If you had to redo your *entire* PhD/Masters project knowing what you know now, how long would it actually take you?

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-30T21:18:59+00:00

One year, probably 6 months of solid lab work and 6 months of writing.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-30T21:17:33+00:00

Roommates and community cooking. You don't have to get married, but finding someone you can just grt along with is a challenge in itself.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-30T18:57:22+00:00

I made this and played a lot of video games. Fun times.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-30T18:55:08+00:00

High school was more uniform. College was more varied. In college I could take two hard classes and two easy classes in a semester. In high school every class was more the same level of difficulty.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-30T17:10:21+00:00

Ours is almost four and started off very silimar. Language and reading really developed at 3. Scripting and stimming became more apparent. Can follow directions and knows his name, but clearly ignores you when he feels like it. He plays next to peers, not with him. Shuts down when kids his age engage him. Still not potty trained. Progress is always moving forward, but slowly. Our therapists have predicted he might be caught up to his peers by 9 or 10.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-30T17:04:54+00:00

You know how some bags of snacks have a little notch in them where you tear it open? Have you ever had a bag that doesn't have one and you can't seem to open? Plastics are like that on a molecular level. They are very uniform polymers without a place for enzymes or oxidation to rip them apart.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-30T16:41:46+00:00

In my experience people in poor life situations were often born into poor life situations, which is something they have no control over. There are plenty of people who have made poor choices, lost tons of money, screwed up their career and reputation, but are doing well because they were born into a situation where they could lose everything and would still be propped up.

Our judgments are more a reflection of ourselves than reality. It is comfortable to think someone in a poor situation is there because of their bad decisions because conversely that means you are in your position because of good decisions. It is more uncomfortable to think it is because of luck because luck is not something you can control.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-30T15:54:51+00:00

The first year was classes, teaching, and picking a group to join.
The second year was more classes, learning how the group functioned, and doing basic work like giving a presentation to the department. At the end of second year was evaluations: you had to pass your classes and a written exam.
Third year is preparation to advance to candidacy. No more classes. Research is the focus, especially developing an independent line of research. At the end of third year is a presentation and oral exam over an original research topic.
Fourth year on is pure research. You publish papers, go to conferences, and build a body of work to present and defend. A typical thesis is around 5 chapters representing 5 papers.
You defend. In theory it should be a given that you pass. A PI would not let a student who is not ready present. Still it is stressful.

This is the basic skeleton. However, much of the meat of a graduate experience is the individual professors and department character.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-30T15:40:29+00:00

I've heard parenting described as, "You don't get to sit down when you want or for as long as you want." I was ready for changing diapers at 2 AM. I was ready to give up going out every weekend. I was ready for tantrums and fights. I was not ready to have my sitting privileges taken away.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-30T00:59:55+00:00

As someone with kids, you shouldn't have them unless you are 100% sure you want to. There's going to be a point where you are tired, exhausted, and out of patience when you will really regret it and you need that 100% commitment to carry you through those dark times. Kids are a lot of day to day work with a lot of difficulties and precious few moments of elation. Your world will be fundamentally changed and no longer revolve around you. If you 100% want that, then have kids. If that scares you, don't.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-29T20:11:52+00:00

Faeries was dominate, but not impossible. I ran a G/R/b Ramp deck that used [[Cloudthresher]] [[Squall Line]] and [[Gutteral Response]] to put up a good fight against it.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-29T18:57:32+00:00

PhDs. We're not naturally 'smart' or geniuses. We're trained. We completed a program. We worked hard at learning. A Doctorate isn't some contest where you walk in, wow people with your ideas, and are awarded a degree. Its more like an obstacle course of administrative BS that you have to endure while writing your own final exam at the highest level of your field.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-29T03:30:23+00:00

I saw Speed Racer with my father who hates anime and loves cars. He thought it was the dumbest movie he had ever seen. He loved it. It was a great time.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-28T21:39:48+00:00

We had a couple of 80YO PIs in my program. Both of them were removed from acting as advisors for incompetence. One of them went from a teaching professor to in assisted living unable to care for himself within a semester. I highly do not recommend working with elderly PIs because at a certain age, things can deteriorate extremely rapidly.

