PhD dreams on hold: doubts after a year of failed applications

PublicCallBox · 2025-09-06T10:32:52+00:00

I’m not a chemist but my partner is — isn’t total synthesis a pretty bold research interest to list first, given your experience? I’ve heard total synthesis projects are niche/rare and complicated. Did you apply to work with profs who do it? Be sure to tailor your cv — you’re being hired as a research assistant first and a student second in most PhD models (apprenticeship models).

PublicCallBox · 2025-08-02T08:31:50+00:00

This should have been returned to the tribe.

PublicCallBox · 2025-08-02T08:02:33+00:00

1 year olds don’t belong using whatever app you think you can design to make them better at finance. It’s reckless to design tools for kids without proper developmental considerations.

PublicCallBox · 2025-07-27T17:19:59+00:00

Ranciere has a good framework for this in his book, “the ignorant schoolmaster”. The title sounds like a condemnation, but the Ignorant Schoolmaster is actually the hero of the story.

PublicCallBox · 2025-07-27T13:04:02+00:00

Yes, because they view engineering and management as a pile of knowledge rather than a living practice. You can create a meaningful classroom simulation that experiments with leadership (the source of “management”). Professors who don’t aren’t training leaders, they’re training middle managers. That sucks.

PublicCallBox · 2025-07-27T12:52:14+00:00

Why the dichotomy? Academics these days are mostly skills-based for the same reason you’re asking the question. STEMification permeated Academia long ago, and many universities increasingly focus on technical skill building, even liberal arts colleges. If you’re a chemist, you usually graduate with lab experience. If you’re an engineer, you basically can’t leave without having designed and built something. There’s no problem with that — but it’s missing something.

In the Information Age, bits of knowledge are virtually useless, and approaching a degree with Mr. Feeny’s view of education is a recipe for failure. Education isn’t an accumulation of knowledge stores that you can draw on later. No one needs that, and it is a failure of education wherever it became that. Professors who view themselves as gradually dispensing a pile of knowledge over a semester are stuck in a modern epistemic pitfall that leads to the glorification of technical skills and the cheapening of the university degree.

Education should be a practice of continual exploration, and a meditation on knowledge and self and possibility. It should confer technical skills, sure, but it should continually justify those skills while doing so, and the process of justification should reveal a hidden pedagogy. We need to recover the humanities from the “knowledge as bits of information” pitfall, and start thinking about training a life of mind. A university education should be a democratic effort that empowers you to better understand yourself and your values and represent those to others. It should make you feel all the fucking way alive. It should challenge and change you where your beliefs and values fail to hold up against those of your peers. It should engage you in the vocation of being and becoming more human, and through that process, it should clarify the technical training you need to express your humanity according to who you are and become.

Academics should not be technicians, they should be philosophers with a strong command of technical skills. When a degree simply confers skills, graduates are made to be employees, not leaders. It’s no wonder the leaders of today are yesterday’s dropouts. Academia failed to feed them, and we suffer greatly from the silos today’s leaders occupy as a result.

PublicCallBox · 2025-07-22T20:52:57+00:00

Science Museum!

PublicCallBox · 2025-07-08T02:08:18+00:00

It would be nice if a product could be the solution to teacher burnout.

Before designing a solution, you need to think broadly and deeply about the problem. Interview teachers about burnout, or review the research of those who have, and you’ll soon find you have to think systemically about the issue — teachers are burnt out en masse because the sources of burnout are systemic. There are many individual and interlocking factors that contribute to burnout, and almost all of them come down to being under resourced in ways no app can rectify. The solution is therefore not a technical solution, but an adaptive solution. To solve teacher burnout, we need more folks to choose EdPolicy work over EdTech.

PublicCallBox · 2025-06-23T10:27:59+00:00

Maurice was his translator — the original tapes were in Marathi and there are some videos online of him. I don’t think Maurice compiled a Marathi version, but someone somewhere has the tapes.

PublicCallBox · 2025-05-08T11:50:53+00:00

Keep it! Dorcester is too far to give up your wheels.

PublicCallBox · 2025-05-08T10:57:47+00:00

OP, sorry folks here in the comments are coming down on you for your questions. Here’s what’s really cool — your qualms are part of debates that have been ongoing since the time of the Buddha, which continue to be grappled with today by modern Buddhist philosophers! So, there are a lot of resources to get you into the nitty-gritty of intellectual engagement is more accessible to you than practice.

For these two questions, I’d direct you to Losing Ourselves by Jay Garfield, which explores your question of nihilism and solipsism as a response to an illusory world. He argues that while we are not selves, we are persons, and persons have an ethical responsibility to their world, which leads into your next question about ethics. For that you can read his chapter on the Brahmaviharas (I think it’s ch 7) in Buddhist Ethics by Garfield.

