28 Dec 2015, 2:26 pm
A350XWB wrote:
SocOfAutism wrote:
I'm certainly not in an engineering field, but I've known a lot of engineers and I think this applies everywhere. There's a healthy mix of idiots and brilliant people in grad school. And of lazy and hard workers. And it seems to me that the brilliant people are usually also the hard workers, and are always about half-mad while they're finishing school. The idiots breeze through and either give up and do something else or finish up and teach.
You're just going to have to find a way to be kinder to yourself. Relax on this break and then when you're ready, try to remember why you're in this in the first place. It's not for grades or to be the highest goal jumper. There's something you loved about your field. Remember why it's interesting and try to immerse yourself in THAT again. Like, enjoy it.
The last time I was actively taking classes I got to obsessively thinking about numbers. I was folding them in my mind for one (which was weird) and thinking about how abstract concepts cause us to measure things that shouldn't be measured. I had to take a break and remember what the hell I was doing.
You're just going to have to find a way to be kinder to yourself. Relax on this break and then when you're ready, try to remember why you're in this in the first place. It's not for grades or to be the highest goal jumper. There's something you loved about your field. Remember why it's interesting and try to immerse yourself in THAT again. Like, enjoy it.
The last time I was actively taking classes I got to obsessively thinking about numbers. I was folding them in my mind for one (which was weird) and thinking about how abstract concepts cause us to measure things that shouldn't be measured. I had to take a break and remember what the hell I was doing.
The main thing I loved most about physics was about asking and answering fundamental questions about the universe. Hence research making sense for me to do, and my choice of an area of research, particle cosmology.
Also the main reason why I seemingly cared so much about grades, beyond access to the research advisors or external funding while in grad school (got 2 papers from work done in a masters, which renders the entire operation of getting external funding doable) was that I planned for the possibility of some career-changing move at some point that required taking an education in another direction. There are times where, unfortunately, any workplace achievement may seemingly be discounted when carrying out such a move (like law school back home).
Physics OR law school? I've only known one person in law school and she seemed to change when she got in. All of a sudden she was hanging out with people with $200 haircuts and wearing blazers with patches on the elbows. I can't imagine a person from an engineering field hanging out with those people.
Unless there's like an Atticus crowd that I never saw.
28 Dec 2015, 5:23 pm
Your situation is definitely not hopeless. true true 
28 Dec 2015, 9:32 pm
SocOfAutism wrote:
A350XWB wrote:
SocOfAutism wrote:
I'm certainly not in an engineering field, but I've known a lot of engineers and I think this applies everywhere. There's a healthy mix of idiots and brilliant people in grad school. And of lazy and hard workers. And it seems to me that the brilliant people are usually also the hard workers, and are always about half-mad while they're finishing school. The idiots breeze through and either give up and do something else or finish up and teach.
You're just going to have to find a way to be kinder to yourself. Relax on this break and then when you're ready, try to remember why you're in this in the first place. It's not for grades or to be the highest goal jumper. There's something you loved about your field. Remember why it's interesting and try to immerse yourself in THAT again. Like, enjoy it.
The last time I was actively taking classes I got to obsessively thinking about numbers. I was folding them in my mind for one (which was weird) and thinking about how abstract concepts cause us to measure things that shouldn't be measured. I had to take a break and remember what the hell I was doing.
You're just going to have to find a way to be kinder to yourself. Relax on this break and then when you're ready, try to remember why you're in this in the first place. It's not for grades or to be the highest goal jumper. There's something you loved about your field. Remember why it's interesting and try to immerse yourself in THAT again. Like, enjoy it.
The last time I was actively taking classes I got to obsessively thinking about numbers. I was folding them in my mind for one (which was weird) and thinking about how abstract concepts cause us to measure things that shouldn't be measured. I had to take a break and remember what the hell I was doing.
The main thing I loved most about physics was about asking and answering fundamental questions about the universe. Hence research making sense for me to do, and my choice of an area of research, particle cosmology.
