epfl-lighteval-dpo-datasets
Collection
7 items
•
Updated
prompt
stringlengths 34
18.6k
| chosen
stringlengths 0
9.99k
| rejected
stringlengths 0
9.99k
|
|---|---|---|
Show support for UC academic worker strike Fellow academic community- Please take a moment to show solidarity with the academic student workers on strike at UC right now. We are in the second week of the strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California (UC) system. The action is the largest strike of academic workers in United States history. The strikers are demanding a salary increase—from an impossibly low $24,000 a year to $54,000—to address California’s skyrocketing rents and other living expenses. Sign the letter to President Drake https://act.aflcio.org/petitions/show-your-support-for-academic-workers-at-university-of-california?source=direct\_link& Make a donation in the hardship fund if you can https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw ​ https://www.fairucnow.org/support/
|
I was given an offer from UC Davis for their biostatistics program at just $22k flat for the academic year, to which I declined knowing it was ridiculous with that cost of living. I feel for the students who probably felt like they had no choice but to accept, or are first-gens without financial backing from their family.
|
Solidarity with UC academic workers! ✊
|
Show support for UC academic worker strike Fellow academic community- Please take a moment to show solidarity with the academic student workers on strike at UC right now. We are in the second week of the strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California (UC) system. The action is the largest strike of academic workers in United States history. The strikers are demanding a salary increase—from an impossibly low $24,000 a year to $54,000—to address California’s skyrocketing rents and other living expenses. Sign the letter to President Drake https://act.aflcio.org/petitions/show-your-support-for-academic-workers-at-university-of-california?source=direct\_link& Make a donation in the hardship fund if you can https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw ​ https://www.fairucnow.org/support/
|
I was given an offer from UC Davis for their biostatistics program at just $22k flat for the academic year, to which I declined knowing it was ridiculous with that cost of living. I feel for the students who probably felt like they had no choice but to accept, or are first-gens without financial backing from their family.
|
I keep seeing $24k cited as the current stipend, but it’s definitely much higher than that at UCs in my field- in the 30k-40k range, depending on which UC. I’m curious as to what $24k represents? Is that the lowest paid worker currently (I know humanities fields pay a lot less)?
|
Show support for UC academic worker strike Fellow academic community- Please take a moment to show solidarity with the academic student workers on strike at UC right now. We are in the second week of the strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California (UC) system. The action is the largest strike of academic workers in United States history. The strikers are demanding a salary increase—from an impossibly low $24,000 a year to $54,000—to address California’s skyrocketing rents and other living expenses. Sign the letter to President Drake https://act.aflcio.org/petitions/show-your-support-for-academic-workers-at-university-of-california?source=direct\_link& Make a donation in the hardship fund if you can https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw ​ https://www.fairucnow.org/support/
|
I was given an offer from UC Davis for their biostatistics program at just $22k flat for the academic year, to which I declined knowing it was ridiculous with that cost of living. I feel for the students who probably felt like they had no choice but to accept, or are first-gens without financial backing from their family.
|
Wishing them much success! I doubt the NIH is going to match, so its up to the University to make up the difference here. Less admin should go a long way. I had 4 other roomates in a 3 bedroom during my PhD at a UC. Was at 17,000 per year in early 2000s. It gets old in your late 20s.
|
Show support for UC academic worker strike Fellow academic community- Please take a moment to show solidarity with the academic student workers on strike at UC right now. We are in the second week of the strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California (UC) system. The action is the largest strike of academic workers in United States history. The strikers are demanding a salary increase—from an impossibly low $24,000 a year to $54,000—to address California’s skyrocketing rents and other living expenses. Sign the letter to President Drake https://act.aflcio.org/petitions/show-your-support-for-academic-workers-at-university-of-california?source=direct\_link& Make a donation in the hardship fund if you can https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw ​ https://www.fairucnow.org/support/
|
I was given an offer from UC Davis for their biostatistics program at just $22k flat for the academic year, to which I declined knowing it was ridiculous with that cost of living. I feel for the students who probably felt like they had no choice but to accept, or are first-gens without financial backing from their family.
|
Is this $24k an year, or $24k for 9-months? I gave two acquaintances at UCB (who joined PhD recently) and both mentioned they get paid around ~26 - 29k for 9 months. They're in EECS though, so that might be why
|
Show support for UC academic worker strike Fellow academic community- Please take a moment to show solidarity with the academic student workers on strike at UC right now. We are in the second week of the strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California (UC) system. The action is the largest strike of academic workers in United States history. The strikers are demanding a salary increase—from an impossibly low $24,000 a year to $54,000—to address California’s skyrocketing rents and other living expenses. Sign the letter to President Drake https://act.aflcio.org/petitions/show-your-support-for-academic-workers-at-university-of-california?source=direct\_link& Make a donation in the hardship fund if you can https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw ​ https://www.fairucnow.org/support/
|
I was given an offer from UC Davis for their biostatistics program at just $22k flat for the academic year, to which I declined knowing it was ridiculous with that cost of living. I feel for the students who probably felt like they had no choice but to accept, or are first-gens without financial backing from their family.
|
SUPPORT!
|
Show support for UC academic worker strike Fellow academic community- Please take a moment to show solidarity with the academic student workers on strike at UC right now. We are in the second week of the strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California (UC) system. The action is the largest strike of academic workers in United States history. The strikers are demanding a salary increase—from an impossibly low $24,000 a year to $54,000—to address California’s skyrocketing rents and other living expenses. Sign the letter to President Drake https://act.aflcio.org/petitions/show-your-support-for-academic-workers-at-university-of-california?source=direct\_link& Make a donation in the hardship fund if you can https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw ​ https://www.fairucnow.org/support/
|
Solidarity with UC academic workers! ✊
|
I keep seeing $24k cited as the current stipend, but it’s definitely much higher than that at UCs in my field- in the 30k-40k range, depending on which UC. I’m curious as to what $24k represents? Is that the lowest paid worker currently (I know humanities fields pay a lot less)?
|
Show support for UC academic worker strike Fellow academic community- Please take a moment to show solidarity with the academic student workers on strike at UC right now. We are in the second week of the strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California (UC) system. The action is the largest strike of academic workers in United States history. The strikers are demanding a salary increase—from an impossibly low $24,000 a year to $54,000—to address California’s skyrocketing rents and other living expenses. Sign the letter to President Drake https://act.aflcio.org/petitions/show-your-support-for-academic-workers-at-university-of-california?source=direct\_link& Make a donation in the hardship fund if you can https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw ​ https://www.fairucnow.org/support/
|
Wishing them much success! I doubt the NIH is going to match, so its up to the University to make up the difference here. Less admin should go a long way. I had 4 other roomates in a 3 bedroom during my PhD at a UC. Was at 17,000 per year in early 2000s. It gets old in your late 20s.
|
Is this $24k an year, or $24k for 9-months? I gave two acquaintances at UCB (who joined PhD recently) and both mentioned they get paid around ~26 - 29k for 9 months. They're in EECS though, so that might be why
|
Show support for UC academic worker strike Fellow academic community- Please take a moment to show solidarity with the academic student workers on strike at UC right now. We are in the second week of the strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California (UC) system. The action is the largest strike of academic workers in United States history. The strikers are demanding a salary increase—from an impossibly low $24,000 a year to $54,000—to address California’s skyrocketing rents and other living expenses. Sign the letter to President Drake https://act.aflcio.org/petitions/show-your-support-for-academic-workers-at-university-of-california?source=direct\_link& Make a donation in the hardship fund if you can https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw ​ https://www.fairucnow.org/support/
|
*checks flairs of users posting comments disagreeing* shocked_pikachu.jpg
|
FYI because a lot of people don't know the structure of a PhD. You can disagree with this structure but it is the current structure in the US. A Ph.D. is a degree with some classes but is primarily working towards a final thesis documents that outlines some novel research you conducted. In theory the student has near complete control on their thesis topic, research path and what they do with their time. Being a student comes with a tuition cost and a lot research requires materials and other expensive equipment. The tuition cost drops drastically after PhD students stop taking classes (and/or progress to candidacy). To deal with this two things are done, 1) you work closely with a PI who provides some resources and equipment but the more material support they provide the more control they have over your topic as they have to approve expenses. 2) They make you an employ for 20 hrs a week in exchange for covering your tuition (money does actually get charged to accounts for this) and pays you for those 20hrs. Three types of employees, TA, RA, RA(thesis). The simplest type is a TA where you do work unrelated to research to pay the bills but is often only for 9 months of the year. RAs do research in a lab that is unrelated to their thesis each week for some professor (usually their PI but not always). RA(thesis) you do research in a lab but it is the same topic as your thesis. This is a double edged sword as you get to do more work towards your thesis but the line between employee and student gets very blurry. Where does the money come from? For TA's the money for salary and tuition comes primarily from the department through fees charged on grants and tuition. For RA's the money for tuition and salary comes from the professors grants. You can think about research labs as mini business with their own accounts and expenses (some run on 50k a year and others run on millions). This does mean the number of PhD offers made a year is tied to the cost of students and the impact this will have depends on how much funding an area has. Where is the contention? Being a PhD student is a full time gig so even though it is only 20 hrs of employment you spend 20+ hrs being a "student" in addition to employment. The contention is generally do we consider this time doing research as part of a degree and treated as being a student or should it be treated as employment and become paid hours. Both ways of looking at it have upsides and downsides: Treating them as student gives you a lot freedom. In the first year (or two) you can focus on classes and exploring topics instead of research. You also have a very strong voice in what you want to study and your productivity during this process can be very low. The downside is you are paid half as much. As an employee you make twice as much and being an employee comes with some protections. Workload while taking classes would increase drastically as class work would be in addition to your research in the first and second year (not possible for most students). The number of Phd positions offered would drop by about 20-40% and students would loose the ability to choose their thesis topic or perform exploration outside what is approved by the PI. There is no better option, there are two options each with pros and cons. We've been looking at moving RAs to more hours a week post candidacy but there are complications from the federal grant side as well as questions about impact on labs in low funding areas. The UC resolution takes a third option of still calling them students but drastically increasing the pay for the 20 hrs they are counted as employees.
