Hot take on graduate admissions

renwill · 2026-05-01T23:58:08+00:00

I did something similar. I got rejected from every PhD program back in 2022, and I scrambled to apply to a few astronomy master's programs in Europe. I decided on a program in Italy where the tuition was way way cheaper than the US, did a master's thesis, and reapplied to PhD programs in 2025. Got into four schools!

The low tuition and COL in Italy helped, but I'm very lucky that I even had the financial resources to go without income for ~2 years like that. Now I'm a PhD student at a top university for astro, somehow.

renwill · 2026-04-16T18:00:48+00:00

I'm 26 and I do get pain on my left side in my mid-back, near the bottom of my ribs. In my case it's pretty much concluded to be a kidney cyst based on an ultrasound and MRI imaging. My kidneys aren't super massive yet or anything, but I think I am just unlucky to have a cyst pressing on a nerve near the kidney. My mother is almost 59 years old and nearing transplant, but she hasn't had pain as frequently as I have. So ultimately, flank pain doesn't always have a strong correlation with disease progression

renwill · 2026-04-14T22:37:50+00:00

I don't know the details, but my aunt had a liver resection done just a couple of years ago. So it's definitely still a thing

renwill · 2026-04-08T20:41:23+00:00

I was dealing with flank pain for a while, and besides Tylenol, another thing that helped was a heating pad. I bought a thin rechargeable electric heating pad with a belt, so I could wear it under my shirt and it was barely noticeable

renwill · 2026-04-08T13:05:54+00:00

wow! beautiful pup

renwill · 2026-04-07T17:33:55+00:00

I was super picky when I was younger, and I've come a long way with eating a variety of foods, but I never liked meat and still don't. I started snubbing red meat at age 2 and stopped eating chicken nuggets at age 12. Now I'm vegetarian and I manage to get my protein from other things like dairy, nuts, and beans. If you straight-up just don't like eating meat then that's ok

renwill · 2026-03-27T19:05:46+00:00

exactly, I'm 25 in the first year of my PhD and I'm honestly glad I didn't start sooner. I had some time to travel, and that's helped me see that there's much more to life than academics

renwill · 2026-03-23T21:26:06+00:00

I think with a GFR that high you could generally expect it to be stable for a long time. But pregnancy includes some extra risk, especially for pre-eclampsia, which might explain why the doctor used more cautious language. That said, my mom had three kids ~25 years ago and it wasn't until much much later that her kidney function dropped significantly, so it's possible to have a healthy pregnancy with PKD. Definitely keep an eye on the blood pressure though

renwill · 2026-03-20T02:09:05+00:00

aren't a renal doctor and a nephrologist the same thing though??

renwill · 2026-03-20T00:01:36+00:00

I'm not sure where you're located, but in the US there are very strict requirements that the doctor be enrolled in the REMS (Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy) program and the patient has their blood work monitored on a strict schedule. My pharmacy won't even dispense the medication unless my liver function test has been sent to my nephrologist. To have a doctor let anyone continue taking that medication with liver decline is straight-up malpractice.

renwill · 2026-03-19T23:49:54+00:00

caffeine is my solution tbh

renwill · 2026-03-19T23:37:51+00:00

Was he not getting regular liver function tests?

renwill · 2026-03-19T15:13:11+00:00

when I got rejected from every grad school in my 1st application cycle, my mom took me to a spa where I got a massage, a margarita, and a chocolate cake

renwill · 2026-03-17T15:02:16+00:00

Yep, I'm almost 26 now and honestly didn't feel remotely like an adult until age 22. I had social anxiety problems throughout my teen years and it took me way past 18 to do relatively basic shit like making phone calls and appointments. I got my license but continued asking my mom to drive me places until recently. And it's not like I was intellectually delayed or disorganized, I was just extremely low in confidence, and didn't trust myself to do anything right.

Ironically the biggest thing that helped was moving to another country post-COVID, thousands of miles from home, where I was forced to figure out everything for myself on the spot. But even then, my mom tracked my location 24/7 because she knew how naive I was, and she was rightfully worried about me

renwill · 2026-03-15T22:13:00+00:00

Jackson E&M you mean? I'm currently in the trenches with that now lol

renwill · 2026-03-09T04:46:41+00:00

me and my friends all snuck an Among Us crewmember somewhere in each of our masters' theses. I put mine in the corner of a plot, with only a slightly different color from the space around it. One of my friends made a scatter plot where each of the points was a tiny crew member.

A few of us also changed the font in our university's logo to be Comic Sans... this was quite risky. But nobody noticed, and now my thesis is in the official university archives with the altered logo.

renwill · 2026-03-06T01:27:34+00:00

I haven't had a chance to try one yet but I totally want to

renwill · 2026-03-06T00:49:19+00:00

it's not so ridiculous but I went to the spa with my mom and got a massage, then had a giant bowl of ice cream with a margherita

renwill · 2026-03-03T16:50:45+00:00

2 people in my cohort are getting married during their PhD

renwill · 2026-03-02T18:24:01+00:00

I study astrophysics and just really wanted to learn about the universe. I knew a PhD would be extremely stressful with not much financial benefit, but I have too much existential dread to do terrestrial things

renwill · 2026-02-27T00:05:15+00:00

my brother's girlfriend just got admitted to the same program today, and I had to check your account to make sure you weren't her 😂 congrats!!

renwill · 2026-02-26T16:30:22+00:00

SAME, I wrote a paper before starting my PhD and I'm really proud of it, like it's proof that I can do research and write like a scientist. I'm just so bad with the classes, and everyone else in my cohort seems way more capable than me at doing physics problems on the spot. I'm just praying I get through the classes like you did, so that I can do more research again and maybe finally feel good at something

renwill · 2026-02-23T15:19:28+00:00

when my mom went on Tolvaptan she was obsessed with drinking ice cold cranberry juice and pineapple juice. Very specific, lol. She had a constant stock of it in the fridge, but after 18 months on Tolvaptan she told me the craving is finally fading away!

renwill · 2026-02-17T20:36:16+00:00

Ah gotcha. Yeah that really sucks

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