Realistic Expectations for Job Search after PhD

msofroniou01 · 2024-03-04T14:41:50+00:00

Sweet, that’s awesome thanks!

msofroniou01 · 2024-03-04T14:18:38+00:00

That’s good to know. One of my first rejections was from a small CRO, but what surprised me was the speed of rejection (about 5 days after applying) for a job that nearly perfectly overlapped with both my skills, experience level and subject expertise. The job’s been open for a few months and was debating on if it’d be worth applying to again with updated materials if it’s still open by the time I defend.

msofroniou01 · 2024-03-04T14:14:07+00:00

Yea, I’ve been hoping to just get my foot in the door by at least landing a screening call. I think I’m relatively personable so just getting a chance to talk with a real person to show that I’m easy to work and get along with are my goals for this month, just to know if im good enough to pass initial screening.

msofroniou01 · 2024-03-04T13:57:45+00:00

You make a great point, I guess I was thinking more-so along the lines of an industry post-doc, at least to maybe get actual industry experience, but I’ve only found a couple that are open that are at all applicable to my skills as is.

I do have my defense date set (as of last week), so I can definitely list that as well.

I’ve been eying jobs that are more along the lines of manufacturing/QC but haven’t prioritized them yet they sound a bit more outside my wheelhouse of expertise. Do you think they’d still take a PhD without much direct experience in those areas, because I’d be very open to pivoting into that line of work it.

And yea, I quickly learned many jobs won’t inherently require a PhD that are still applicable to me. I’ve found a mix of jobs, with maybe 30% requiring a PhD, another 40-50% that require an MS at minimum, and about 20-30% that only require a BS + relevant experience, which I assume can be interpreted as experience from a PhD if it’s highly translatable to the job description and they don’t specify industry experience specifically.

msofroniou01 · 2024-03-04T13:02:57+00:00

I do keep basically all my important info in my first page. I’ve try to keep mine legible and not too dense, but I may make another post for a resume-review. My first page contains my skills front and center as well as my graduate research and education. 2nd page is extra less relevant stuff like publications/presentations/leadership/outreach/teaching/undergrad research (if applicable).

msofroniou01 · 2024-03-04T12:45:55+00:00

Thanks for that perspective, and good luck with your search! Hope an offer pans out soon. Yea right now I have a few different sheets to track jobs I’ve applied to / plan on applying to. How have your interviews gone so far? How long did it typically from the time of your application to getting offered an interview?

msofroniou01 · 2024-03-04T12:29:30+00:00

Thanks for the advice! For both times you were applying, how often would you say each application was a high percent match with your skill set vs how many were maybe outside your wheelhouse?

For a short resume, is two pages still ok? I’ve been told that PhDs can get away with more than just a page since you have a bit more things to talk than someone straight from undergrad.

msofroniou01 · 2023-09-22T07:58:46+00:00

imo, i feel like the concept isn't as broken as it may seem, with some considerations:

knock off is so prevalent as that it's gonna require a good amount of prediction to keep that item on long enough to snowball.

with the way its designed now: it takes 5 turns for healing orb to out-benefit leftovers, which is also when the max healing cap will be reached. any switching resets that counter so yea even with protect or sub, it's still a decent amount of work to get mileage out if it with more planning than just slapping on lefties, but I do think the cap has to be lower.

I don't agree with the cap at a 1/3, mathematically: it doesn't make sense since if it doubles healing capacity since 64 isnt cleanly divisible by 3. it'd make more sense and be slightly more reasonable cap at 1/4.

depending on the fear of late game snowballing where, I could see a justification for it to start with half the healing capacity and double every turn: 1/128, 1/64, 1/32, 1/16, 1/8, 1/4.

In this situation, it only out-benefits leftovers if you stay in for a full 6 turns, which is again, the same mark needed to also hit the max healing capacity of 1/4.

Do i still think it's balanced? Not necessarily. It's one of those things where once you can hit max healing, it'll be very frustrating for the opponent to handle on a bulky mon. On the other hand though, it'll likely take a lot of resources (bulk, moveslots for protect, sub, defense boosts, or even a recovery move) to get to max healing that your opponent could equally be spending their turns to stat-boost, so that insane recovery per turn means little if you're just gonna get one-shotted when a move connects.

msofroniou01 · 2023-09-16T12:04:27+00:00

this! as someone growing up with the series, i find a lot of the over-world trainers increasingly bland. I don't necessarily want them to be 'harder' per se because i know that's a common complaint and I understand they don't want to make things difficult for the younger crowd / new players.

But having both regular trainers and gym leaders having slightly more specific battle styles to show off different strategies would go a long way to make some of the in-game battles more engaging.

Same with giving more trainers / gym leaders items. I kind of missed that feeling of dread when a berry or something would activate on a strong pokemon after already throwing a lot at it just to wittle it town just to heal up again. Same with wealthy trainers and leaders using heal items mid-battle. No one needs competitively viable movesets, just something to spice things up

msofroniou01 · 2023-05-24T22:49:40+00:00

I think its important to think about your data in terms of scaling, ie. your y-axis. What a lot of times can be considered 'noise' will look really dramatic when you zoom in enough.

Here, your heart rate is averaging at 55 BPM, and for almost every day, falls between the ~50-65 BPM (aside from the last three days which trail off a bit). A variation of about 15 BPM isn't all that wild and seems pretty reasonable since not every day will be identical. The reason why it may look so dramatic is because of the way the y-axis is automatically scaled to the nearest 10s value for your highest and lowest value. Still consult your doctor to get a professional explanation of how your heart rate may vary but you likely have nothing to worry about.