|
Show support for UC academic worker strike Fellow academic community- Please take a moment to show solidarity with the academic student workers on strike at UC right now. We are in the second week of the strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California (UC) system. The action is the largest strike of academic workers in United States history. The strikers are demanding a salary increase—from an impossibly low $24,000 a year to $54,000—to address California’s skyrocketing rents and other living expenses. Sign the letter to President Drake https://act.aflcio.org/petitions/show-your-support-for-academic-workers-at-university-of-california?source=direct\_link& Make a donation in the hardship fund if you can https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw ​ https://www.fairucnow.org/support/
|
*checks flairs of users posting comments disagreeing* shocked_pikachu.jpg
|
Is this $24k an year, or $24k for 9-months? I gave two acquaintances at UCB (who joined PhD recently) and both mentioned they get paid around ~26 - 29k for 9 months. They're in EECS though, so that might be why
|
Show support for UC academic worker strike Fellow academic community- Please take a moment to show solidarity with the academic student workers on strike at UC right now. We are in the second week of the strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California (UC) system. The action is the largest strike of academic workers in United States history. The strikers are demanding a salary increase—from an impossibly low $24,000 a year to $54,000—to address California’s skyrocketing rents and other living expenses. Sign the letter to President Drake https://act.aflcio.org/petitions/show-your-support-for-academic-workers-at-university-of-california?source=direct\_link& Make a donation in the hardship fund if you can https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw ​ https://www.fairucnow.org/support/
|
*checks flairs of users posting comments disagreeing* shocked_pikachu.jpg
|
SUPPORT!
|
Show support for UC academic worker strike Fellow academic community- Please take a moment to show solidarity with the academic student workers on strike at UC right now. We are in the second week of the strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California (UC) system. The action is the largest strike of academic workers in United States history. The strikers are demanding a salary increase—from an impossibly low $24,000 a year to $54,000—to address California’s skyrocketing rents and other living expenses. Sign the letter to President Drake https://act.aflcio.org/petitions/show-your-support-for-academic-workers-at-university-of-california?source=direct\_link& Make a donation in the hardship fund if you can https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw ​ https://www.fairucnow.org/support/
|
*checks flairs of users posting comments disagreeing* shocked_pikachu.jpg
|
You have my support!
|
Show support for UC academic worker strike Fellow academic community- Please take a moment to show solidarity with the academic student workers on strike at UC right now. We are in the second week of the strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California (UC) system. The action is the largest strike of academic workers in United States history. The strikers are demanding a salary increase—from an impossibly low $24,000 a year to $54,000—to address California’s skyrocketing rents and other living expenses. Sign the letter to President Drake https://act.aflcio.org/petitions/show-your-support-for-academic-workers-at-university-of-california?source=direct\_link& Make a donation in the hardship fund if you can https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw ​ https://www.fairucnow.org/support/
|
FYI because a lot of people don't know the structure of a PhD. You can disagree with this structure but it is the current structure in the US. A Ph.D. is a degree with some classes but is primarily working towards a final thesis documents that outlines some novel research you conducted. In theory the student has near complete control on their thesis topic, research path and what they do with their time. Being a student comes with a tuition cost and a lot research requires materials and other expensive equipment. The tuition cost drops drastically after PhD students stop taking classes (and/or progress to candidacy). To deal with this two things are done, 1) you work closely with a PI who provides some resources and equipment but the more material support they provide the more control they have over your topic as they have to approve expenses. 2) They make you an employ for 20 hrs a week in exchange for covering your tuition (money does actually get charged to accounts for this) and pays you for those 20hrs. Three types of employees, TA, RA, RA(thesis). The simplest type is a TA where you do work unrelated to research to pay the bills but is often only for 9 months of the year. RAs do research in a lab that is unrelated to their thesis each week for some professor (usually their PI but not always). RA(thesis) you do research in a lab but it is the same topic as your thesis. This is a double edged sword as you get to do more work towards your thesis but the line between employee and student gets very blurry. Where does the money come from? For TA's the money for salary and tuition comes primarily from the department through fees charged on grants and tuition. For RA's the money for tuition and salary comes from the professors grants. You can think about research labs as mini business with their own accounts and expenses (some run on 50k a year and others run on millions). This does mean the number of PhD offers made a year is tied to the cost of students and the impact this will have depends on how much funding an area has. Where is the contention? Being a PhD student is a full time gig so even though it is only 20 hrs of employment you spend 20+ hrs being a "student" in addition to employment. The contention is generally do we consider this time doing research as part of a degree and treated as being a student or should it be treated as employment and become paid hours. Both ways of looking at it have upsides and downsides: Treating them as student gives you a lot freedom. In the first year (or two) you can focus on classes and exploring topics instead of research. You also have a very strong voice in what you want to study and your productivity during this process can be very low. The downside is you are paid half as much. As an employee you make twice as much and being an employee comes with some protections. Workload while taking classes would increase drastically as class work would be in addition to your research in the first and second year (not possible for most students). The number of Phd positions offered would drop by about 20-40% and students would loose the ability to choose their thesis topic or perform exploration outside what is approved by the PI. There is no better option, there are two options each with pros and cons. We've been looking at moving RAs to more hours a week post candidacy but there are complications from the federal grant side as well as questions about impact on labs in low funding areas. The UC resolution takes a third option of still calling them students but drastically increasing the pay for the 20 hrs they are counted as employees.
|
SUPPORT!
|
Show support for UC academic worker strike Fellow academic community- Please take a moment to show solidarity with the academic student workers on strike at UC right now. We are in the second week of the strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California (UC) system. The action is the largest strike of academic workers in United States history. The strikers are demanding a salary increase—from an impossibly low $24,000 a year to $54,000—to address California’s skyrocketing rents and other living expenses. Sign the letter to President Drake https://act.aflcio.org/petitions/show-your-support-for-academic-workers-at-university-of-california?source=direct\_link& Make a donation in the hardship fund if you can https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw ​ https://www.fairucnow.org/support/
|
FYI because a lot of people don't know the structure of a PhD. You can disagree with this structure but it is the current structure in the US. A Ph.D. is a degree with some classes but is primarily working towards a final thesis documents that outlines some novel research you conducted. In theory the student has near complete control on their thesis topic, research path and what they do with their time. Being a student comes with a tuition cost and a lot research requires materials and other expensive equipment. The tuition cost drops drastically after PhD students stop taking classes (and/or progress to candidacy). To deal with this two things are done, 1) you work closely with a PI who provides some resources and equipment but the more material support they provide the more control they have over your topic as they have to approve expenses. 2) They make you an employ for 20 hrs a week in exchange for covering your tuition (money does actually get charged to accounts for this) and pays you for those 20hrs. Three types of employees, TA, RA, RA(thesis). The simplest type is a TA where you do work unrelated to research to pay the bills but is often only for 9 months of the year. RAs do research in a lab that is unrelated to their thesis each week for some professor (usually their PI but not always). RA(thesis) you do research in a lab but it is the same topic as your thesis. This is a double edged sword as you get to do more work towards your thesis but the line between employee and student gets very blurry. Where does the money come from? For TA's the money for salary and tuition comes primarily from the department through fees charged on grants and tuition. For RA's the money for tuition and salary comes from the professors grants. You can think about research labs as mini business with their own accounts and expenses (some run on 50k a year and others run on millions). This does mean the number of PhD offers made a year is tied to the cost of students and the impact this will have depends on how much funding an area has. Where is the contention? Being a PhD student is a full time gig so even though it is only 20 hrs of employment you spend 20+ hrs being a "student" in addition to employment. The contention is generally do we consider this time doing research as part of a degree and treated as being a student or should it be treated as employment and become paid hours. Both ways of looking at it have upsides and downsides: Treating them as student gives you a lot freedom. In the first year (or two) you can focus on classes and exploring topics instead of research. You also have a very strong voice in what you want to study and your productivity during this process can be very low. The downside is you are paid half as much. As an employee you make twice as much and being an employee comes with some protections. Workload while taking classes would increase drastically as class work would be in addition to your research in the first and second year (not possible for most students). The number of Phd positions offered would drop by about 20-40% and students would loose the ability to choose their thesis topic or perform exploration outside what is approved by the PI. There is no better option, there are two options each with pros and cons. We've been looking at moving RAs to more hours a week post candidacy but there are complications from the federal grant side as well as questions about impact on labs in low funding areas. The UC resolution takes a third option of still calling them students but drastically increasing the pay for the 20 hrs they are counted as employees.
|
You have my support!
|
Show support for UC academic worker strike Fellow academic community- Please take a moment to show solidarity with the academic student workers on strike at UC right now. We are in the second week of the strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California (UC) system. The action is the largest strike of academic workers in United States history. The strikers are demanding a salary increase—from an impossibly low $24,000 a year to $54,000—to address California’s skyrocketing rents and other living expenses. Sign the letter to President Drake https://act.aflcio.org/petitions/show-your-support-for-academic-workers-at-university-of-california?source=direct\_link& Make a donation in the hardship fund if you can https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw ​ https://www.fairucnow.org/support/
|
You have my support!
|
SUPPORT!
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
That actually happened to one of my friends in grad school - he was teaching an undergrad class, and one of the undergrads cheated on his homework and then refused to pay the person who did his homework for him. The person who did the homework contacted the university to out the student, and we failed him. Put us in a bit of an awkward position though, as the person helping him cheat was a grad student at a nearby university and working for this company was definitely a violation of the honor code there. We didn't report him, though.
|
I would like to know, yes. At the end of the plagiarism is a fact of academic life and at the industrial scale on which it is practiced now, it is basically impossible to stop or even curtail. But still, I would like to know, yes.