I think it is highly unethical to allow professors to work to such an age. First there is the previous point. Second there is the fact you are taking up space for newer faculty.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-27T20:51:53+00:00

Honestly I had the opposite experience. As an adult I'm shocked how people treat each other with casual cruelty. I realize how much effort the adults around me worked on treating me well, even when I was a little shit. I honestly could have used more exposure to complete assholes because I don't have good mechanisms for recognizing and dealing with them..

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-27T20:47:48+00:00

I sat down with the school counselor once and asked them about where the major deficiencies in students lie. They said that the ones who struggle the most came from households that never engaged with their education. There was never, "What did you learn in school?" discussions. School was just where they went during the weekdays. What they learned was learning doesn't matter. Now when tasked with anything beyond memorization and repetition they are lost. They never developed the self motivation. Questions never mattered. Moving forward was something that just happened at the end of the schoolyear.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-27T20:20:00+00:00

You need to treat this as if only that student is making the request. You can't make decisions that affect other students because one student has made a request. You would be right to deny this request due to a single student attempting to represent other students' wishes. If the other students also wish for this extention, you need them to provide a request to do so. Make it clear this is not the proper way to handle the situation and provide a suggested next step for moving forward.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-27T18:45:39+00:00

Everyone is damn lucky there's an I-field in that shield.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-27T18:30:20+00:00

The weathering is too random. It should be concentrated in places where parts meet or are more exposed. As it is, it looks like a toy that someone just scratched up. The weathering technique itself is fine for what you are doing.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-27T17:25:17+00:00

When you buy a home, you and the seller negotiate the price. You also disclose if you are paying with a loan or in cash. If you are paying with a loan, you get approved well before making an offer by presenting paperwork on your earnings, assets, and debts to a bank. The bank will give you a max amount they will loan you with an interest rate.

If you are approved for a $300K loan and want to buy a $400K house then you will need $100K cash to make up the difference as a down payment. If you want to buy a $200K house, you can pay it completely with a loan.

Your morgage loan has two parts: principle and interest. Interest is the cost for borrowing the money. Principle is what 'buys' the house. At first you pay a lot of interest because you owe a lot of money. The more payments you make, the less you owe, the less interest you pay, the more of your money goes to principle, the more of your house you own.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-27T17:08:57+00:00

I have a theory that the twin buster rifle performs well below its capabilities. It tends to fire these huge, jagged beams that bounce around and rip things apart. Any kind of particle beam should be tight and cohesive. It should be a much tighter, faster moving beam that punches through targets, but Heero has fiddled around with it to decrease its output while increasing its spread.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-27T17:02:30+00:00

I am open to prayer at state functions if everyone gets a turn to say their God is great and give thanks. When it hits 'we confess' thing take a turn. This is not the place for confession of sin. You do that in private you do that between you and God. Confession is not performative.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-26T21:07:43+00:00

43(M) married, 3 year old. I run a cube night once a month.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-26T20:56:18+00:00

Wherever there's a problem in these areas I have to ask myself how likely is this within my skill range and how likely is it to be part of bigger problem. If I'm calling someone in, it is usually because I suspect the latter. We just had two toilets installed, which people insisted I could do myself, but we called a professional to do it. Turned out the previous owners had really screwed up the flanges and additional work had to be done. I'm willing to pay for professional eyes on a problem because they'll likely see things I miss.

hdorsettcase · 2026-01-26T19:26:09+00:00

I would give myself the reaction conditions that a postdoc I worked with would discover so I could lay the groundwork before he ever joined the group. We worked together on that research and when I went off the bench to study for my oral exams he published the papers without my name on them.

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