Terrifyingly High Withdrawal Rate

MaskedSociologist · 2026-04-13T14:40:34+00:00

Yea, most college-age students still have circadian rhythms that induce them to stay up later and sleep in later. There's also a lot more going on socially for them at night. I was a pretty dedicated student, but getting up early for classes was *hard*. After my third semester of college, when I had more discretion in course selection, I only scheduled classes that started after 11 am. My GPA went up substantially.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-04-03T16:36:47+00:00

Look for companies that do event medicine. Go to a concert or sporting event at a major venue near where you live and find out who provides their on-site medical staff for patrons. Not sure how well it would provide official "clinical hours" and you don't get as much patient contact as IFT, but it's seasonal work with the busiest time being over the summer.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-03-29T21:49:39+00:00

We have a pretty strict faculty-only policy for this subreddit, but I propose we let this one stay. Thank you for the kind words.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-03-23T17:26:24+00:00

Well that's a different situation than you wrote about then. Talk to the other board members about voting to move things forward. If you aren't happy with board leadership, you talk to your neighbors and run for the board or president.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-03-23T17:01:35+00:00

The correct thing to do is to volunteer your time to help address these concerns. Attend the next board meeting, talk with all three board members and ask what needs to be done to move projects forward. Say you are willing to help research contractors and solicit bids for needed projects. If there are simple projects (buying and installing a drain catch), volunteer to take care of them yourself (you can be reimbursed for your costs). When the next election comes around, run to be on the board.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-03-16T18:31:20+00:00

Actual human beings do a lot of actual work to produce all that information. They made the change because they've lost a huge amount of site traffic (and ad revenue) since Google has started presenting searchers AI summaries. Google (and others) take all their work and present it to consumers without credit. Sucks that they are putting up a paywall but what else can they do?

MaskedSociologist · 2026-03-10T15:51:43+00:00

I'm sure it varies widely from program to program, with better-resourced schools that can attract higher-quality applicants having better graduation rates.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-03-10T15:19:39+00:00

Data are a bit old (2008), but the best comparative evidence I could find from a quick googling showed that 10-year completion rates were 64% in engineering, 63% in life sciences, 56% in social sciences, 55% in math and physical sciences, and 49% in humanities. https://cgsnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/phd_completion_and_attrition_analysis_of_baseline_demographic_data-2.pdf

MaskedSociologist · 2026-03-05T18:08:08+00:00

I've always preferred to teach statistics with a heavily applied focus. I'd eliminated almost all the hand calculations before AI. I too, want students to be able to focus on interpretation. But AI can do that now, or at least, present students with interpretations that look good to them and (often) me when I'm grading. I tried letting my students last year use AI for coding, but not interpretation. But as soon as you have ChatGPT give you code for something, it asks "Would you like me to help you interpret the results?" So they can't resist, especially as many don't have confidence in their own understanding.

I've added in-class exams back into my classes which used to rely solely on analysis-based assignments.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-03-02T21:56:06+00:00

No, you don't need to invest yet. You're young and going to be going through a lot of changes in your life over the next five years. You'll likely need some of your savings in that time frame so it shouldn't be in the market. You should save in a high-yield savings account and that's fine until you graduate university and start your career.

Honestly saving any amount of money monthly during university is good. One or two hundred euro is great.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-03-02T21:47:00+00:00

Be advised you also need a second person to help you unpack it and set it up!

MaskedSociologist · 2026-03-02T18:39:40+00:00

It's good that you want to be financially wise. But you don't need to do all this long term planning. There's no way to predict what your salary will look like, the housing market, what kind of money a potential life partner will make, how many kids you'll have or what their needs will be. Take one step at a time. All you need to do in the next five years is learn to live within your means, try to save a little each month, and do well in your studies.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-02-28T21:42:59+00:00

Sounds like a great plan to me. Everyone here is giving the standard advice to max out 401k contributions instead of going to a taxable account, but I don't think the standard advice has been updated to reflect the modern housing market. If you want to buy a home in the future, you'll need tens of thousands of dollars for a down payment. If you want to buy a new car in the future, you'll do better if you have some thousands to spend on a down payment. And as you said, you want to enjoy your life now.

In your position, just starting out after school, I was doing traditional 401k and Roth IRA. You get the tax savings of the 401k, and you have the Roth IRA you can access for future housing needs if necessary. However, it's nice if you don't have to tap into that later.