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
Cheating hurts all hard working and honest students.
|
Uvocorp? I used to do your job, too. It pays pretty well, but it's disgusting to see people get their PhDs by outsourcing their work. Especially the bitchy and entitled clients that think they are all that. Since my background is in ancient philosophy, I particularly hated a client that said Plato is "old" and "irrelevant". It was eye-opening to me, especially, because as an undergrad I knew so many foreign exchange students who could hardly speak English but wrote immaculate papers. Now I know how that happened... That said: you wouldn't accomplish anything by martyring yourself here. The issues won't change until professors wake up and create plagiarism-proof systems. I don't mean to say our professors are being lazy, but I don't think they realize how wide-spread this issue is or how undetectable it is. They think TurnItIn.com is doing great, but there are probably several students in the class that are paying to have original papers written for them.
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
Cheating hurts all hard working and honest students.
|
I would like to know, yes. At the end of the plagiarism is a fact of academic life and at the industrial scale on which it is practiced now, it is basically impossible to stop or even curtail. But still, I would like to know, yes.
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
Uvocorp? I used to do your job, too. It pays pretty well, but it's disgusting to see people get their PhDs by outsourcing their work. Especially the bitchy and entitled clients that think they are all that. Since my background is in ancient philosophy, I particularly hated a client that said Plato is "old" and "irrelevant". It was eye-opening to me, especially, because as an undergrad I knew so many foreign exchange students who could hardly speak English but wrote immaculate papers. Now I know how that happened... That said: you wouldn't accomplish anything by martyring yourself here. The issues won't change until professors wake up and create plagiarism-proof systems. I don't mean to say our professors are being lazy, but I don't think they realize how wide-spread this issue is or how undetectable it is. They think TurnItIn.com is doing great, but there are probably several students in the class that are paying to have original papers written for them.
|
I would like to know, yes. At the end of the plagiarism is a fact of academic life and at the industrial scale on which it is practiced now, it is basically impossible to stop or even curtail. But still, I would like to know, yes.
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
Probably going to get downvoted to hell here but I find it laughable that OP (and the other plagiarist commenters) think they have some moral grounds to look down on their clients.
|
Dude, I had a student turn into me *my own* lab report from the year prior It's in everyone's best interests to just assume the students are cheating
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
Probably going to get downvoted to hell here but I find it laughable that OP (and the other plagiarist commenters) think they have some moral grounds to look down on their clients.
|
The thing I can't help but wonder when people cheat like that is, what's going to happen for them once they're in a job? I've found that almost everything I remember writing about has ended up being useful in my career at some point; what do people do when they don't have that well of research and writing experience to draw from? Are they successful in their careers? Or are these largely the people who later complain that they couldn't get a job in their field and that college degrees are "worthless"?
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
Probably going to get downvoted to hell here but I find it laughable that OP (and the other plagiarist commenters) think they have some moral grounds to look down on their clients.
|
I would like to know, yes. At the end of the plagiarism is a fact of academic life and at the industrial scale on which it is practiced now, it is basically impossible to stop or even curtail. But still, I would like to know, yes.
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
Probably going to get downvoted to hell here but I find it laughable that OP (and the other plagiarist commenters) think they have some moral grounds to look down on their clients.
|
This makes me really really mad because I spend hours stressing and working on my papers. And if there are students who get good grades because someone else writes the papers for them? How is a company like that legal?
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
If you're working for these companies you're as much a part of the problem as the students.
|
Dude, I had a student turn into me *my own* lab report from the year prior It's in everyone's best interests to just assume the students are cheating
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
If you're working for these companies you're as much a part of the problem as the students.
|
The thing I can't help but wonder when people cheat like that is, what's going to happen for them once they're in a job? I've found that almost everything I remember writing about has ended up being useful in my career at some point; what do people do when they don't have that well of research and writing experience to draw from? Are they successful in their careers? Or are these largely the people who later complain that they couldn't get a job in their field and that college degrees are "worthless"?
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
If you're working for these companies you're as much a part of the problem as the students.
|
I would like to know, yes. At the end of the plagiarism is a fact of academic life and at the industrial scale on which it is practiced now, it is basically impossible to stop or even curtail. But still, I would like to know, yes.
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
If you're working for these companies you're as much a part of the problem as the students.
|
This makes me really really mad because I spend hours stressing and working on my papers. And if there are students who get good grades because someone else writes the papers for them? How is a company like that legal?
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
> I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. Laughable. This strikes me as no different than a hitman complaining that his employers don't value human life. > *I can't believe those lowlifes would be willing to kill a business partner just for control of the company, scum... oh well a man's gotta eat.* So you think they're scum for cheating and they deserve to be caught (they do)... but you're just in it for the money and that's OK??? Absurd. You want to turn these people in but don't want to jeopardize your job helping them cheat? In a truly just world both the buyer and supplier would be charged with fraud. > Ugh. I don't see how you have the moral authority to judge them when you're literally half the problem.
|
Dude, I had a student turn into me *my own* lab report from the year prior It's in everyone's best interests to just assume the students are cheating
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
> I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. Laughable. This strikes me as no different than a hitman complaining that his employers don't value human life. > *I can't believe those lowlifes would be willing to kill a business partner just for control of the company, scum... oh well a man's gotta eat.* So you think they're scum for cheating and they deserve to be caught (they do)... but you're just in it for the money and that's OK??? Absurd. You want to turn these people in but don't want to jeopardize your job helping them cheat? In a truly just world both the buyer and supplier would be charged with fraud. > Ugh. I don't see how you have the moral authority to judge them when you're literally half the problem.
|
The thing I can't help but wonder when people cheat like that is, what's going to happen for them once they're in a job? I've found that almost everything I remember writing about has ended up being useful in my career at some point; what do people do when they don't have that well of research and writing experience to draw from? Are they successful in their careers? Or are these largely the people who later complain that they couldn't get a job in their field and that college degrees are "worthless"?
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
> I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. Laughable. This strikes me as no different than a hitman complaining that his employers don't value human life. > *I can't believe those lowlifes would be willing to kill a business partner just for control of the company, scum... oh well a man's gotta eat.* So you think they're scum for cheating and they deserve to be caught (they do)... but you're just in it for the money and that's OK??? Absurd. You want to turn these people in but don't want to jeopardize your job helping them cheat? In a truly just world both the buyer and supplier would be charged with fraud. > Ugh. I don't see how you have the moral authority to judge them when you're literally half the problem.
|
I would like to know, yes. At the end of the plagiarism is a fact of academic life and at the industrial scale on which it is practiced now, it is basically impossible to stop or even curtail. But still, I would like to know, yes.
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
> I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. Laughable. This strikes me as no different than a hitman complaining that his employers don't value human life. > *I can't believe those lowlifes would be willing to kill a business partner just for control of the company, scum... oh well a man's gotta eat.* So you think they're scum for cheating and they deserve to be caught (they do)... but you're just in it for the money and that's OK??? Absurd. You want to turn these people in but don't want to jeopardize your job helping them cheat? In a truly just world both the buyer and supplier would be charged with fraud. > Ugh. I don't see how you have the moral authority to judge them when you're literally half the problem.
|
This makes me really really mad because I spend hours stressing and working on my papers. And if there are students who get good grades because someone else writes the papers for them? How is a company like that legal?
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
Dude, I had a student turn into me *my own* lab report from the year prior It's in everyone's best interests to just assume the students are cheating
|
The thing I can't help but wonder when people cheat like that is, what's going to happen for them once they're in a job? I've found that almost everything I remember writing about has ended up being useful in my career at some point; what do people do when they don't have that well of research and writing experience to draw from? Are they successful in their careers? Or are these largely the people who later complain that they couldn't get a job in their field and that college degrees are "worthless"?
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
Dude, I had a student turn into me *my own* lab report from the year prior It's in everyone's best interests to just assume the students are cheating
|
I would like to know, yes. At the end of the plagiarism is a fact of academic life and at the industrial scale on which it is practiced now, it is basically impossible to stop or even curtail. But still, I would like to know, yes.
|
Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.
|
The thing I can't help but wonder when people cheat like that is, what's going to happen for them once they're in a job? I've found that almost everything I remember writing about has ended up being useful in my career at some point; what do people do when they don't have that well of research and writing experience to draw from? Are they successful in their careers? Or are these largely the people who later complain that they couldn't get a job in their field and that college degrees are "worthless"?
|
I would like to know, yes. At the end of the plagiarism is a fact of academic life and at the industrial scale on which it is practiced now, it is basically impossible to stop or even curtail. But still, I would like to know, yes.
|
How do you regain your passion for a subject after a stressful grad school experience? I am fortunate to have a full time teaching job in my field after earning my Masters. The trouble is I had some bad experiences with my PI and my whole thesis experience being very stressful and not getting the support he promised when he asked to be my PI. I graduated, but never felt confident in my learning. On top of that, my husband died the year after I graduated and I suddenly became a single mom with all the household duties my husband used to do. Now it's 2 years later and I have a very flexible teaching schedule and the luxury to learn my subject more in depth at a leisurely pace and I find the whole idea of digging into a new project to get better at it just makes me feel stressed out and avoidant. I have undergrad students who are passionate and doing amazing projects while I have imposter syndrome and wanting to do cool things, but lack motivation to roll up my sleeves and dig in to the difficult intellectual work. I feel like I'm just phoning it in. How can I learn to love my subject again and put aside all the anxiety and avoiding behaviors? I really want to fall in love again with my work!
|
I imagine the best thing to do is to first determine what is the reason that thinking about a new project makes you feel stressed out and avoidant. Is it fear that you will fail? Concerns that others will judge you? Worried about getting attached to something that you won’t be able to finish? Or that you won’t have time to dedicate to the project? I don’t think you can really move forward without doing some excavation of what exactly it is that is holding you back. Also, I think it’s important to ask yourself whether you really are passionate about these subjects anymore. Just because you were at one time doesn’t mean you have to continue to be. Maybe there are other subjects that are more deserving of your passion and energy now.
|
Sounds like what you really need is motivation to actually do the learning. One avenue may be to improve course materials.
