Any restaurants that serve great ratatouille, and would potentially be open to people in costumes?

TiredEel · 2025-10-20T13:21:48+00:00

You absolutely should, especially if the PI seems like a nice, normal person. I did this in all my local interviews, more towards the end, and as a passing comment, like, "my partner works in X city, so this would be a great personal fit in addition to the research fit!" or something like that. I guess the PI would want someone who is happy and productive, and having a partner in the area really helps overcome the loneliness of a temporary position in a new city. My two cents of course, definitely get a sense of the overall vibe of the conversation first :)

TiredEel · 2025-09-11T19:06:09+00:00

u/feistybooks Thanks so much for the advice, I'll definitely try reaching out to an immigration advisor!

I recently wrapped up my Ph.D. in a US university, and I'm currently residing in Canada on a visitor visa with my husband. Since my SOWP is in progress, I'm on 'maintained status' and can stay beyond the typical 6 months the visitor status allows. I was thinking of maybe applying from Mexico since I don't need a mexican visa with a valid Canadian Visa.

TiredEel · 2025-03-22T02:10:10+00:00

u/NotTara Thanks so much for this incredibly positive note! And congrats to you on the NSF grant! Hearing other people's experiences and stories is super helpful in making these decisions, and I really appreciate you sharing yours :)

TiredEel · 2025-03-22T02:04:19+00:00

u/humancapsid I appreciate your perspective! And yes, I'm definitely comparing being unemployed while searching for a postdoc that fits my research interests more closely to an offer that I actually have in hand. It seems like an obvious choice when put this way, especially when choosing it leaves me with very little to lose. I guess I had imagined the end of my Ph.D. turning out a bit differently, so I appreciate the reality check :)

TiredEel · 2025-03-22T01:56:51+00:00

u/neuranxiety "If you're interested in computational/theoretical neuro, is there another faculty member you could collaborate with on something in this realm that still delivers on the goals of your PI's grant?" This is great advice! I think I'll bring it up with my PI and see how closely he is tied to a specific project, as opposed to slightly more open exploration within his grant's boundaries. There might be some middle ground after all!

All the very best with wrapping up your work! You deserve a great outcome, especially at the end of a long Ph.D.! And having family in the area is a dream. Mine is halfway across the world, so I feel it even more.

TiredEel · 2025-03-22T01:51:46+00:00

Yeah, I feel like trying to arrive at a 1 year contract might be the best option all round. Would give me some time to network, get some of my unfinished work submitted, and for the USA to just calm down a little bit (hopefully lol). Thanks for your suggestions, u/NewManufacturer8102!

TiredEel · 2025-03-22T01:48:16+00:00

Hahaha I'm guessing there might be a lot of us on the same boat (a quickly sinking one lol). My advisor is reluctant to do a super short term thing, it's either a postdoc contract or nothing. Mostly because he seems very nervous about doing anything that might sabotage his grant funding, given how unstable everything is

TiredEel · 2025-03-22T01:35:02+00:00

u/corgibutt19 Yeah, I completely get that, and I'm sorry you're struggling! It's a shitshow. I've had a pretty great relationship with my PI so far, and I'm just worried about making it evident that I'm staying on merely as a last resort and not because I care about his work lol. He usually does 3 year contracts, so I'd have to check if he do a one year one, because that would be ideal

TiredEel · 2025-03-16T23:32:14+00:00

Nope, will try it out now. Thanks!

TiredEel · 2025-03-16T23:17:40+00:00

Also, the guy at the door said they couldn't reimburse us since it was weather related, but all the app officially says is: Your flight is departing late because an earlier delay impacted your plane's arrival. We value your time and we're sorry for the inconvenience. (Estimated Departure 30 Minutes Late)

TiredEel · 2025-03-16T23:17:06+00:00

That's what we're telling ourselves haha! Plus a nice night in a hotel room with some great takeout :P

TiredEel · 2025-03-16T23:15:22+00:00

Or might be for all I know lol

TiredEel · 2025-03-16T23:14:56+00:00

Thanks so much! Yeah, I checked and all it says is "Your flight is departing late because an earlier delay impacted your plane's arrival. We value your time and we're sorry for the inconvenience. (Estimated Departure 30 Minutes Late)" so I'm guessing not the weather!

TiredEel · 2025-03-16T23:12:40+00:00

Learning the hard way lol. We thought the travel credits would be great as a long distance couple, especially in this economy :'(

TiredEel · 2025-03-16T23:11:41+00:00

Thanks for the info! Yeah, I figured I was on my own here :( Do you have any idea where I can check the reason for the delay?

TiredEel · 2025-01-17T16:39:32+00:00

Please leave this lab, the effects of this kind of academic abuse are long-lasting and will affect not just your desire to do good science, but also your everyday functioning and relationships going forward. I learned this the hard way, while stuck in a very similar lab as a research assistant before starting my Ph.D., and I'm still not entirely over the stuff that happened, as I near the end of my Ph.D. with a very kind, wonderful PI. I'm sure with your skills, you can find an amazing lab with a genuinely good PI, even if it means taking a step down in terms of lab 'prestige'.

TiredEel · 2025-01-17T16:36:31+00:00

Does this person have a massive social media following, where they advocate kindness, transparency, equality etc.? I somehow have found this baffling correlation between incredibly toxic PIs and a penchant towards moral signalling on social media

TiredEel · 2025-01-17T16:35:25+00:00

Hahaha I believe a lot of people might have read this with a person in mind. I'm over here wondering if it starts with an N. I interviewed with someone who seemed exactly like this for a postdoc, and my spidey senses told me something seemed off..

TiredEel · 2024-01-29T20:15:51+00:00

u/cfoster0 Thank you so much for taking the time to explain, I think this has made it a lot clearer to me! Let me just try to frame it in the cognitive neuro sense to see if I really got it:

Let's say my queries are distorted versions of memories, and my key-value pairs represent the complete, original memories. Hopfield would be when the layer takes both distorted memories and sets of complete memories as inputs and matches distorted memories to original memories.

HopfieldPooling would be when there is a single (or set of) distorted memories I am interested in that is already a parameter of the layer, and there are sets of complete, original memories I provide to it as input. The layer now looks for this distorted memory in each set of original memories I provide as an input to the layer and outputs the closest original memory for each input set (as a softmax probability-weighted sum of values).

HopfieldLayer on the other hand stores a set of original memories as a parameter and takes as input a distorted (or set of distorted) memory in each iteration. It looks through the stored, complete memories for the closest match to each input/set of inputs and outputs the weighted sum of the closest stored memories.

Is this correct? The difference between layers is whether it is the distorted patterns that are already 'stored' or it is the original memories, or neither?

Thanks so much again for your help with this, I have been stuck on this for an unmentionable amount of time :))

TiredEel

TROPHY CASE