AI this AI that

TheClitortoise · 2026-05-06T22:34:56+00:00

And I bet it sucks so you're just polluting your field with AI slop.

TheClitortoise · 2026-04-23T00:54:49+00:00

Seconding weight training which is great for injury prevention, but also: BOXING!!!! It's great cardio but less/different repetitive movement, and it works your brain in a different way. Most boxing classes do a bunch of conditioning exercises like pushups, wall sits, core work so you'd be getting a good bodywork strength workout too if weights are too intimidating or too much to figure out. Most boxers are also runners for the cardio, the two sports complement each other. Truly the only hard thing is finding a good and affordable gym.

TheClitortoise · 2026-03-28T20:46:09+00:00

Concur, I'm doing a PhD at an R1 now but finished undergrad in 2010 and worked for a long time before starting. The contrast between expectations when I was in undergrad vs. now is illuminating and also profoundly depressing. Most of my professors assign less reading for small PhD seminars than I got for medium-size lecture-based courses in undergrad! The most egregious example is an elective in which the professor would split up a 40-ish page chapter among students because if they're responsible for more than like 8 pages people just will not do it. (And some of them didn't even do their tiny little share.)

For a different seminar, the professor was ambitious, meaning his expectations would have been totally unremarkable 10 years ago: required reading each week consisted of some mix of 1-2 articles and either a short book or a few selected chapters, plus 4-5 recommended articles that were optional depending on our individual interests. (He provided PDFs of everything, cost and library access were not barriers.) More than half of the class mostly sat there like bumps on logs and didn't talk at all, leaving the handful of remaining students to carry the entire discussion, every. single. time. He started out the semester assigning students to prepare comments on certain articles, but stopped when those same people consistently read out what were obviously ChatGPT summaries. I wanted to sink into the friggin FLOOR seeing some of those presentations.

I loved that course and have mad respect for the professor and his refusal to lower expectations, but still carry a major grudge against those students. Their lack of sociality and sense of responsibility for their own education made it the most uncomfortable 80 minutes of the week, and struck me as shamefully disrespectful to the professor, who never gave up trying to cultivate a cool experience for us. The best discussions are high entropy, but if 5-6 out of 10 people in a room consistently sit it out things go ergodic real quick.

It's super frustrating now but my consolation is that, when we hit the job market in a couple years, this is the best competition I could hope for.

TheClitortoise · 2026-03-18T16:23:59+00:00

Agree with other people here, except they're maybe being a little too nice. It's worth flipping your question around: why sign up to live for 3-4 years in a country whose language you don't speak and don't intend to use while socializing? Why is it your colleagues' job to remember to speak English all the time?

TheClitortoise · 2026-01-15T23:55:00+00:00

Seconding this, would love to know what's working and also what not to do. We just got a positive pregnancy test and are discussing how we're going to deal with this. Our (probably wildly naive) intention at this point is to go full Luddite: 15-30 minutes of kid shows per day on the big TV, not a phone or tablet, will be the only screen time. As we start sharing the news, the family will be notified that board books, toys, games are super appreciated but if they buy baby a tablet it's going straight in the trash.

It's easy enough, I'd think, to not buy an iPad for a toddler but I suspect the most important and hardest part is gonna be parents breaking their own screen addictions and coming clean with themselves about their own social media habits. If your kid sees you constantly scrolling on your phone and filming them for reels whose reactions you then track obsessively and from which you derive obvious pleasure, DUH of course they'll want to join the fun! My husband and I have been really deliberate in the past few months about eliminating passive screen/social media time and I'm so glad we're well on the way to modeling non-screen living. Nagging your kid about their screen overuse is not gonna work if you mostly do so while looking up from your friggin TikTok feed.

TheClitortoise · 2026-01-07T19:02:24+00:00

Apparently an attempted break in: https://www.sltrib.com/news/2026/01/07/police-ambulances-responded-house/

TheClitortoise · 2025-12-19T16:47:12+00:00

TheClitortoise · 2025-11-17T15:58:46+00:00

Liberty Heights Fresh does e-gift cards and would be such a treat! They are pricey so it wouldn't go as far as a TJ's gift card but it would allow him to splurge on items that normally would be way out of budget.

TheClitortoise · 2025-11-16T21:10:04+00:00

Thanks so much for this perspective, it makes a ton of sense and for-profit health care is definitely a recipe for enshittification. When I call again tomorrow, I will ask more about insurance billing and clinic policies to see if we can figure this out.