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
My PhD advisor always said "It doesn't have to be good, it just has to be done." Even in a normal year, theses and dissertations are terrible writing. They're a bizarre genre that doesn't easily map to... anything else really. So yes, the pandemic has likely made this worse, but it is also increasing your anxiety about the quality of a document that is usually not someone's "best" work anyway. I remember writing mine and thinking to myself "I've never written anything important before." What I didn't understand then is that while it was important in the completion of my degree, in the long run that document would not be important at all. If I were to publish any of it then it would need to be majorly revised to fit the journal. I had to do extra research. I had to refocus everything. And THEN it was something worth being proud of. I'm 10 years out of finishing and I STILL PANIC when I hear somebody is reading my dissertation. WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO DO THAT????
|
I worry about that but it's not because of the pandemic.
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
My PhD advisor always said "It doesn't have to be good, it just has to be done." Even in a normal year, theses and dissertations are terrible writing. They're a bizarre genre that doesn't easily map to... anything else really. So yes, the pandemic has likely made this worse, but it is also increasing your anxiety about the quality of a document that is usually not someone's "best" work anyway. I remember writing mine and thinking to myself "I've never written anything important before." What I didn't understand then is that while it was important in the completion of my degree, in the long run that document would not be important at all. If I were to publish any of it then it would need to be majorly revised to fit the journal. I had to do extra research. I had to refocus everything. And THEN it was something worth being proud of. I'm 10 years out of finishing and I STILL PANIC when I hear somebody is reading my dissertation. WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO DO THAT????
|
I lost basically an entire year reshuffling to figure out how to make a 180° shift in plans. My advisors helped me think about how to successfully navigate the process but it was mentally and emotionally taxing beyond anything I expected. And, yes, my thesis too will be pretty rough. But it's just gonna be FINISHED, that's the most important thing. Your program and advisors have a vested interest in seeing you succeed. Lean on those resources, good luck
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
My PhD advisor always said "It doesn't have to be good, it just has to be done." Even in a normal year, theses and dissertations are terrible writing. They're a bizarre genre that doesn't easily map to... anything else really. So yes, the pandemic has likely made this worse, but it is also increasing your anxiety about the quality of a document that is usually not someone's "best" work anyway. I remember writing mine and thinking to myself "I've never written anything important before." What I didn't understand then is that while it was important in the completion of my degree, in the long run that document would not be important at all. If I were to publish any of it then it would need to be majorly revised to fit the journal. I had to do extra research. I had to refocus everything. And THEN it was something worth being proud of. I'm 10 years out of finishing and I STILL PANIC when I hear somebody is reading my dissertation. WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO DO THAT????
|
I would start a conversation now with your advisor and your committee about your concerns, but more importantly, what you are proactively doing to make sure you have something done to base your thesis on. Your thesis doesn't have to be amazing (most aren't), but it does have to convince your committee that you are ready to graduate. Start determining now what their expectations are going to be, and if they are going to give you leeway due to the situation. I don't know what your field is exactly, but also consider if you can pivot 1 or 2 of your aims to some sort of informatics or analysis of existing datasets (either from your own lab, or publicly available). This is a fantastic time to teach yourself to code or work with large datasets, safely alone in your house. Those skills are very in demand so this will be good for your career prospects, and proactively trying to address this problem will put your committee and advisor on your side. I know you are concerned about pleasing your funding agency, but I would hope they would be understanding in this situation.
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
The dissertation is, in most cases, not exactly a masterful contribution to scholarship. All it does is prove that you understand the general rules of producing a piece of academic work and have the wherewithal to do the research and write up/interpret your findings in the format dictated by your discipline. I saw this comic on Twitter about scientific papers and I thought it was relevant: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/types\_of\_scientific\_paper\_2x.png The paper you end up writing rarely answers the question you originally set out to answer. Figuring out how to pivot is as much part of the PhD training as producing the final thesis itself is. :) Edit: fixed link Edit 2: actually fixed link
|
I lost basically an entire year reshuffling to figure out how to make a 180° shift in plans. My advisors helped me think about how to successfully navigate the process but it was mentally and emotionally taxing beyond anything I expected. And, yes, my thesis too will be pretty rough. But it's just gonna be FINISHED, that's the most important thing. Your program and advisors have a vested interest in seeing you succeed. Lean on those resources, good luck
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
The dissertation is, in most cases, not exactly a masterful contribution to scholarship. All it does is prove that you understand the general rules of producing a piece of academic work and have the wherewithal to do the research and write up/interpret your findings in the format dictated by your discipline. I saw this comic on Twitter about scientific papers and I thought it was relevant: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/types\_of\_scientific\_paper\_2x.png The paper you end up writing rarely answers the question you originally set out to answer. Figuring out how to pivot is as much part of the PhD training as producing the final thesis itself is. :) Edit: fixed link Edit 2: actually fixed link
|
I would start a conversation now with your advisor and your committee about your concerns, but more importantly, what you are proactively doing to make sure you have something done to base your thesis on. Your thesis doesn't have to be amazing (most aren't), but it does have to convince your committee that you are ready to graduate. Start determining now what their expectations are going to be, and if they are going to give you leeway due to the situation. I don't know what your field is exactly, but also consider if you can pivot 1 or 2 of your aims to some sort of informatics or analysis of existing datasets (either from your own lab, or publicly available). This is a fantastic time to teach yourself to code or work with large datasets, safely alone in your house. Those skills are very in demand so this will be good for your career prospects, and proactively trying to address this problem will put your committee and advisor on your side. I know you are concerned about pleasing your funding agency, but I would hope they would be understanding in this situation.
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
The dissertation is, in most cases, not exactly a masterful contribution to scholarship. All it does is prove that you understand the general rules of producing a piece of academic work and have the wherewithal to do the research and write up/interpret your findings in the format dictated by your discipline. I saw this comic on Twitter about scientific papers and I thought it was relevant: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/types\_of\_scientific\_paper\_2x.png The paper you end up writing rarely answers the question you originally set out to answer. Figuring out how to pivot is as much part of the PhD training as producing the final thesis itself is. :) Edit: fixed link Edit 2: actually fixed link
|
I just keep telling myself that a good dissertation is a finished dissertation.
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
I lost basically an entire year reshuffling to figure out how to make a 180° shift in plans. My advisors helped me think about how to successfully navigate the process but it was mentally and emotionally taxing beyond anything I expected. And, yes, my thesis too will be pretty rough. But it's just gonna be FINISHED, that's the most important thing. Your program and advisors have a vested interest in seeing you succeed. Lean on those resources, good luck
|
I would start a conversation now with your advisor and your committee about your concerns, but more importantly, what you are proactively doing to make sure you have something done to base your thesis on. Your thesis doesn't have to be amazing (most aren't), but it does have to convince your committee that you are ready to graduate. Start determining now what their expectations are going to be, and if they are going to give you leeway due to the situation. I don't know what your field is exactly, but also consider if you can pivot 1 or 2 of your aims to some sort of informatics or analysis of existing datasets (either from your own lab, or publicly available). This is a fantastic time to teach yourself to code or work with large datasets, safely alone in your house. Those skills are very in demand so this will be good for your career prospects, and proactively trying to address this problem will put your committee and advisor on your side. I know you are concerned about pleasing your funding agency, but I would hope they would be understanding in this situation.
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
A finished thesis is a good thesis. I mainly remind myself of that and of the fact that 6 people will ever read the thing.
|
I would start a conversation now with your advisor and your committee about your concerns, but more importantly, what you are proactively doing to make sure you have something done to base your thesis on. Your thesis doesn't have to be amazing (most aren't), but it does have to convince your committee that you are ready to graduate. Start determining now what their expectations are going to be, and if they are going to give you leeway due to the situation. I don't know what your field is exactly, but also consider if you can pivot 1 or 2 of your aims to some sort of informatics or analysis of existing datasets (either from your own lab, or publicly available). This is a fantastic time to teach yourself to code or work with large datasets, safely alone in your house. Those skills are very in demand so this will be good for your career prospects, and proactively trying to address this problem will put your committee and advisor on your side. I know you are concerned about pleasing your funding agency, but I would hope they would be understanding in this situation.
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
A finished thesis is a good thesis. I mainly remind myself of that and of the fact that 6 people will ever read the thing.
|
I just keep telling myself that a good dissertation is a finished dissertation.
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
Oi cara, eu estou numa situação parecida, vou terminar o meu doutorado com bolsa do México. O mais importante é terminar se puder, e eu acho que você pode, mesmo se tiver que se arranjar de outro jeito e mesmo se a qualidade do seu trabalho não será ótima. Não se atrase não, termine enquanto puder, procure ajuda do seu orientador e também procure o apoio de outros bolsistas na mesma situação. Nós temos criado uma associação de bolsistas mexicanos que tem servido para nós dar dicar mas também para brigar com a nossa agência de pesquisa quando ela tentou de nós deixar sem bolsa pelo quarto ano (antes da pandemia) e agora conseguimos que eles prolongassem o apoio na maioria dos casos. Vai dar certo ! Abraços.
|
As I read through your first paragraph I thought "jeez, so much like Brazil, where is this guy fro.. Oh there you go" Brazilian here 💔
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
As I read through your first paragraph I thought "jeez, so much like Brazil, where is this guy fro.. Oh there you go" Brazilian here 💔
|
I would start a conversation now with your advisor and your committee about your concerns, but more importantly, what you are proactively doing to make sure you have something done to base your thesis on. Your thesis doesn't have to be amazing (most aren't), but it does have to convince your committee that you are ready to graduate. Start determining now what their expectations are going to be, and if they are going to give you leeway due to the situation. I don't know what your field is exactly, but also consider if you can pivot 1 or 2 of your aims to some sort of informatics or analysis of existing datasets (either from your own lab, or publicly available). This is a fantastic time to teach yourself to code or work with large datasets, safely alone in your house. Those skills are very in demand so this will be good for your career prospects, and proactively trying to address this problem will put your committee and advisor on your side. I know you are concerned about pleasing your funding agency, but I would hope they would be understanding in this situation.
