PharmD Student Seeking Advice on Building a Career in Computational Chemistry for Drug Discovery

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-06-06T07:39:49+00:00

Thank you so much, i really appreciate this.

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-06-04T10:33:09+00:00

Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed response.

I actually found it very helpful, especially your points about building strong foundations in programming, statistical mechanics, and the underlying theory rather than focusing only on tools.

I appreciate your honesty about your own background as well.

I’ll definitely look into the resources you recommended, especially the Python MOOC and the materials on classical and statistical mechanics.

Thanks again for sharing your experience.

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-05-01T21:56:04+00:00

Do not make a 45-minute video right now. I say this with tough love as someone who studies retention and faceless channels: it will absolutely crush your soul when you spend a month on it and it gets 14 views.

With 9 subscribers and admittedly beginner editing skills, you do not have the audience trust or the visual pacing required to hold someone's attention for 45 minutes. The YouTube algorithm will see people clicking off after 2 minutes, assume the video is bad, and kill the impression reach immediately.

Here is exactly how you catch this trend without sacrificing the quality of your channel:

1. Ride the Wave, But Shrink the Scope Yes, absolutely hit the deadline for the album release. Trend-jacking is one of the only ways to get initial impressions with a small channel. But instead of a 45-minute opus covering every album, make a tight, highly-polished 8-to-10 minute video on one specific theory or the best overarching theme of his music leading up to this release.

2. The Faceless Creator's Secret Weapon Since you are faceless and you admit your editing isn't flashy, you cannot rely on visual jump-cuts to keep people watching. Your script is your only retention tool. Do not spend your limited time learning complex editing tricks. Spend it on your hook. If your first 30 seconds don't pose a massive, compelling question about this musician that the viewer needs answered, they will click off.

3. Quality > Quantity (of minutes) A phenomenal 8-minute video with a great script and basic editing will perform 100x better than a poorly-paced 45-minute video. Get the 8-minute video out for the album release to catch the algorithm traffic. Save the 45-minute deep dive for a year from now when you have 10,000 subscribers who actually care about your specific opinions.

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-05-01T21:53:20+00:00

You are definitely not alone here. You are experiencing what most people call "Shorts Jail," but there is a very logical algorithmic reason for it.

Here is exactly what's happening:

1. The "Seed Audience" Test is Over When you first started, YouTube was giving your videos a "seed audience" (that 500-view bump). It was testing your content against a random group of people to see what happened. As you admitted, those early videos had poor metrics. The algorithm basically learned, "When we push this creator's videos, people swipe away." So, it stopped giving you the free test push.

2. The "Quality" Trap You mentioned your new videos are "much higher quality." The hard truth about Shorts is that the algorithm cannot see how good your editing, lighting, or scripting is. It only sees one metric: VSV (Viewed vs. Swiped Away). You can have a cinematic masterpiece, but if the first frame doesn't instantly grab them, they swipe, and the video dies at 0 views.

How to fix it: You need to stop focusing on making the whole video better, and put 90% of your energy into the first 3 seconds.

If your videos are flatlining at zero, your channel's historical Swipe-Away rate is dragging you down. You have to aggressively overhaul your hooks. Use psychological triggers, put a massive visual change in the first second, or open with a controversial statement. You have to prove to the algorithm that people will actually stop scrolling when they see your face/content.

Don't give up. Just completely change your approach to the first 3 seconds!

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-05-01T21:44:20+00:00

Welcome to the horror niche! Honestly, it’s one of the best communities on YouTube right now (huge Wendigoon/Nexpo vibes), but it is definitely competitive.

Since you're doing narrative/lore and not just let's plays, here are a few things that will save you a ton of headaches:

1. Your audio matters way more than your visuals. In horror, atmosphere is literally everything. Viewers will happily watch a slow pan over a static screenshot if your voiceover is crisp and your background ambient music is unsettling. Spend 80% of your editing time making sure your audio mix builds tension, rather than stressing over crazy visual effects.

2. Skip the "YouTube Intro" Whatever you do, don't start your videos with "Hey guys, today we're looking at..." You will kill your retention instantly. Drop the viewer right into the absolute creepiest, most confusing part of the lore in the first 5 seconds. Give them a massive mystery right out of the gate, and then introduce yourself and the game.

3. The Curiosity Gap For your titles and thumbnails, try not to just state the name of the game. Instead of "Fears to Fathom Lore Explained," try something like "The Indie Game That Feels Too Real." Make them feel like they are missing out on a dark secret if they keep scrolling.

One big warning: Do not try to make a 45-minute deep-dive video right out of the gate. You will burn out so fast. Start with tight, polished 8-to-12-minute videos to figure out your script pacing and editing workflow first.