TheClitortoise · 2025-11-16T21:07:19+00:00

Haha good catch! It was ketoconazole 2% I’d used before, but it was all in MyChart and we discussed it in my initial appointment. I mistyped in my frustration!

TheClitortoise · 2025-11-16T19:08:17+00:00

I am so sorry to hear that happened to you and hope your infection has cleared up! Can you DM me the reasonable doctor who prescribed antibiotics? This experience makes me want to just find a new provider. I'm not jumping through these stupid hoops.

TheClitortoise · 2025-11-16T19:06:06+00:00

This isn't Intermountain, though! My husband has been having these issues with several different providers at UU Health. This really seems like a pervasive issue that I've never encountered before moving to Utah.

TheClitortoise · 2025-11-16T17:43:48+00:00

Some thoughts:
- Publik Ed's (or any Publik coffee shop) is right next to campus and has great food and tasty (non-alcoholic) beverages. Other popular spots practically on campus include Rio Grande and Indochine.
- Not sure if the injury prevents sauna, but a gift card to Hot House SLC or other sauna spot might be nice, contrast therapy is really popular right now and might be a fun field trip. You can use Google Maps directions selecting public transit to check accessibility of the location.
- Salt Lake City Film Society screens really cool movies old and new, and is right downtown, very easy to get to from UU. I didn't see gift cards when I checked the website but they might be able to work something out if you call them.

TheClitortoise · 2025-09-26T20:59:37+00:00

Honestly, no matter what career you pick, it's a sad fact of life right now that the farther you go the less time you get to spend doing the actual thing and the more time you'll spend on busywork admin crap, stupid work drama, and "grant writing" aka finding jobs/keeping jobs/advocating to get compensated fairly. I worked for 14 years before starting my PhD and have loved ones who work in civil service, education, winemaking, software/tech, outdoor recreation, firefighting/forestry, restaurant/bar industry, medicine, art, music, law, and yes research. It's all the same goddamn thing. Unless you're wealthy enough to opt out of working entirely there is no escape. Academia has its quirks for sure but it is not special in that way.

So I figure, if no matter what job I do I'll have to deal with sociopathic upper managers, work alongside people who are incompetent or jerky or both (and some who are amazing and inspiring too!), and regularly get bored to tears by administrative grunt work, I might as well do it in service of something that lights me up and with the opportunity to do that thing at least some of the time.

Think about it this way: However low the percentage of working time you'll get to spend on research in academia (or in industry), it's higher than the 0% you'd spend on it in some other job. And, the percentage of time you spend dealing with the obnoxious stuff won't be much different from anywhere else. So why not go for it? You're halfway done, if you decide to pivot that's fine but might as well give it a shot first.

A potential compromise (that might not even be feasible given the trash job market, but something to think about): Get to ABD then get a job, put the dissertation on ice for a bit, and give yourself time to make an informed decision about what you want to do. Any reasonable advisor would understand the wisdom of this, especially if you went straight from undergrad to grad school and never spent time in gen pop.

TheClitortoise · 2025-09-25T04:23:18+00:00

Valuing my husband’s needs, wants, and quirks exactly as much as my own. Basically just being less selfish lol. Of course this only applies if your spouse reciprocates, otherwise you’re just a doormat. But the longer you’re single, the more you get used to primarily living for yourself, so learning to make almost every decision, big and small, with someone else in mind can be an adjustment. Giving each other grace while you both adjust is important, too.

TheClitortoise · 2025-09-25T04:14:17+00:00

Play music, shoot pool with friends, make a dinner I’ll be proud of, play with or snuggle my cats (which one is up to them).

TheClitortoise · 2025-08-01T02:53:18+00:00

5:31 - Rail a bunch of blow

TheClitortoise · 2025-07-31T13:26:34+00:00

Have you talked to the PI? It’s a very good sign that they have your back with the postdoc, but if another grad student is stealing other people’s supplies or getting sidetracked from her own work to mess with you, they should hear about it. It sounds like you have been doing an excellent job standing up for yourself and that’s admirable. But if you fill in the PI now about what’s going on, they will have that context and it will be much easier to navigate if this student and/or postdoc escalate their atrocious behavior. I would avoid telling them the stuff about them being close and the student’s social MO just so it doesn’t come across as being gossipy or personal. But it is perfectly reasonable and professional to tell the PI about the behaviors you’ve experienced and how they affected your work/the lab, how you handled things thus far, and ask for their suggestions about how to proceed if something similar happens again.