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
Oi cara, eu estou numa situação parecida, vou terminar o meu doutorado com bolsa do México. O mais importante é terminar se puder, e eu acho que você pode, mesmo se tiver que se arranjar de outro jeito e mesmo se a qualidade do seu trabalho não será ótima. Não se atrase não, termine enquanto puder, procure ajuda do seu orientador e também procure o apoio de outros bolsistas na mesma situação. Nós temos criado uma associação de bolsistas mexicanos que tem servido para nós dar dicar mas também para brigar com a nossa agência de pesquisa quando ela tentou de nós deixar sem bolsa pelo quarto ano (antes da pandemia) e agora conseguimos que eles prolongassem o apoio na maioria dos casos. Vai dar certo ! Abraços.
|
I would start a conversation now with your advisor and your committee about your concerns, but more importantly, what you are proactively doing to make sure you have something done to base your thesis on. Your thesis doesn't have to be amazing (most aren't), but it does have to convince your committee that you are ready to graduate. Start determining now what their expectations are going to be, and if they are going to give you leeway due to the situation. I don't know what your field is exactly, but also consider if you can pivot 1 or 2 of your aims to some sort of informatics or analysis of existing datasets (either from your own lab, or publicly available). This is a fantastic time to teach yourself to code or work with large datasets, safely alone in your house. Those skills are very in demand so this will be good for your career prospects, and proactively trying to address this problem will put your committee and advisor on your side. I know you are concerned about pleasing your funding agency, but I would hope they would be understanding in this situation.
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
Oi cara, eu estou numa situação parecida, vou terminar o meu doutorado com bolsa do México. O mais importante é terminar se puder, e eu acho que você pode, mesmo se tiver que se arranjar de outro jeito e mesmo se a qualidade do seu trabalho não será ótima. Não se atrase não, termine enquanto puder, procure ajuda do seu orientador e também procure o apoio de outros bolsistas na mesma situação. Nós temos criado uma associação de bolsistas mexicanos que tem servido para nós dar dicar mas também para brigar com a nossa agência de pesquisa quando ela tentou de nós deixar sem bolsa pelo quarto ano (antes da pandemia) e agora conseguimos que eles prolongassem o apoio na maioria dos casos. Vai dar certo ! Abraços.
|
I’ve had this conversation with my advisor a few times, and luckily he wasn’t satisfied with his dissertation either. Mine’s... not gonna win any prizes, partly due to the pandemic and partly due to just life. But it will be done. That’s the goal. It’s not the be all to end all, it’s a hurdle you have to pass to get to the next stage in your life. You can do it!
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
I just keep telling myself that a good dissertation is a finished dissertation.
|
I would start a conversation now with your advisor and your committee about your concerns, but more importantly, what you are proactively doing to make sure you have something done to base your thesis on. Your thesis doesn't have to be amazing (most aren't), but it does have to convince your committee that you are ready to graduate. Start determining now what their expectations are going to be, and if they are going to give you leeway due to the situation. I don't know what your field is exactly, but also consider if you can pivot 1 or 2 of your aims to some sort of informatics or analysis of existing datasets (either from your own lab, or publicly available). This is a fantastic time to teach yourself to code or work with large datasets, safely alone in your house. Those skills are very in demand so this will be good for your career prospects, and proactively trying to address this problem will put your committee and advisor on your side. I know you are concerned about pleasing your funding agency, but I would hope they would be understanding in this situation.
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
To be honest when you started I thought you are from India because we are facing the exact same situation. We are in the middle of 2nd wave and everything is closed. I am a firsr year master's student, I haven't visited my lab even once in this 1 year due to lockdown and haven't received my scholarship either. I feel terrible for what you are going through and hope everything gets normal again.
|
I would start a conversation now with your advisor and your committee about your concerns, but more importantly, what you are proactively doing to make sure you have something done to base your thesis on. Your thesis doesn't have to be amazing (most aren't), but it does have to convince your committee that you are ready to graduate. Start determining now what their expectations are going to be, and if they are going to give you leeway due to the situation. I don't know what your field is exactly, but also consider if you can pivot 1 or 2 of your aims to some sort of informatics or analysis of existing datasets (either from your own lab, or publicly available). This is a fantastic time to teach yourself to code or work with large datasets, safely alone in your house. Those skills are very in demand so this will be good for your career prospects, and proactively trying to address this problem will put your committee and advisor on your side. I know you are concerned about pleasing your funding agency, but I would hope they would be understanding in this situation.
|
How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...
|
I’ve had this conversation with my advisor a few times, and luckily he wasn’t satisfied with his dissertation either. Mine’s... not gonna win any prizes, partly due to the pandemic and partly due to just life. But it will be done. That’s the goal. It’s not the be all to end all, it’s a hurdle you have to pass to get to the next stage in your life. You can do it!
|
I would start a conversation now with your advisor and your committee about your concerns, but more importantly, what you are proactively doing to make sure you have something done to base your thesis on. Your thesis doesn't have to be amazing (most aren't), but it does have to convince your committee that you are ready to graduate. Start determining now what their expectations are going to be, and if they are going to give you leeway due to the situation. I don't know what your field is exactly, but also consider if you can pivot 1 or 2 of your aims to some sort of informatics or analysis of existing datasets (either from your own lab, or publicly available). This is a fantastic time to teach yourself to code or work with large datasets, safely alone in your house. Those skills are very in demand so this will be good for your career prospects, and proactively trying to address this problem will put your committee and advisor on your side. I know you are concerned about pleasing your funding agency, but I would hope they would be understanding in this situation.
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
ECR here too. Your boss is right, classic imposter syndrome. Not to discourage you, but it may never go away, so you gotta embrace it and learn how to deal with it. You'll always be in a point in your career where you know enough of your topic that you know how complicated it is, and how little you know about it. The good thing, that's not true, you probable know a lot more than what you think and you're very likely more up-to-date with the latest literature than the PIs/postdocs. Mentally, novelty always seems to be more "interesting" than whatever you're doing, because if you can do it, everybody can do it too, right? Well, that's not true. So, what can you do? 1. Don't trust yourself when you have those thoughts. 2. Take a step back. Draw on a paper the steps you took and highlight important bits that inspire you to do the experiment (that goes in the intro). Now it may seem like a very linear process, but it wasn't. You just need to remember the whole process. 3. Highlight interesting parts of the methods (or why the one you chose is the best approach). Get a coffee/tea/whatever is your poison, and try to find 3 main things you thought were interesting from to your findings (what do you want to tell people about what you did?). Even if the findings won't revolutionise science, your field, or change the World as we know it, it's still important to communicate confirmatory and negative results. And in science, we do it with a paper. 4. Remember that a project is ALWAYS better when it's finished than perfect. Perfection doesn't exist and if you go after it, it'll only feed the imposter monster inside your head and make you keep working for something unatainable. Prioritise feedback rounds (get as many as you can) than your own expectation. Good supervisor/collaborators will likely know better than you what's "enough" to submit. 5. Break down every section to paragraphs, then write a few lines about what the topic of the paragraphs should be. As you already have a previous draft, that gives you a headstart to identify what needs to be changed. 6. When stuck, look for help. Just send it to co-authors/supervisor and ask them what they think. Ask them to be precise and suggest the changes they want to see (I hate when co-authors just add a comment that says "change/update"). Sometimes things take way less effort than what we envisioned, which is amazing because in academia everything takes way longer than what we initially imagined. Good luck!
|
how do you know your paper have no value to contribute? even for your own self improvement in terms of writing, etc. Most good writer I know they didn't expect any values, at all. They let the readers determine that, and just let go after it publishes.
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
ECR here too. Your boss is right, classic imposter syndrome. Not to discourage you, but it may never go away, so you gotta embrace it and learn how to deal with it. You'll always be in a point in your career where you know enough of your topic that you know how complicated it is, and how little you know about it. The good thing, that's not true, you probable know a lot more than what you think and you're very likely more up-to-date with the latest literature than the PIs/postdocs. Mentally, novelty always seems to be more "interesting" than whatever you're doing, because if you can do it, everybody can do it too, right? Well, that's not true. So, what can you do? 1. Don't trust yourself when you have those thoughts. 2. Take a step back. Draw on a paper the steps you took and highlight important bits that inspire you to do the experiment (that goes in the intro). Now it may seem like a very linear process, but it wasn't. You just need to remember the whole process. 3. Highlight interesting parts of the methods (or why the one you chose is the best approach). Get a coffee/tea/whatever is your poison, and try to find 3 main things you thought were interesting from to your findings (what do you want to tell people about what you did?). Even if the findings won't revolutionise science, your field, or change the World as we know it, it's still important to communicate confirmatory and negative results. And in science, we do it with a paper. 4. Remember that a project is ALWAYS better when it's finished than perfect. Perfection doesn't exist and if you go after it, it'll only feed the imposter monster inside your head and make you keep working for something unatainable. Prioritise feedback rounds (get as many as you can) than your own expectation. Good supervisor/collaborators will likely know better than you what's "enough" to submit. 5. Break down every section to paragraphs, then write a few lines about what the topic of the paragraphs should be. As you already have a previous draft, that gives you a headstart to identify what needs to be changed. 6. When stuck, look for help. Just send it to co-authors/supervisor and ask them what they think. Ask them to be precise and suggest the changes they want to see (I hate when co-authors just add a comment that says "change/update"). Sometimes things take way less effort than what we envisioned, which is amazing because in academia everything takes way longer than what we initially imagined. Good luck!
|
Be kind to yourself and learn how to trust yourself.