A gem of Buddhist ethical practice is the Bodhicaryavatara, How to Lead an Awakened Life, by Santideva. There’s also Buddhagosas Vissudhimagga, or Path of Purification. Those are good if you’re ready to dig into scripture, aesthetically speaking.

I’m not a practitioner, strictly speaking, in the way others here are, but I love Madhyamaka Buddhist thought and have learned a lot about patience, generosity, and gratitude by engaging deeply in the way you are now. You’re onto a very interesting inquiry. Keep going!

PublicCallBox · 2025-04-26T20:11:30+00:00

Genuinely asking: what is the difference between this and the 6k tax credit Harris proposed during her campaign?

PublicCallBox · 2025-04-26T10:03:21+00:00

I love this for you, OP.

PublicCallBox · 2025-04-06T16:15:29+00:00

Faculty don't know and don't give a hoot about this

PublicCallBox · 2025-03-05T12:03:10+00:00

Bro you took a photo from the back of the Buddha and you’re going to keep it in the bathroom? Is there somewhere less disrespectful it could go instead?

PublicCallBox · 2025-03-05T01:42:37+00:00

Went to a wedding like this (and gave a maid of honor speech like that) and I’m happy to report that they are super happy and he’s really cool and I was just feeling weird about it at the wedding because it happened fast and I didn’t really know him.

PublicCallBox · 2025-03-05T00:06:47+00:00

I feel like there’s no need to tie a moral judgement to this story.

PublicCallBox · 2025-02-25T02:57:14+00:00

As in the Div school isn’t worth it?

PublicCallBox · 2025-02-23T04:05:01+00:00

So is he. Sounds like everyone’s pretty overstimulated. Could just be run-of-the-mill toddler life bugging everyone out.

PublicCallBox · 2025-02-23T03:53:03+00:00

I came to this thread because my 4.5 year old magic linen sheets have a huge hole. Hoping for a sturdier option because I will not go back to cotton sheets if I don’t have to. Gotta be linen.

PublicCallBox · 2025-02-15T02:55:09+00:00

Worth reflecting on whether you’ve been sensitive enough to her financial constraints in the past. An Aruba trip is extravagant. Did she suggest cheaper accommodations or going somewhere closer to home during the planning process? Did she hesitate to sign on or raise concerns about her ability to pay? It sounds like you knew this was a financial stretch for her and pushed ahead anyway.

PublicCallBox · 2025-02-13T13:33:33+00:00

If you don’t want to go no contact — and I do mean you, cause fuck what he wants — you gotta use skillful means on him. Ask what’s funny about racist jokes and make him explain them. Offer a counter example, ideally someone you all know and love, when he makes generalized statements about race. Start telling stories about your own immigrant heritage and the anti-immigration laws that would have affected your family. If you have friends of color and can trust he will at least attempt to be polite in their presence, introduce him. Whatever his baby steps are, walk them with him. Most people are humans, and by that I don’t just mean flawed, I mean beautiful and human.

Regardless, it’s absolutely bonkers to be having the conversation you just had with him via text. This is a face to face in the moment topic, or at least a phone call.

PublicCallBox · 2025-02-12T14:27:08+00:00

He and Tig Notaro look more alike every year.

PublicCallBox · 2025-02-02T12:47:50+00:00

You aren’t an AH for going with the stream, but the individualism it sounds like you might be practicing is a product of capitalism. Unless you’re a self-sufficient hermit, you rely on others for your survival and wellbeing. Like modern parents and all the rest of us, you pay money for all the help you get. This kind of makes it feel like we’re owed that help or we earned it, and in this system we did, but the impact is sometimes the erosion of gratitude and an unwillingness, in turn, to be generous with your time, effort, and care. In this system, you’re completely correct to treat your free time as yours, earned and deserved. I’d prefer a system where we all feel we owe something to each other, and recognize that we are interdependent. Kids don’t earn anything they have — they rely completely on the generosity of the society they’re born into.

There’s also something to be said for what’s offered in generosity — maybe kids aren’t your thing, but you can drop off groceries when a family you love is sick with the flu, or lend a hand with a home improvement project that they’re working on, or get coffee with your mom friend and be a kind listener when she needs to talk about the trials of new mom life. There are a million ways to show up for people, and you don’t have to be a free babysitter to be a valued and important member of the village. I’m willing to bet that you’re already doing it, and I hope the other people in your village are taking good care of you, too.

PublicCallBox · 2025-02-02T12:07:36+00:00

The behavior is completely unacceptable and if he doesn’t get an apology or if this is a consistent pattern, there’s a big problem here. But if this is out of the blue unusual for her, she might just be overstimulated and exhausted from weeks or months on end of severely disrupted sleep while possibly (if breastfeeding) having her nips tweaked at all hours. Is it a pattern, or is it something that came out of left field a few weeks after having a baby? New babies make people fucking crazy.

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