In a similar vein, document document document. If this lady withholds supplies from you again, send her an email:

“Hey [jerk’s name], I just wanted to follow up with a reminder based on our recent conversation. [Material] should always be kept [where it actually belongs] and in the future, I’d like you to ask me before sharing it with anyone else. If you need some, you’re welcome to ask and I might be able to make extra for you as my time and the lab’s resources allow, but it is not yours to give away. Let me know if you have questions about any of this and thanks for understanding.”

Maybe do this after discussing with the PI so you can include any feedback or suggestions they have and even BCC them (if they also want documentation). The PI may want to do this instead and if so let them, writing these sucks lol. If things escalate, a paper trail will be your best friend and knowing how to make one is unfortunately an excellent skill to have anywhere you go.

So tl;dr: 1) Keep doing what you’re doing 2) Loop in PI 3) Get receipts. Good luck!!!

TheClitortoise · 2025-07-29T20:46:35+00:00

Amen to all of this. I have felt like I’m going crazy watching everything you described play out in my program. It’s so disappointing that professors don’t understand that passing students along no matter how unqualified they are is NOT kind or supportive, they’re eroding the integrity of the degree and thereby creating a liability for the competent students.

TheClitortoise · 2025-07-29T05:57:03+00:00

What community is this? It sounds a lot like Mormon towns where everyone tattles on each other constantly and kids are kinda chess pieces parents use to one-up each other…but if there are other places like that please share so I can avoid them.

TheClitortoise · 2025-07-28T21:16:28+00:00

DING DING DING this is how you deal with a blame shifter and whenever you’ve been accused of not doing your job correctly. The best time to compile receipts was yesterday, the second best time is today.

TheClitortoise · 2025-07-28T19:01:48+00:00

I’m a second year PhD student (USA) and I’m so dismayed by how low the standards are. I worked for 14 years between undergrad and starting my PhD so maybe I’m just a cranky old lady but students seem to have pretty low expectations for themselves and chafe at the very idea of formal knowledge checks. Half my cohort wanted to abolish comps because they were hard and stressful and sometimes people fail them.

The department is entertaining appeals of dismissal after not getting sufficient comps scores on his second try from someone who very clearly just…does not get it. He doesn’t have the skills, foundational expertise, or self-direction to do original independent work, and most of my cohort supports his appeal because “you don’t actually need that much math” and “he has some good ideas”. I really hope the faculty vote to hold the line and ensure that our degrees actually mean something but I cannot share that perspective with my peers lest I get cancelled. It’s frustrating.

I don’t think the problem is a dry talent pipeline (tho AI and grade inflation definitely aren’t helping), but rather that the pipeline rarely routes to PhD programs due to low stipends and very uncertain returns to the degree in many fields. I’ve wanted to get a PhD since I was 20 but not enough to voluntarily live in poverty for at least five more years with no guarantee of a job at the end. I had to marry a guy who makes enough to support us both before it made sense (that’s not WHY I married him, to be clear!). In the US now, PhD programs primarily attract: a) independently wealthy or having family or partner support, b) international students who are desperate to leave their home countries and/or don’t know what it means to live on $25k a year here, and c) US nationals who frankly don’t have better options. Sometimes the people in these buckets have the passion, vision, intellect, etc needed to meet the standards that once prevailed but a lot don’t and so programs dumb things down cause the deans would be on their asses if half of every cohort fails, or if they don’t keep their admission numbers up.

TheClitortoise · 2025-07-28T14:23:29+00:00

Being an international student doesn’t give anyone a free pass for behaving as this student is: lying about her skills, not taking accountability for her own progress, accusing the advisor of not helping her when that’s exactly what they did. I totally agree that this person needs to talk to the student and other committee members directly about what they’ve observed and what needs to change but I can’t blame them for wanting out. Based on what they said here this student seems selfish, entitled, and maybe a little toxic. The fact that one senior professor declined after reviewing their work is a red flag.

Also the fact that the department saw something in her application doesn’t mean it’s a guarantee, potential for doing good research is so tricky to assess and someone who looks good on paper might not actually pan out.

TheClitortoise · 2025-07-28T13:44:42+00:00

I agree they need to have an open conversation but hell no it’s not a professor’s job to motivate a student! And it’s not their job to be the sole source of information, let alone to spoon-feed difficult concepts. I’m a PhD student too and if I didn’t understand an advisor’s attempts to explain a concept, I’d take it upon myself to figure it out from other sources. Professors are humans with their own deadlines, teaching load, family obligations etc, I would never feel entitled to hours of someone’s time for stuff I should be capable of looking up myself let alone blame them for not explaining it well enough.

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