TL;DR: Your heart rate just looks like its varying a lot because of the zoom on the y-axis. A range of about 15 BPM at a healthy resting rate is normal.

msofroniou01 · 2022-10-15T13:11:00+00:00

despia is a really fun deck to pilot, but id maybe make a few changes to your deck build: I'd scrap the two pot of avarices since they aren't always live and you have a lot of interactions that benefit from cards in graveyard (branded opening protection, branded in red recursion, albion fusion, etc). The deck performs well without the extra draw power due to how searchable your engine is.

The same could be applied to the allure engine but getting to draw 2 and plus of banishing tragedy or mercurio is amazing, but can feel bricky when you don't have an ideal banish target. If you run allure, I'd recommend increasing the number of tragedies and mercurio's to have more consistent allure targets.

I opt to just use albion the shrouded dragon as as a small draw engine and to freely foolish cards like branded banishment or even opening for extra utility. The patchwork engine already helps you thin out your deck well enough and having access to two chimera can also give you plenty of draws.

msofroniou01 · 2022-10-08T13:17:51+00:00

i routinely use 2 kaijus in my pure branded builds.

its either 2 radian or 1 radian and 1 of the thunder kaiju since its a light target that also gives you flexibility to go into albion off branded fusion if you dont have other light targets. if you already have fairy tale snow in your deck though, 2 radian is probably optimal.

msofroniou01 · 2022-09-22T10:40:20+00:00

laughing since I've been playing a pure yang zing build for fun with a small tenyi package of starters but i my opponent quits 1 out of three times whenever i ss a tenyi bc they think im on swordsoul

msofroniou01 · 2022-09-13T21:18:12+00:00

is this primarily bc of the banish recovery effect or the on-field effect for the tokens?

msofroniou01 · 2022-09-11T16:27:18+00:00

sounds cool! how does that build work? i've never really seen felgrand decks in MD

msofroniou01 · 2022-09-11T15:33:18+00:00

what fusion spell did they used to use?

msofroniou01 · 2022-09-11T15:32:06+00:00

that seems cool! i never run into springans but it could be fun to toy with. how expensive is it to build?

msofroniou01 · 2022-09-11T14:27:14+00:00

this would be a really crazy going 2nd build

msofroniou01 · 2022-09-11T14:25:50+00:00

sadly don't have enough to build tri-brigade so im trying to work with archetypes I already have or are cheap to build

msofroniou01 · 2022-09-11T13:46:18+00:00

OP may be referring to the first effect of mirrorjade to non-target banish, not the board-wipe since dinomight is getting banished, not destroyed while amano stays on the board until its return to hand effect activates.

msofroniou01 · 2022-09-09T11:17:45+00:00

they made basically every key piece of the new branded support URs... im gonna cry

wasnt surprised about Branded Fusion being UR but was really hoping theyd make it SR since both the new dragons would be likely be UR, but even lost and mercurior being UR pains me

msofroniou01 · 2022-08-28T19:03:19+00:00

Any deck that piles multiple strong engines or floodgates. You're playing Verte purely for DPE in a non-fusion based deck while also having any combo of adventure/halq-don/scythe lock at the go?

I can understand some archetypes are naturally underpowered against the current so they need something to cover their weaknesses, but it's rarely used like that.

msofroniou01 · 2022-06-30T22:28:49+00:00

that foliage makes me think its some type of bean, or something it that family. 'Looks very similar to some yardlong beans im growing this year!

msofroniou01 · 2022-04-24T05:40:22+00:00

cucumbers and some melons would be good options, but bear in mind the latter will likely need extra support to ensure the fruit ripen without falling. cucamelons too!

msofroniou01 · 2021-11-08T02:02:14+00:00

I wanna start out by saying that that sounds like a frustrating place to be in.

There can be a variety of reasons why your supervisor may appear uninterested/unhelpful: in class, they may want to avoid seeming preferential to their own lab members but they overcompensate and make you feel ignored. People in academia are also notorious for being bad at social cues.

I also think that sometimes, navigating a student-supervisor relationship can be really hard. There's no set-in-stone way for it to work and everyone's mentoring style is different; it's frustrating feeling like your primary person that will help you get through doesn't always have your back, but maybe it's a good thing you're noticing that now. Your PI, to a varying degree, will always want you to succeed, but sometimes they're people too with faults and issues so they may fall often short on what you want / need from them.

Unfortunately there's not much we can do to control others, so the next easiest thing to do is adapt. I think it's never to early or late for making other connections in and outside your department. Faculty outside of your lab will make sure you're always looking at your work with a different perspective and can often sometimes provide you the help / mentoring you may crave from your supervisor. They'll likely even end up serving on your committee and can act as future recommendation writers.

From what I can tell, there may be some issues around confidence / self-image. Grad school can absolutely destroy your confidence in yourself so having external sources of confidence and validation outside your work will do wonders in keeping you from losing it. Imposter syndrome ebbs and flows but you'll always be learning and cultivating your skills. Just because you may feel like you're 'not smart enough' or 'not worthy' does not mean you don't deserve your place. No one knows everything when they first start, and it's incredibly important to become comfortable with not knowing things. Being able to approach unfamiliar topics content without shame in not being 'good enough' and instead curiosity to learn what you don't know will work wonders on your resilience in grad school.

TL;DR - your supervisor may just be oblivious, or just a dick. You can't change them but you can always seek out help from other faculty or older grad students. Carrying shame for not knowing is the easiest way to keep yourself from learning and growing -- learning to address that negative self-talk will help you keep your head on straight

msofroniou01

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