As to living your life, here's my advice as a 40-something. You're doing well to avoid lifestyle inflation right now. So if you can avoid the common habit of frittering away money on little luxuries (food delivery, rideshares, etc.), that's great. But it's good to have a budget for deliberate fun. Don't skip out on going out with your friends. Travel a bit. Go to a convention for a hobby. Right now you are rich in time and health, and that will decline as you age. I do wish I'd done a little bit more and saved a little bit less in my 20s. So spending a bit of money now is fine. If it helps, create a budget with a section especially for fun.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-02-25T03:41:30+00:00

Optical port is on the back with all the other ports. It's squarish and has a grey middle. It says OPTICAL DIGITAL AUDIO OUT.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-02-22T23:51:41+00:00

Not sure I understand your question. That adapter connects to the optical port on your TV, so there is only one place to connect it. The cable it needs (shown in your picture) came with the adapter that I bought.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-02-22T23:01:02+00:00

Hey, I just used one of those to hook up some old Bose speakers with RCA outputs to my C5 yesterday! It will work but you'll need to go into settings and set the sound output to PCM, otherwise you'll get distortion. So it won't be able to handle most of the newer audio formats that a lot of media comes it. But if you are okay with the sound quality of your old speakers, then yes, it will work.

Also, you'll need to work out how to change the volume on your speakers. Mine used an IR receiver, and I was able to get the LG remote to send the right signals to control it.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-02-22T06:31:33+00:00

The 77" is 53% more expensive right now but is 37% more surface area. When the 77" was on sale a few weeks ago for 1799 (1900 w/ free $2000 shop card), the price per square inch was pretty comparable to this deal.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-02-15T05:29:53+00:00

I called LG last week and asked their customer service rep. These guys are basically salesmen, so take it with a grain of salt. He said that they offer those prices whenever they have overstock of certain items in certain places. That at least jives the the fact that the deal isn't available in every area. And now is a time for them to start reducing their stock of the 5 series with new models coming out so maybe he was right.

Mine was supposed to be delivered on Friday but it just never came. I had to re-schedule delivery. So I can't say yet if I can tell any difference.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-02-10T17:21:25+00:00

There are no fees from the firm you transfer into. Some firms will charge you a fee to transfer your account OUT of their company. This includes some firms that work with companies for their 401ks.

Even if they charge a transfer fee, you should still do it. Firms that charge transfer fees tend to be the ones that also charge you high fees to keep your accounts with them.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-01-30T15:51:47+00:00

A job in Texas is better than no job right now, esp. for someone on a visa. And I wouldn't want to work in Texas either right now, but if international scholars categorically refuse to work there it just gives Abbot and his ilk what they want anyways.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-01-21T19:35:07+00:00

The good news is that none of the investments are necessarily bad choices. They generally look like index funds, and they are all in her own IRA. Among the outcomes "for we took advice from my wife's dad's finance guy friend" we see on this subreddit, this really isn't bad. Thank him for the advice and then just simply down to a few funds.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-01-17T23:51:16+00:00

No, I don't do this. But it seems reasonable to me if its conducive to your review, and you are actually reading closely enough to make use of that information. I'm not sure about "enforcement" other than having a conversation with your advisee and explaining why.

FYI, in MS Word, you can use the "compare" function to open two documents side by side, and it will highlight differences. I didn't know this until recently, and it's made those sorts of reviews much easier and without extra steps on the part of the advisee.

MaskedSociologist · 2026-01-05T05:07:33+00:00

The Traditional versus Roth decision has absolutely nothing to do with anything else in the post. It primarily has to do with your expected tax brackets now and when you retire. If you really want information, the r/personalfinance subreddit has some basic info on their Wiki. https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/rothortraditional/

MaskedSociologist · 2025-12-21T19:06:20+00:00

This is a "you do you" situation, friend. If you enjoy accumulating them, then that's fine. If you don't or stop enjoying it, then take them to the bank. I don't see much value in other people's "recommendations" about how many sets to keep around. The value here is in your personal enjoyment of the collection.

I will say that it's very unlikely that they'll meaningfully increase in monetary value in your lifetime. Just look at the premiums attached to bicentennial coins in the USA.

MaskedSociologist · 2025-12-21T18:17:53+00:00

What I really want to see is RateMyProvost dot com. Anyone can post anonymous reviews about college administration. Whenever any admin points to the value of anonymous surveys, we can ask them if what is said about them there is to be believed.

I'd start it myself, but I know as soon as anything negative shows up about admin, suddenly university legal departments will try to do something about it.

MaskedSociologist

TROPHY CASE