Also the main reason why I seemingly cared so much about grades, beyond access to the research advisors or external funding while in grad school (got 2 papers from work done in a masters, which renders the entire operation of getting external funding doable) was that I planned for the possibility of some career-changing move at some point that required taking an education in another direction. There are times where, unfortunately, any workplace achievement may seemingly be discounted when carrying out such a move (like law school back home).
Physics OR law school? I've only known one person in law school and she seemed to change when she got in. All of a sudden she was hanging out with people with $200 haircuts and wearing blazers with patches on the elbows. I can't imagine a person from an engineering field hanging out with those people.
Unless there's like an Atticus crowd that I never saw.
Law students are from a different crowd for sure. When I was starting grad school, the graduate association for the university had a yearly get-together meeting for all grad majors. That particular year it was organized primarily by the law school students. My friends forced me to go (designated driver) or I never would have by choice. The law students made fun of anyone in the STEM fields and made us feel quite unwelcome there. It did not matter if you were a biologist, a chemical engineer or a nuclear physicist, they openly mocked you. They would snicker as they introduced you to others (along with your major of study). Then they would shuffle you off to another side room away from them, where you could hear them openly laughing about it. Needless to say, I never attended another one of those events when the law school was in charge.
29 Dec 2015, 10:44 am
I just gave law school at home as an example of who could discount work experience in admissions processes, yet would consider PhD grades (knowing law school in the US won't, and a select few common-law Canadian schools will). There are other such examples that exist, and those usually do not care about one's research record either.
Just that high PhD grades will allow me to cover my bases if I needed to take my education in another direction at some point.
Quote:
Physics OR law school? I've only known one person in law school and she seemed to change when she got in. All of a sudden she was hanging out with people with $200 haircuts and wearing blazers with patches on the elbows. I can't imagine a person from an engineering field hanging out with those people.
Unless there's like an Atticus crowd that I never saw.
Unless there's like an Atticus crowd that I never saw.
True, law school in the US (or common-law-Canada for that matter, albeit to a lesser extent) seem to be populated with rather privileged students, if only because of the tuition.
But Canadian civil-law schools (Quebec, and hence home) are not as heavily populated with upper-class people; these cost the same as any other undergrad program in civil-law-land. That is, ~$90/credit. At home tuition is charged on a per-credit basis - Quebec residents doing financial planning for full-time college study plan for 30 credits a year. That way civil law students represent a much wider socio-economic cross-section than would be the case in common law schools. And civil law schools actually allow graduate grades to enter the equation (either as a supplement or as a substitute) as long as they are better than undergraduate grades after difficulty adjustments have been applied.
And somehow, law school came to mind because many of the transferrable skills from physics can still be applied to the practice of law. Plus, if you practice patent law, you may end up using some physics as well... as an aside, science policy often requires both legal skills and scientific skills.
QuantumChemist wrote:
Law students are from a different crowd for sure. When I was starting grad school, the graduate association for the university had a yearly get-together meeting for all grad majors. That particular year it was organized primarily by the law school students. My friends forced me to go (designated driver) or I never would have by choice. The law students made fun of anyone in the STEM fields and made us feel quite unwelcome there. It did not matter if you were a biologist, a chemical engineer or a nuclear physicist, they openly mocked you. They would snicker as they introduced you to others (along with your major of study). Then they would shuffle you off to another side room away from them, where you could hear them openly laughing about it. Needless to say, I never attended another one of those events when the law school was in charge.
Because law students from social sciences and humanities outnumber those from STEM fields by a rather wide margin, maybe some of it can be explained by the difference in background, and also some of it can be explained by the difference in the day-to-day work after graduation.
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29 Dec 2015, 1:59 pm
30 Dec 2015, 3:38 pm
A350XWB wrote:
I just gave law school at home as an example of who could discount work experience in admissions processes, yet would consider PhD grades (knowing law school in the US won't, and a select few common-law Canadian schools will). There are other such examples that exist, and those usually do not care about one's research record either.
