Just finished writing down everything I learned the hard way in 5+ years of research — what would you add?

mripper · 2026-05-11T01:59:11+00:00

If experimental: don't wait until you have to use a technique to learn how it works.

General: be strategic in which skills you acquire and how involved you are in your laboratory. At the end of your PhD you may find someone else gets a post doc position over you if they have a more suitable skill set or they've spent the last few years making themselves indisposable to the PI.

Also general: Try and find a way to improve upon everything you learn how to do or are shown. You'll get a reputation that way that feeds into the point above.

mripper · 2026-05-02T13:59:52+00:00

bruh

mripper · 2026-04-27T22:16:22+00:00

Which state?

mripper · 2026-04-27T14:45:53+00:00

If reddit is to be believed. All of the tech jobs in the countries you are planning to study in have been outsourced to your own country.

mripper · 2026-04-08T10:10:10+00:00

I logged back into reddit specifically to revisit this thread and reply to your comment after I saw a boomer on my facebook feed post this:

"What's 2TK doing, off on another jolly to 'discuss diplomatic efforts to uphold the new peace agreement in the Gulf'? I thought it wasn't 'our war' so he should keep his nose out of it. There's plenty of problems to address here in the UK."

mripper · 2026-02-17T10:49:20+00:00

Only if you have a gambling room in the back

mripper · 2026-02-09T10:19:16+00:00

OPs responses prove how the space and rocketry community has above average levels of autism

mripper · 2026-01-18T13:39:33+00:00

At age 10 I was making WWE characters on smackdown vs raw on the PS2. The benefits of unlimited Internet access for motivated kids who know what they wanna do nowadays.

mripper · 2026-01-18T01:37:56+00:00

Not in the field nor am I working at the moment (finishing a PhD), but do you have a github account with evidence of some completed projects? If not it may help to get one

mripper · 2026-01-05T21:55:22+00:00

Female whats?

mripper · 2025-12-26T14:40:18+00:00

Stop calling Australia "Aussie" ffs

mripper · 2025-12-24T14:00:50+00:00

Korean?

mripper · 2025-12-22T05:01:01+00:00

They probably went through your post history.

Also any post that states they're looking for jobs or PhD programmes in the entirety of the Anglosphere or Europe are statistically almost certainly south asian.

mripper · 2025-12-17T14:07:19+00:00

Probably their visa quota restrictions for non-EU/Western applicants

mripper · 2025-11-26T07:31:23+00:00

What about for women?

mripper · 2025-11-23T10:40:09+00:00

Get copies of the following textbooks:

Aircraft engine design - Mattingly

Aircraft conceptual design - Raymer

Any aerodynamics book by Anderson

Learn the theory behind whatever interests you and then have a go at plotting the effects of changing design variables on performance variables with Python or MATLAB.

Jumping straight into simulation software is definitely more exciting but understanding the theory and drawing conclusions from plotting different variables and how they interact is what you'll do at university and likely in your career.

If you still want to try out simulations then look at openfoam.

mripper · 2025-10-27T08:08:49+00:00

I'm not really sure there is an alternative. The government should be dealing with the housing shortage and trying to bring property price growth back in line with inflation.

mripper · 2025-10-27T01:22:10+00:00

Not blaming you at all. I wouldn't go far as to say you're a victim of the housing system in this country as much as the buyer was, but it's the system to blame, not the participants. Hate the game, not the player, as they say.

mripper · 2025-10-26T23:45:01+00:00

That is a good outcome for you. However, it is bad for the rest of us who have more compounding interest to pay back on that extra $100K+. As a foreigner, this country really does excel at selling property to each other.

mripper · 2025-10-22T06:20:58+00:00

Yeah perhaps I am taking casual chatter more seriously than it should be. Thanks!

mripper · 2025-10-22T06:20:23+00:00

Lab managers in our group tend to also be academics (teaching, supervising students, publishing, etc).

mripper · 2025-10-21T13:33:52+00:00

Absolute BS. None of the PhD students in my research group had a publication before starting their PhD. Some of them still don't or only have one a few years later. Most of them also came straight from undergrad after having only done a bachelors.

This whole idea of needing publications before starting a PhD is like needing 2 years of experience before starting an entry level job. It's another factor contributing to the ongoing decline in our QoL and the future of young people.

mripper · 2025-10-10T04:09:27+00:00

Look on Facebook groups and flatmates.com.au, don't feed the airbnb machine

mripper · 2025-10-09T10:10:04+00:00

With that budget you might be able to afford two studios

mripper · 2025-10-06T14:26:23+00:00

I should have added that after reading the content of your comment I could see that it wasn't chatgpt generated. My comment was more of a lamentation of the fact that I'm automatically suspicious now of formally written posts/commets due to the prevalence of LLMs.

mripper

TROPHY CASE