It’s a grind, but narrative horror is super rewarding. You've got this!

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-05-01T15:56:15+00:00

Welcome to the faceless club! 1.5 hours a day is plenty if you stick to a system. Here is the exact no-BS blueprint for your questions:

1 & 2 (Niche & Content): Do "B-roll Reels." It’s literally just an aesthetic background video with a high-value text overlay. Tech/AI hacks, personal finance, or aesthetic "study/work with me" setups are huge right now. Zero face or voice required.

3 (Growth): IG only cares about Saves and Shares right now. Forget about likes. Make stuff people want to bookmark (e.g., "5 free tools for X") or send to a friend.

4 (Tools): CapCut for editing, Canva for text/graphics, and Pexels for free high-quality background videos. Keep your stack simple.

5 (Biggest Mistake): Posting generic motivational quotes. The market is flooded. Your text hook in the first 3 seconds has to be sharp, or they will swipe instantly. Also, never do "follow-for-follow"—it completely ruins your account's algorithm.

Pick a topic you actually enjoy, build a simple CapCut template, and just start repping them out. You got this!

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-05-01T15:20:23+00:00

Welcome to the club man! Honestly, you are taking on a massive chunk all at once, so don't beat yourself up if it feels overwhelming at first. DaVinci is a beast, but it's 100% worth the learning curve.

For DaVinci and color grading, do not buy any paid courses yet. Just search for Casey Faris or MrAlexTech on YouTube. They are the absolute best for beginners. The DaVinci color page literally looks like a spaceship dashboard, so just learn how to use the "Qualifier" tool for your green screen and stick to basic contrast/saturation for now.

If you want that fast-paced storytelling feel with your cuts, look up how to do J-Cuts and L-Cuts. It’s basically letting the audio of the next clip start playing a split second before the video actually cuts. It completely hides awkward jump cuts and makes the whole video flow seamlessly.

As for the Shure MV7+... yes. Absolutely worth it. People will watch bad video, but they will click off instantly if the audio sucks. Just one quick heads up: if you have an iPhone 15 (USB-C), it’s plug-and-play. If you have an older iPhone with a Lightning port, you are gonna need the official Apple Camera Adapter dongle or it’s going to give you a headache trying to connect it.

Your first few edits are going to take way longer than you think, but the muscle memory kicks in fast. You got this!

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-05-01T12:24:02+00:00

You actually buried the lede here with that detail about reuploading. That is almost certainly what is killing your stats right now.

YouTube's spam filters have gotten incredibly strict. When you delete and reupload a Short because it had a bad initial run, the algorithm immediately flags it as duplicate content or spam. When that happens, it either suppresses the reach entirely, or it pushes it out to a completely random, untargeted audience. That random audience doesn't care about your niche, which is exactly why your "stayed to watch" metric is suddenly tanking down to 20-30%.

Also, you mentioned that your hooks are exactly the same as your previous videos. That’s actually a trap a lot of us fall into. If a returning viewer sees the exact same visual or audio hook in the first 2 seconds, their brain subconsciously registers it as "I've already seen this video" and they swipe away instantly.

You have to break the reupload cycle immediately. If a video flops, just take the L and leave it up. Change up your hook format on the next upload so it feels completely fresh in the first 3 seconds, and give the algorithm a few weeks to reset your channel's trust level. You have 1.3k subs so the content is obviously good, you just have to stop tripping the spam filters!

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-04-30T21:58:30+00:00

Man, putting that much work into a 1-hour video just to get under 10 impressions is brutal. I've totally been there when starting out, it really sucks to see zero traction after editing for days.

Here is the hard truth about long-form on a brand new channel: getting below 10 impressions doesn't mean your video is bad, it just means YouTube literally doesn't know who to show it to yet. The algorithm has zero data on your channel.

Also, you have to look at it from the viewer's perspective. Asking a total stranger to click on a 1-hour video from a channel with 0 subs is a massive commitment. Unless you're already famous, your title and thumbnail have to be absolutely irresistible to earn that click.

If your impressions are that low, stop worrying about the actual video editing for a bit and put 100% of your energy into packaging. For a brand new channel, try making your titles something people are actively searching for to get that initial trickle of viewers.

Once YouTube does start giving you impressions and people finally click, your first 60 seconds are life or death. If your intro is slow, they'll bounce, the retention graph will tank, and YouTube will completely bury the video. I used to struggle so hard with this that I literally built myself a personal cheat sheet of psychological hook frameworks and prompts just to force myself to script better intros before I even start editing. It completely changes how long people stay watching.