Just that high PhD grades will allow me to cover my bases if I needed to take my education in another direction at some point.
True, law school in the US (or common-law-Canada for that matter, albeit to a lesser extent) seem to be populated with rather privileged students, if only because of the tuition.
But Canadian civil-law schools (Quebec, and hence home) are not as heavily populated with upper-class people; these cost the same as any other undergrad program in civil-law-land. That is, ~$90/credit. At home tuition is charged on a per-credit basis - Quebec residents doing financial planning for full-time college study plan for 30 credits a year. That way civil law students represent a much wider socio-economic cross-section than would be the case in common law schools. And civil law schools actually allow graduate grades to enter the equation (either as a supplement or as a substitute) as long as they are better than undergraduate grades after difficulty adjustments have been applied.
And somehow, law school came to mind because many of the transferrable skills from physics can still be applied to the practice of law. Plus, if you practice patent law, you may end up using some physics as well... as an aside, science policy often requires both legal skills and scientific skills.
Because law students from social sciences and humanities outnumber those from STEM fields by a rather wide margin, maybe some of it can be explained by the difference in background, and also some of it can be explained by the difference in the day-to-day work after graduation.
Just that high PhD grades will allow me to cover my bases if I needed to take my education in another direction at some point.
Quote:
Physics OR law school? I've only known one person in law school and she seemed to change when she got in. All of a sudden she was hanging out with people with $200 haircuts and wearing blazers with patches on the elbows. I can't imagine a person from an engineering field hanging out with those people.
Unless there's like an Atticus crowd that I never saw.
Unless there's like an Atticus crowd that I never saw.
True, law school in the US (or common-law-Canada for that matter, albeit to a lesser extent) seem to be populated with rather privileged students, if only because of the tuition.
But Canadian civil-law schools (Quebec, and hence home) are not as heavily populated with upper-class people; these cost the same as any other undergrad program in civil-law-land. That is, ~$90/credit. At home tuition is charged on a per-credit basis - Quebec residents doing financial planning for full-time college study plan for 30 credits a year. That way civil law students represent a much wider socio-economic cross-section than would be the case in common law schools. And civil law schools actually allow graduate grades to enter the equation (either as a supplement or as a substitute) as long as they are better than undergraduate grades after difficulty adjustments have been applied.
And somehow, law school came to mind because many of the transferrable skills from physics can still be applied to the practice of law. Plus, if you practice patent law, you may end up using some physics as well... as an aside, science policy often requires both legal skills and scientific skills.
QuantumChemist wrote:
Law students are from a different crowd for sure. When I was starting grad school, the graduate association for the university had a yearly get-together meeting for all grad majors. That particular year it was organized primarily by the law school students. My friends forced me to go (designated driver) or I never would have by choice. The law students made fun of anyone in the STEM fields and made us feel quite unwelcome there. It did not matter if you were a biologist, a chemical engineer or a nuclear physicist, they openly mocked you. They would snicker as they introduced you to others (along with your major of study). Then they would shuffle you off to another side room away from them, where you could hear them openly laughing about it. Needless to say, I never attended another one of those events when the law school was in charge.
Because law students from social sciences and humanities outnumber those from STEM fields by a rather wide margin, maybe some of it can be explained by the difference in background, and also some of it can be explained by the difference in the day-to-day work after graduation.
Ohh...I didn't think about patent law. Well really, there are as many different kinds of law as there are anything else.
Is trivia night still a thing? Before I had my son, my friends and I used to go out to an Irish pub and it was like big leagues trivia every week. It would be packed there, and all the competitive teams were carefully chosen to have the right "kinds" of players. When we were regularly placing first or second, we had two aspies, one with a special interest in internet gossip and ancient civilizations, the other with a special interest in geography, a down low gay man biochemist, me the sociologist woman, and my friend the zookeeper woman. The other team that beat us half the time had a similar makeup. NO ONE got the sports questions.
The typical law school students may have come in handy. Maybe they would have gotten sports.
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