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
ECR here too. Your boss is right, classic imposter syndrome. Not to discourage you, but it may never go away, so you gotta embrace it and learn how to deal with it. You'll always be in a point in your career where you know enough of your topic that you know how complicated it is, and how little you know about it. The good thing, that's not true, you probable know a lot more than what you think and you're very likely more up-to-date with the latest literature than the PIs/postdocs. Mentally, novelty always seems to be more "interesting" than whatever you're doing, because if you can do it, everybody can do it too, right? Well, that's not true. So, what can you do? 1. Don't trust yourself when you have those thoughts. 2. Take a step back. Draw on a paper the steps you took and highlight important bits that inspire you to do the experiment (that goes in the intro). Now it may seem like a very linear process, but it wasn't. You just need to remember the whole process. 3. Highlight interesting parts of the methods (or why the one you chose is the best approach). Get a coffee/tea/whatever is your poison, and try to find 3 main things you thought were interesting from to your findings (what do you want to tell people about what you did?). Even if the findings won't revolutionise science, your field, or change the World as we know it, it's still important to communicate confirmatory and negative results. And in science, we do it with a paper. 4. Remember that a project is ALWAYS better when it's finished than perfect. Perfection doesn't exist and if you go after it, it'll only feed the imposter monster inside your head and make you keep working for something unatainable. Prioritise feedback rounds (get as many as you can) than your own expectation. Good supervisor/collaborators will likely know better than you what's "enough" to submit. 5. Break down every section to paragraphs, then write a few lines about what the topic of the paragraphs should be. As you already have a previous draft, that gives you a headstart to identify what needs to be changed. 6. When stuck, look for help. Just send it to co-authors/supervisor and ask them what they think. Ask them to be precise and suggest the changes they want to see (I hate when co-authors just add a comment that says "change/update"). Sometimes things take way less effort than what we envisioned, which is amazing because in academia everything takes way longer than what we initially imagined. Good luck!
|
If you're stuck on one section, especially the introduction, switch to another. It's sometimes easier to revise a less central part of the paper, and that can help break up a block. Regarding the imposter syndrome, so many people experience the same feelings. If you're concerned in particular about your paper having value, listen to your advisor if they say it is valuable! If you're still not sure, you have nothing to lose by submitting it for publication. You'll either get accepted, or you'll get feedback from other academics on how to make it better. Rejection is totally normal, and it doesn't mean the idea is stupid or bad, just that it wasn't totally ready yet, or maybe just that you got a bad reviewer. But like many others are saying, also keep in mind that just because something seems obvious to you doesn't mean it's obvious to someone else! You're an expert in your project and not everyone can say that!
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
how do you know your paper have no value to contribute? even for your own self improvement in terms of writing, etc. Most good writer I know they didn't expect any values, at all. They let the readers determine that, and just let go after it publishes.
|
Be kind to yourself and learn how to trust yourself.
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
Stop trying to write something valuable and just write what you know. Outline some basic questions about your topic (for the sections you still need) and then answer them. I guarantee you know more than you think you do and it's more valuable than you think it is. And, this may be contrary to a lot of feel good advice, but stop listening to yourself. Listen to your advisor. Find a friend to read your draft and listen to them. At least for a bit. When we're ruled by our fears and anxieties, we're not a great judge of ourselves. So don't listen to yourself. Rely on others and realize you /can/ work on your paper no matter how bad you feel about it. Your fingers still work and so does your brain. And I bet it's a good brain! Good luck!
|
Be kind to yourself and learn how to trust yourself.
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
Stop trying to write something valuable and just write what you know. Outline some basic questions about your topic (for the sections you still need) and then answer them. I guarantee you know more than you think you do and it's more valuable than you think it is. And, this may be contrary to a lot of feel good advice, but stop listening to yourself. Listen to your advisor. Find a friend to read your draft and listen to them. At least for a bit. When we're ruled by our fears and anxieties, we're not a great judge of ourselves. So don't listen to yourself. Rely on others and realize you /can/ work on your paper no matter how bad you feel about it. Your fingers still work and so does your brain. And I bet it's a good brain! Good luck!
|
If you're stuck on one section, especially the introduction, switch to another. It's sometimes easier to revise a less central part of the paper, and that can help break up a block. Regarding the imposter syndrome, so many people experience the same feelings. If you're concerned in particular about your paper having value, listen to your advisor if they say it is valuable! If you're still not sure, you have nothing to lose by submitting it for publication. You'll either get accepted, or you'll get feedback from other academics on how to make it better. Rejection is totally normal, and it doesn't mean the idea is stupid or bad, just that it wasn't totally ready yet, or maybe just that you got a bad reviewer. But like many others are saying, also keep in mind that just because something seems obvious to you doesn't mean it's obvious to someone else! You're an expert in your project and not everyone can say that!
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
Stop trying to write something valuable and just write what you know. Outline some basic questions about your topic (for the sections you still need) and then answer them. I guarantee you know more than you think you do and it's more valuable than you think it is. And, this may be contrary to a lot of feel good advice, but stop listening to yourself. Listen to your advisor. Find a friend to read your draft and listen to them. At least for a bit. When we're ruled by our fears and anxieties, we're not a great judge of ourselves. So don't listen to yourself. Rely on others and realize you /can/ work on your paper no matter how bad you feel about it. Your fingers still work and so does your brain. And I bet it's a good brain! Good luck!
|
I agree with what everyone else said, but on a more technical note: this is when something like the pomodoro technique can be really helpful. Set yourself a 30 minute timer every day and work on your paper. If you don’t get much done in that time, no worries. If you want to keep working when the timer goes off, great! But even 30 minutes a day is better than not working on it at all, and now you won’t also be carrying around guilt because you aren’t working on your manuscript.
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
Stop trying to write something valuable and just write what you know. Outline some basic questions about your topic (for the sections you still need) and then answer them. I guarantee you know more than you think you do and it's more valuable than you think it is. And, this may be contrary to a lot of feel good advice, but stop listening to yourself. Listen to your advisor. Find a friend to read your draft and listen to them. At least for a bit. When we're ruled by our fears and anxieties, we're not a great judge of ourselves. So don't listen to yourself. Rely on others and realize you /can/ work on your paper no matter how bad you feel about it. Your fingers still work and so does your brain. And I bet it's a good brain! Good luck!
|
Write an outline. Hit each point you are trying to make with one sentence describing the point, and the result that supports it. Add a second sentence with an interpretation. This is now your outline - each point is a paragraph. Add text in between the two sentences to explain and develop your points. Every time I get stuck, I eventually return to this dumb, algorithmic approach. It works (for me).
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
Stop trying to write something valuable and just write what you know. Outline some basic questions about your topic (for the sections you still need) and then answer them. I guarantee you know more than you think you do and it's more valuable than you think it is. And, this may be contrary to a lot of feel good advice, but stop listening to yourself. Listen to your advisor. Find a friend to read your draft and listen to them. At least for a bit. When we're ruled by our fears and anxieties, we're not a great judge of ourselves. So don't listen to yourself. Rely on others and realize you /can/ work on your paper no matter how bad you feel about it. Your fingers still work and so does your brain. And I bet it's a good brain! Good luck!
|
Having "obvious" results most likely means you had a well designed experiment and some solid data. You're not teasing apart meaning at every step, data mining to find something significant, and forcing your data into whatever narrative you want to have. Clear, concise results are like the holy grail in science. Also, to be honest, a lot of science IS luck. We run experiments to test or examine a question, but at the end of the day we have no idea whether we're asking the right question. It's literally an educated guess. We do our best to combat this by designing experiments backed by previous literature and hold ourselves to a high standard while running those experiments. Why did my colleague get a significant reaction and I didn't? Maybe the part of the brain I'm targeting doesn't affect the behavior I'm examining, but theirs does. Literally just luck that I chose one area and they chose another. So, sure, you might have gotten lucky, but more likely you have well designed and well executed experiment. Don't be so hard on yourself, and be proud of the work you've done!
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
Stop trying to write something valuable and just write what you know. Outline some basic questions about your topic (for the sections you still need) and then answer them. I guarantee you know more than you think you do and it's more valuable than you think it is. And, this may be contrary to a lot of feel good advice, but stop listening to yourself. Listen to your advisor. Find a friend to read your draft and listen to them. At least for a bit. When we're ruled by our fears and anxieties, we're not a great judge of ourselves. So don't listen to yourself. Rely on others and realize you /can/ work on your paper no matter how bad you feel about it. Your fingers still work and so does your brain. And I bet it's a good brain! Good luck!
|
I've felt the same way! When I submitted my first paper, I sat on my figures/draft for quite some time before moving forward because I kept on trying to add experiments/complexity (it seemed too simplistic to me). I think I realized that this was mainly because I had been working on the experiments/paper for over a year so I was so used to everything. I think you have to narrow your focus on sharing your first draft with your advisor. At least this lessens the burden of thinking about what multiple people will think. Once you get over the hurdle of the first draft, it should be much smoother sailing
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
Instead of focusing on your own work and its limitations, focus on the limitations of previous research in the field. What can you add? What "gaps in the literature" motivated you to start this project? There are many good comments already here, but I don't see any that points you back to your original motivations, the gap in the literature you originally set out to address, or the weaknesses of other scholarship in your field. It's good to look for problems in your own work because that's a measure of quality control, but that sometimes means that you forget the problems in the work of others. I doubt you started the project thinking "Well, the literature has all this already." You probably started by thinking "these publications don't go quite far enough," or "I can add something to that area." Instead of focusing on improving your own work, focus on how your work adds to, corrects, or improves on previous research, even if only in a small way.
|
Be kind to yourself and learn how to trust yourself.