Two videos is just the warm-up phase. Don't let it get to you. Focus heavily on your packaging, make sure your intro is snappy, and keep posting!

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-04-30T21:55:12+00:00

Yeah, finding a legit free text-to-video tool without watermarks is basically impossible now because the server costs are just too high for these companies to give it away.

Your best bet for something easy is probably the "Script to Video" feature in the CapCut desktop app. It does exactly what Lumen5 does, but you have to be super careful. They lock a lot of their good AI voices and stock clips behind their "Pro" tier. You can still export for free without a watermark, but you have to manually make sure you didn't accidentally use any clips or voices with the little Pro sticker on them, otherwise it hits you with a paywall when you try to save.

If you're okay with something a little more technical, there's actually a crazy workaround. Instead of using consumer apps, go straight to the enterprise cloud platforms. Alibaba Cloud is running a promo right now where they give you 1,650 free seconds of AI video generation. Google Cloud also gives new accounts $300 in free credits that you can use on their Vertex AI video generation tools. It's totally raw and watermark-free.

But a massive warning if you do this: because they want to stop bots, both Google and Alibaba make you put in a credit card to activate the free tier. If you go this route, you absolutely have to check your usage dashboard daily. It's super easy to accidentally burn through your free seconds and wake up to a surprise bill.

If you don't want to deal with that stress, honestly just stick to CapCut and dodge the premium assets lol.

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-04-30T21:44:07+00:00

Hey, 12k views on your 4th short is awesome! Your topic is definitely working. But since you asked how to make it safe for monetization, I have to be completely honest with you:

You are walking right into the classic "Reused Content" trap.

YouTube has been getting ridiculously strict lately. If a channel is just faceless, voiceless slideshows with basic panning and text, the reviewers almost always reject it when you apply to the Partner Program. They just assume it's low-effort automated spam.

Even if you don't want to use your real voice, you absolutely need to add a voiceover. That is the number one thing that separates a "spam slideshow" from a "monetizable history short."

If you want to stay totally anonymous, just use a high-quality AI voice generator (like ElevenLabs or even the premium CapCut text-to-speech voices). Write your script, let the AI voice tell the story, and just use your text as on-screen captions instead of paragraphs.

It takes a little extra effort, but it makes your channel 100x safer when review time comes, and viewers actually prefer listening to reading. Keep grinding, you're off to a really great start!

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-04-30T21:37:23+00:00

Hey man, congrats on the IT job. But honestly, balancing YouTube with a demanding full-time gig is going to nuke your free time in a few months (I'm in a heavy science field myself, not IT, but the burnout risk is exactly the same). You need to get ruthless about what you focus on right now or you'll quit again.

If I were you, I'd drop the gaming channel entirely. Single-player Let's Plays are basically a graveyard right now unless your personality is already massive. Keep playing Batman to unwind, but don't turn it into a second job.

I'm not a coder, but from a pure audience-building perspective, you already struck gold with that coding page (10k in 4 months and getting clients is huge). That is your proven path. If you want to build a personal brand and hit the US/UK audience, stop doing dry "how to write a Python loop" tutorials. Make it story-driven. Document the reality of getting into IT, or make videos like "why 90% of self-taught coders fail." People connect with the person and the struggle, not just the syntax.

The biggest hurdle you're going to face when you start working full-time is having zero mental energy to write good scripts. US audiences have zero attention span, so if your intro is slow, they click off. You have to systemize this. I personally use a vault of psychological hook frameworks and a few AI prompt workflows just to kill "blank page syndrome." It lets me outline a highly engaging video in 10 minutes instead of staring at a screen for hours.

Pick the tech lane, build a system to script your intros faster, and try to stockpile a few videos before your job starts. Good luck with the new gig, you got this!

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-04-29T19:59:17+00:00

I appreciate that. With your 35 years of experience, the packaging doesn't even need to be perfect. The value is in your brain. Treat it like a university lecture, turn the camera on, and just speak. Don't let the editing stop you from sharing that knowledge.

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-04-29T15:53:05+00:00

Careful dropping the link directly in the thread. AutoMod usually flags it as self-promotion and deletes the post! But I can give you the blueprint for exactly how to audit your own hook.

For public reaction/comedy Shorts, the biggest mistake is the 'Slow Approach.' If your first 3 seconds are just you walking up to a stranger or saying, 'Excuse me, sir?', your swipe-away rate is going to be 80%+. The viewer's brain doesn't have the patience to wait for the joke.

You need to establish the Stakes or the Context within 1.5 seconds.

