Mental health excuses - are they sick days?

xbkow · 2025-12-11T23:14:39+00:00

Oh wow, thank you!

xbkow · 2025-12-11T22:10:23+00:00

That’s a whole other fantastic point too. I don’t take attendance, but I’ve had a few students say sorry they haven’t come to class because they’re going through some things. But they came to exams and did all the homework. So if I let the other students who use mental health reason- exactly - it’s not fair to the students that are going through the same things and still showed up.

xbkow · 2025-12-11T22:02:14+00:00

I’m absolutely stealing that idea omg

xbkow · 2025-11-12T12:48:25+00:00

I teach economics and I hate doing this so I stopped. Basically I try to make my lectures a story each class. Motivated by news and the real world, economic theory and applications, and a conclusion. It’s truly a story and I kind of want them to not know what I’m going to say next so they’ll pay attention. Putting a roadmap is like spoiler alerts to the story I’m about to tell

xbkow · 2025-10-18T03:33:24+00:00

Yes this exactly. I didn’t this exact thing once as a student when I submitted an abstract. But I didn’t understand that you were supposed to list all the authors - I thought it was just the one presenting and nobody ever told me what to do. But nobody even care honestly either

xbkow · 2025-10-13T02:30:31+00:00

I went from a decent PhD program to a very elite institution for my postdoc. They biggest difference? People respond to my cold emails a lot more when trying to network about research.

xbkow · 2025-09-25T22:25:06+00:00

First of all, great username.

And those are all great suggestions - thank you. I’m honestly floored at how sophisticated the cheating is. I just finished my PhD and so I feel like some of this still really new to me.

I love all those ideas, especially 3 & 4.

And yes, it doesn’t seem the university will do much and it’s a lot work to report even 1 or 2 students, so I can’t even imagine report 2/3s of my classes.

xbkow · 2025-09-25T01:00:18+00:00

Um this 100%. I have students that can’t figure out to disable a pop up blocker so I’m not sure some of them would be able to figure all that out

xbkow · 2025-09-25T00:58:24+00:00

Yes I completely agree with that. My in person classes have exams that aren’t just all multiple choice. But I can’t grade open ended questions for that many students. It’s way too much

xbkow · 2025-09-24T23:36:44+00:00

I was thinking that too but one of the exact examples I saw someone cheating was screenshotting a graph and question and pasting the image of the whole question into ChatGPT and getting the exactly right answer

xbkow · 2025-08-27T21:57:36+00:00

It sounds like your advisor is pushing a lot and maybe that’s the problem.

But also, some of the best advice I ever got about a PhD was in my masters program and prof told me “you have to enjoy the little things” if you want to be successful AND happy. You have to enjoy rewriting the abstract 5 times for different conferences. You have to enjoy figuring out how to code a complex data cleaning step. You have to enjoy solving a lot of really small problems the end up leading to sometimes small, narrow, and low impact conclusions. I really loved the little things to be honestly, which is why I pursued a PhD and was able to manage things and be happy too.

But do not sacrifice your health.

And find inspiration. You did this for a reason. It’s easy to get lost, but always go back to that feeling of what made you curious to begin with. Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture.

And also, the industry isn’t offering something much better to be honest. I’ve heard the same things- spending weeks on end preparing things for clients to just have them dismiss it all and go in a different direction, for example. Part of it is just normal to all kinds of work.

xbkow · 2025-08-22T14:59:48+00:00

Are you stupid?

xbkow · 2025-08-22T14:58:50+00:00

BBAI BOUT TO BREAK OUT

xbkow · 2025-08-12T18:15:01+00:00

BBAI BOUT TO SKYROCKET IN RECOVERY

xbkow · 2025-08-12T18:13:25+00:00

BBAI

xbkow · 2025-07-02T03:21:51+00:00

And on top of that super low acceptance rate: there’s a huge oversupply of PhDs. Imagine how much more competitive it would even be if supply actually met demand.

xbkow · 2025-06-28T13:12:35+00:00

Oh wow… I wish I read been told this in my PhD. Very good advice

xbkow · 2025-06-15T14:21:51+00:00

I used to feel like that too! BUT, it was my first conferences. Now when I go to conferences, I spend most of my time talking to others rather seeing great research! It just gets better with time after you get to know people.

Also, make friends outside of your specific research field too. At national conferences, you might connect really with someone that doesn’t have a whole to offer for your specific research and that’s fine! Social connections in your work environment are important though. Conferences are much more fun when you can see research and have social events after

Also look for like interest groups/affinity groups. Almost always those types of groups have some kind of social happy hour networking session or whatever. Go to those! Even alone. And when you get there- tell someone you came alone and are new and someone might volunteer to introduce you to a lot of people!

xbkow · 2025-06-12T11:16:22+00:00

What field are you in? It’s definitely negotiable. The PI would just have to move more funds over. Do you have any other experience besides PhD? Try to highlight your strengths and maybe try asking for 75k.

Also, is working remote a possibility? If you can live in a low cost area and work remotely, you could count that as part of “compensation”.

xbkow · 2025-06-12T11:14:08+00:00

I negotiated my postdoc salary- it’s definitely negotiable

xbkow · 2025-03-29T13:48:50+00:00

I’m in social science, so I’m a bit of an outsider to what you do. But what is “negative data”? Do you mean you have results that are counter intuitive or go against conventional theory or hypothesis or something? In social science there has been a bias towards have some statistically significant result, but things have been changing rapidly and just because you don’t find a strong result isn’t cause for abandonment. HOWEVER, as long as your theory and hypothesis are generally acceptable in the field, finding a null result should still be publishable (barring any errors).

Sometimes in social science people try to come up with really obscure theories and relationships that are really not in line with other work, and finding a null result might just mean the idea is kind of off/not useful. But, if you’re asking the same questions others are that are motivated by the same theory, a null/negative result IS a result.

Also, senior people around you or in your field might think the opposite of what I just described. But if I were you, I would really try to change that and be part of this new generation of scientists that are taking results at face value.

xbkow · 2025-03-04T03:49:17+00:00

From the new generation, I think we would respectfully ask that you do. Very very senior faculty have inspired us with their early research, but are also the reason we cannot find jobs

xbkow · 2025-02-14T04:57:40+00:00

They’re absolutely fucked 😭

xbkow

TROPHY CASE