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
Instead of focusing on your own work and its limitations, focus on the limitations of previous research in the field. What can you add? What "gaps in the literature" motivated you to start this project? There are many good comments already here, but I don't see any that points you back to your original motivations, the gap in the literature you originally set out to address, or the weaknesses of other scholarship in your field. It's good to look for problems in your own work because that's a measure of quality control, but that sometimes means that you forget the problems in the work of others. I doubt you started the project thinking "Well, the literature has all this already." You probably started by thinking "these publications don't go quite far enough," or "I can add something to that area." Instead of focusing on improving your own work, focus on how your work adds to, corrects, or improves on previous research, even if only in a small way.
|
If you're stuck on one section, especially the introduction, switch to another. It's sometimes easier to revise a less central part of the paper, and that can help break up a block. Regarding the imposter syndrome, so many people experience the same feelings. If you're concerned in particular about your paper having value, listen to your advisor if they say it is valuable! If you're still not sure, you have nothing to lose by submitting it for publication. You'll either get accepted, or you'll get feedback from other academics on how to make it better. Rejection is totally normal, and it doesn't mean the idea is stupid or bad, just that it wasn't totally ready yet, or maybe just that you got a bad reviewer. But like many others are saying, also keep in mind that just because something seems obvious to you doesn't mean it's obvious to someone else! You're an expert in your project and not everyone can say that!
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
Instead of focusing on your own work and its limitations, focus on the limitations of previous research in the field. What can you add? What "gaps in the literature" motivated you to start this project? There are many good comments already here, but I don't see any that points you back to your original motivations, the gap in the literature you originally set out to address, or the weaknesses of other scholarship in your field. It's good to look for problems in your own work because that's a measure of quality control, but that sometimes means that you forget the problems in the work of others. I doubt you started the project thinking "Well, the literature has all this already." You probably started by thinking "these publications don't go quite far enough," or "I can add something to that area." Instead of focusing on improving your own work, focus on how your work adds to, corrects, or improves on previous research, even if only in a small way.
|
I agree with what everyone else said, but on a more technical note: this is when something like the pomodoro technique can be really helpful. Set yourself a 30 minute timer every day and work on your paper. If you don’t get much done in that time, no worries. If you want to keep working when the timer goes off, great! But even 30 minutes a day is better than not working on it at all, and now you won’t also be carrying around guilt because you aren’t working on your manuscript.
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
Instead of focusing on your own work and its limitations, focus on the limitations of previous research in the field. What can you add? What "gaps in the literature" motivated you to start this project? There are many good comments already here, but I don't see any that points you back to your original motivations, the gap in the literature you originally set out to address, or the weaknesses of other scholarship in your field. It's good to look for problems in your own work because that's a measure of quality control, but that sometimes means that you forget the problems in the work of others. I doubt you started the project thinking "Well, the literature has all this already." You probably started by thinking "these publications don't go quite far enough," or "I can add something to that area." Instead of focusing on improving your own work, focus on how your work adds to, corrects, or improves on previous research, even if only in a small way.
|
Write an outline. Hit each point you are trying to make with one sentence describing the point, and the result that supports it. Add a second sentence with an interpretation. This is now your outline - each point is a paragraph. Add text in between the two sentences to explain and develop your points. Every time I get stuck, I eventually return to this dumb, algorithmic approach. It works (for me).
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
Instead of focusing on your own work and its limitations, focus on the limitations of previous research in the field. What can you add? What "gaps in the literature" motivated you to start this project? There are many good comments already here, but I don't see any that points you back to your original motivations, the gap in the literature you originally set out to address, or the weaknesses of other scholarship in your field. It's good to look for problems in your own work because that's a measure of quality control, but that sometimes means that you forget the problems in the work of others. I doubt you started the project thinking "Well, the literature has all this already." You probably started by thinking "these publications don't go quite far enough," or "I can add something to that area." Instead of focusing on improving your own work, focus on how your work adds to, corrects, or improves on previous research, even if only in a small way.
|
Having "obvious" results most likely means you had a well designed experiment and some solid data. You're not teasing apart meaning at every step, data mining to find something significant, and forcing your data into whatever narrative you want to have. Clear, concise results are like the holy grail in science. Also, to be honest, a lot of science IS luck. We run experiments to test or examine a question, but at the end of the day we have no idea whether we're asking the right question. It's literally an educated guess. We do our best to combat this by designing experiments backed by previous literature and hold ourselves to a high standard while running those experiments. Why did my colleague get a significant reaction and I didn't? Maybe the part of the brain I'm targeting doesn't affect the behavior I'm examining, but theirs does. Literally just luck that I chose one area and they chose another. So, sure, you might have gotten lucky, but more likely you have well designed and well executed experiment. Don't be so hard on yourself, and be proud of the work you've done!
|
Trying to write a paper but feeling like I have nothing of value to contribute. How to get over this? Writing my first paper ever, also my first as first author. I did write a rough draft during the summer but then decided to add some more experiments and change the order of figures. For the last month or so I’m sitting on the new graphs and the old draft. I just can’t bring myself to write or make figures. I’m so scared that people will think my results are very obvious and I constantly feel that I made it so far on luck and now I have to prove that I really deserve to be here. My boss said this is plain old imposter syndrome and it won’t go away even after I write the paper. I’ll probably think they made a mistake in accepting my paper. He says it’ll take two three papers before I firmly believe in my worth as a scientist. That’s all fine but it does nothing to help me right now. I’m just staring at my old draft and can’t figure out how to proceed. Any advice is appreciated.
|
Instead of focusing on your own work and its limitations, focus on the limitations of previous research in the field. What can you add? What "gaps in the literature" motivated you to start this project? There are many good comments already here, but I don't see any that points you back to your original motivations, the gap in the literature you originally set out to address, or the weaknesses of other scholarship in your field. It's good to look for problems in your own work because that's a measure of quality control, but that sometimes means that you forget the problems in the work of others. I doubt you started the project thinking "Well, the literature has all this already." You probably started by thinking "these publications don't go quite far enough," or "I can add something to that area." Instead of focusing on improving your own work, focus on how your work adds to, corrects, or improves on previous research, even if only in a small way.
|
I've felt the same way! When I submitted my first paper, I sat on my figures/draft for quite some time before moving forward because I kept on trying to add experiments/complexity (it seemed too simplistic to me). I think I realized that this was mainly because I had been working on the experiments/paper for over a year so I was so used to everything. I think you have to narrow your focus on sharing your first draft with your advisor. At least this lessens the burden of thinking about what multiple people will think. Once you get over the hurdle of the first draft, it should be much smoother sailing
|
What is the strangest feedback you have received from a peer review? Make me laugh! Hi all, this evening I have the pleasure of going through the reviewer comments I received on a manuscript for a pretty notable journal in my field (a well respected society journal). One of the reviewers was adamant that four out of five of our figures were not mentioned in the main body of our manuscript text and appeared to come across angry about this in their summary (lol)... except they all were... many times! Perhaps the reviewer commented on our manuscript whilst half asleep, who knows! Slightly concerned our paper hasn't been reviewed properly but their other comments seem legit. What are some of the strangest reviewer comments you have received back on a manuscript? xD
|
"Fix the typos - there are several superscripted comas in text" Those were plural Saxon genitives ("samples' surfaces" and so on).
|
Reviewer (for top 3 journal in my field): manuscript would be much better if they had a general theorem rather than only specific examples. Manuscript: Section 4. A General Theorem, Section 5. Specific Examples (easiest) Revision (ever): Thanks to the reviewer for their thoughtful comment. In the revision, Section 4 presents a general theorem and section 5 specific examples.
|
What is the strangest feedback you have received from a peer review? Make me laugh! Hi all, this evening I have the pleasure of going through the reviewer comments I received on a manuscript for a pretty notable journal in my field (a well respected society journal). One of the reviewers was adamant that four out of five of our figures were not mentioned in the main body of our manuscript text and appeared to come across angry about this in their summary (lol)... except they all were... many times! Perhaps the reviewer commented on our manuscript whilst half asleep, who knows! Slightly concerned our paper hasn't been reviewed properly but their other comments seem legit. What are some of the strangest reviewer comments you have received back on a manuscript? xD
|
"Fix the typos - there are several superscripted comas in text" Those were plural Saxon genitives ("samples' surfaces" and so on).
|
From the editor: “Used is shorter than implemented.” Yes, thank you. I’m fully aware of that. This was in round 3 of several revisions to please never ending pedantic comments from the editor
|
What is the strangest feedback you have received from a peer review? Make me laugh! Hi all, this evening I have the pleasure of going through the reviewer comments I received on a manuscript for a pretty notable journal in my field (a well respected society journal). One of the reviewers was adamant that four out of five of our figures were not mentioned in the main body of our manuscript text and appeared to come across angry about this in their summary (lol)... except they all were... many times! Perhaps the reviewer commented on our manuscript whilst half asleep, who knows! Slightly concerned our paper hasn't been reviewed properly but their other comments seem legit. What are some of the strangest reviewer comments you have received back on a manuscript? xD
|
My first publication. In the middle of a very positive review (recommending acceptance), my reviewer hit a paragraph towards the end of the manuscript where I did some vague speculation on what might explain the data I reported. To be honest, I was kinda stretching into a subfield I didn't really understand that well, trying to get "theoretical" without really having the background to pull it off. When I read that draft paragraph now I seriously cringe. Anyway, in the middle of this really positive review, suddenly the reviewer says "this paragraph makes absolutely no sense, it's frankly embarrassing, and it should be removed." Just fucking brutal. Once I recovered from the shock, I realized they were right, and I did exactly what they suggested. Ended up getting published in that journal. Fast forward 8 years: I know exactly who that reviewer was (*very* senior person in my field who I admire a ton), they've supported my career ever since, and we're also good friends.
