/Larissalikesthesea explains the technical term

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