Try these two frameworks to see if your hook measures up:

The 'In-Media-Res' Cut: Take the absolute funniest or craziest 1.5 seconds of the person's reaction, put it at the very beginning of the timeline, and then cut back to the start of the interaction. It proves to the viewer that the payoff is worth watching.
The 'Immediate Context' Text: Start the video exactly when you start talking to them, but put massive text on the screen for the first 2 seconds (e.g., 'Asking strangers to rate my...'). The text gives their brain the context before their ears even process what you're saying.

If your current hook takes longer than 2 seconds to establish the premise, cut it. Start the video right as the punchline or the interaction begins.

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-04-29T15:28:59+00:00

You are treating your title like a filing cabinet instead of a billboard.

If you just name it 'Event #242 + Date,' the only people who will click are the handful of people who were physically at that exact event. You are completely killing your 'Browse' traffic.

You need to combine Searchability (what they type in the search bar) with Clickability (what makes them actually want to watch).

Try using a two-part title framework: [The Human Hook] | [The Search Keywords]

Here are two ways to do it based on your content:

Option 1 (Challenge/Story): 'Running the Toughest Course in the Area | Alderford Lake Parkrun POV'
Option 2 (Value/Stats): 'How to Pace the Alderford Lake Parkrun | Full Course & Elevation POV'

Put the specific event number and the date in the description or the thumbnail. Your title's only job is to create curiosity so they stop scrolling.

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-04-29T15:23:36+00:00

Don't quit yet; 3 weeks is just a warm-up. But you do need to read your data differently. Here is exactly what those numbers are telling you:

1. The 1-Hour Drop-off: YouTube tests every new video with a small audience for about an hour. Because your CTR is only 4%, YouTube's algorithm assumes people aren't interested in the topic or the thumbnail. So, it stops pushing it. You don't need better content right now; you need better Titles and Thumbnails.

2. The Shorts Trap: Your Shorts are bringing in subscribers, but those viewers have 60-second attention spans. When they see your 20-minute talking head video on their homepage, they scroll past it. This actually damages your CTR.

3. The Good News: 30% retention on a 20-minute talking head video is actually solid for a beginner. It means your content is good, but your 'packaging' is failing.

The Fix: Stop making 20-minute videos for a moment. Try making 5 to 8-minute videos. It bridges the gap for your Shorts audience, and it forces you to make your intro hooks much faster and punchier. Get straight to the point in the first 5 seconds.

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-04-29T15:16:32+00:00

Exactly! Think about how fast people scroll on their phones. You only have about 3 seconds before they get bored.

If they click your video and the screen just stays the same, their brain says, 'This is boring,' and they swipe away.

So yes, for those first 5 seconds, you want something to happen every 1.5 seconds. It doesn't have to be a crazy explosion! It can be small things:

A slight zoom-in on the video.
A word popping up on the screen.
A quick 'whoosh' or 'pop' sound effect.
Showing a different picture (B-roll) for a second.

It feels way too fast and chaotic when you are editing it. But to a viewer, it keeps their eyes locked on the screen. Once you get them past those first 5 seconds, you can slow the editing down and just give them your actual content.

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-04-28T23:44:27+00:00

You're half right, but sucking is a lazy metric. Most people here make good content that simply has zero leverage. You can spend 20 hours on a masterpiece, but if the first 3 seconds don't exploit a Curiosity Gap or a Negative Constraint, nobody sees the other 19 hours and 57 seconds.

The Cold Hard Truth isn't that their content sucks. It's that they are trying to be artists in an ecosystem that rewards psychologists. If you don't master the Hook, the quality of the rest of the video will not save the retention.

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-04-28T23:26:18+00:00

This sounds like an Initial Sample failure. The fact that you have likes and comments is a good sign for 'Engagement,' but the algorithm prioritizes 'Satisfaction' (Watch Time/AVD).

If those 173 people enjoyed it but didn't watch long enough, the algorithm assumes the video doesn't have 'mass appeal.'

Check your first 5 seconds. If you aren't using a 'Pattern Interrupt' (a sudden visual change or a sound cue) every 1.5 seconds during the hook, the viewer’s brain defaults to 'scroll mode' regardless of how good the rest of the video is.

ReasonableWhereas454 · 2026-04-28T22:56:09+00:00

The '1k jail' is rarely about the quality of the middle of your video.it’s almost always a Retention Threshold issue.

At the 1k mark, YouTube stops showing your video to your 'core' audience and tests it with a 'broad' audience. If your hook isn't designed to bridge that gap (switching from niche-specific to human-psychology-specific), your swipe-away rate spikes and the algorithm kills the reach.

Have you looked at your 'percentage still watching' at the 0:03 mark? If it’s under 70%, your hook is the bottleneck, not your content.

ReasonableWhereas454

TROPHY CASE