|
Reviewer (for top 3 journal in my field): manuscript would be much better if they had a general theorem rather than only specific examples. Manuscript: Section 4. A General Theorem, Section 5. Specific Examples (easiest) Revision (ever): Thanks to the reviewer for their thoughtful comment. In the revision, Section 4 presents a general theorem and section 5 specific examples.
|
What is the strangest feedback you have received from a peer review? Make me laugh! Hi all, this evening I have the pleasure of going through the reviewer comments I received on a manuscript for a pretty notable journal in my field (a well respected society journal). One of the reviewers was adamant that four out of five of our figures were not mentioned in the main body of our manuscript text and appeared to come across angry about this in their summary (lol)... except they all were... many times! Perhaps the reviewer commented on our manuscript whilst half asleep, who knows! Slightly concerned our paper hasn't been reviewed properly but their other comments seem legit. What are some of the strangest reviewer comments you have received back on a manuscript? xD
|
My first publication. In the middle of a very positive review (recommending acceptance), my reviewer hit a paragraph towards the end of the manuscript where I did some vague speculation on what might explain the data I reported. To be honest, I was kinda stretching into a subfield I didn't really understand that well, trying to get "theoretical" without really having the background to pull it off. When I read that draft paragraph now I seriously cringe. Anyway, in the middle of this really positive review, suddenly the reviewer says "this paragraph makes absolutely no sense, it's frankly embarrassing, and it should be removed." Just fucking brutal. Once I recovered from the shock, I realized they were right, and I did exactly what they suggested. Ended up getting published in that journal. Fast forward 8 years: I know exactly who that reviewer was (*very* senior person in my field who I admire a ton), they've supported my career ever since, and we're also good friends.
|
From the editor: “Used is shorter than implemented.” Yes, thank you. I’m fully aware of that. This was in round 3 of several revisions to please never ending pedantic comments from the editor
|
What is the strangest feedback you have received from a peer review? Make me laugh! Hi all, this evening I have the pleasure of going through the reviewer comments I received on a manuscript for a pretty notable journal in my field (a well respected society journal). One of the reviewers was adamant that four out of five of our figures were not mentioned in the main body of our manuscript text and appeared to come across angry about this in their summary (lol)... except they all were... many times! Perhaps the reviewer commented on our manuscript whilst half asleep, who knows! Slightly concerned our paper hasn't been reviewed properly but their other comments seem legit. What are some of the strangest reviewer comments you have received back on a manuscript? xD
|
My first publication. In the middle of a very positive review (recommending acceptance), my reviewer hit a paragraph towards the end of the manuscript where I did some vague speculation on what might explain the data I reported. To be honest, I was kinda stretching into a subfield I didn't really understand that well, trying to get "theoretical" without really having the background to pull it off. When I read that draft paragraph now I seriously cringe. Anyway, in the middle of this really positive review, suddenly the reviewer says "this paragraph makes absolutely no sense, it's frankly embarrassing, and it should be removed." Just fucking brutal. Once I recovered from the shock, I realized they were right, and I did exactly what they suggested. Ended up getting published in that journal. Fast forward 8 years: I know exactly who that reviewer was (*very* senior person in my field who I admire a ton), they've supported my career ever since, and we're also good friends.
|
Got very constructive feedback for a paper that was definitely not my paper. Key clues include: wrong title, theory, and methods.
|
What is the strangest feedback you have received from a peer review? Make me laugh! Hi all, this evening I have the pleasure of going through the reviewer comments I received on a manuscript for a pretty notable journal in my field (a well respected society journal). One of the reviewers was adamant that four out of five of our figures were not mentioned in the main body of our manuscript text and appeared to come across angry about this in their summary (lol)... except they all were... many times! Perhaps the reviewer commented on our manuscript whilst half asleep, who knows! Slightly concerned our paper hasn't been reviewed properly but their other comments seem legit. What are some of the strangest reviewer comments you have received back on a manuscript? xD
|
My first publication. In the middle of a very positive review (recommending acceptance), my reviewer hit a paragraph towards the end of the manuscript where I did some vague speculation on what might explain the data I reported. To be honest, I was kinda stretching into a subfield I didn't really understand that well, trying to get "theoretical" without really having the background to pull it off. When I read that draft paragraph now I seriously cringe. Anyway, in the middle of this really positive review, suddenly the reviewer says "this paragraph makes absolutely no sense, it's frankly embarrassing, and it should be removed." Just fucking brutal. Once I recovered from the shock, I realized they were right, and I did exactly what they suggested. Ended up getting published in that journal. Fast forward 8 years: I know exactly who that reviewer was (*very* senior person in my field who I admire a ton), they've supported my career ever since, and we're also good friends.
|
The most hilarious review I got was a long list of legitimate typos they had found in my paper... I laughed by myself that night at my own writing.
|
What is the strangest feedback you have received from a peer review? Make me laugh! Hi all, this evening I have the pleasure of going through the reviewer comments I received on a manuscript for a pretty notable journal in my field (a well respected society journal). One of the reviewers was adamant that four out of five of our figures were not mentioned in the main body of our manuscript text and appeared to come across angry about this in their summary (lol)... except they all were... many times! Perhaps the reviewer commented on our manuscript whilst half asleep, who knows! Slightly concerned our paper hasn't been reviewed properly but their other comments seem legit. What are some of the strangest reviewer comments you have received back on a manuscript? xD
|
My first publication. In the middle of a very positive review (recommending acceptance), my reviewer hit a paragraph towards the end of the manuscript where I did some vague speculation on what might explain the data I reported. To be honest, I was kinda stretching into a subfield I didn't really understand that well, trying to get "theoretical" without really having the background to pull it off. When I read that draft paragraph now I seriously cringe. Anyway, in the middle of this really positive review, suddenly the reviewer says "this paragraph makes absolutely no sense, it's frankly embarrassing, and it should be removed." Just fucking brutal. Once I recovered from the shock, I realized they were right, and I did exactly what they suggested. Ended up getting published in that journal. Fast forward 8 years: I know exactly who that reviewer was (*very* senior person in my field who I admire a ton), they've supported my career ever since, and we're also good friends.
|
Someone once told me that my writing was flamboyant, ... as if that is some kind of bad thing. It was, of course, reviewer 2.
|
What is the strangest feedback you have received from a peer review? Make me laugh! Hi all, this evening I have the pleasure of going through the reviewer comments I received on a manuscript for a pretty notable journal in my field (a well respected society journal). One of the reviewers was adamant that four out of five of our figures were not mentioned in the main body of our manuscript text and appeared to come across angry about this in their summary (lol)... except they all were... many times! Perhaps the reviewer commented on our manuscript whilst half asleep, who knows! Slightly concerned our paper hasn't been reviewed properly but their other comments seem legit. What are some of the strangest reviewer comments you have received back on a manuscript? xD
|
My first publication. In the middle of a very positive review (recommending acceptance), my reviewer hit a paragraph towards the end of the manuscript where I did some vague speculation on what might explain the data I reported. To be honest, I was kinda stretching into a subfield I didn't really understand that well, trying to get "theoretical" without really having the background to pull it off. When I read that draft paragraph now I seriously cringe. Anyway, in the middle of this really positive review, suddenly the reviewer says "this paragraph makes absolutely no sense, it's frankly embarrassing, and it should be removed." Just fucking brutal. Once I recovered from the shock, I realized they were right, and I did exactly what they suggested. Ended up getting published in that journal. Fast forward 8 years: I know exactly who that reviewer was (*very* senior person in my field who I admire a ton), they've supported my career ever since, and we're also good friends.
|
"please explain how to interpret an odds ratio as part of your methods", in a journal which regularly publishes logistic regression models, for our binary exposure variable.
|
What is the strangest feedback you have received from a peer review? Make me laugh! Hi all, this evening I have the pleasure of going through the reviewer comments I received on a manuscript for a pretty notable journal in my field (a well respected society journal). One of the reviewers was adamant that four out of five of our figures were not mentioned in the main body of our manuscript text and appeared to come across angry about this in their summary (lol)... except they all were... many times! Perhaps the reviewer commented on our manuscript whilst half asleep, who knows! Slightly concerned our paper hasn't been reviewed properly but their other comments seem legit. What are some of the strangest reviewer comments you have received back on a manuscript? xD
|
My first publication. In the middle of a very positive review (recommending acceptance), my reviewer hit a paragraph towards the end of the manuscript where I did some vague speculation on what might explain the data I reported. To be honest, I was kinda stretching into a subfield I didn't really understand that well, trying to get "theoretical" without really having the background to pull it off. When I read that draft paragraph now I seriously cringe. Anyway, in the middle of this really positive review, suddenly the reviewer says "this paragraph makes absolutely no sense, it's frankly embarrassing, and it should be removed." Just fucking brutal. Once I recovered from the shock, I realized they were right, and I did exactly what they suggested. Ended up getting published in that journal. Fast forward 8 years: I know exactly who that reviewer was (*very* senior person in my field who I admire a ton), they've supported my career ever since, and we're also good friends.
|
Two positive reviews followed by “this paper includes no new data, rehash of decades of work”. Funnily enough the editor agreed they were an idiot and didn’t send them the revised manuscript to review.
|
What is the strangest feedback you have received from a peer review? Make me laugh! Hi all, this evening I have the pleasure of going through the reviewer comments I received on a manuscript for a pretty notable journal in my field (a well respected society journal). One of the reviewers was adamant that four out of five of our figures were not mentioned in the main body of our manuscript text and appeared to come across angry about this in their summary (lol)... except they all were... many times! Perhaps the reviewer commented on our manuscript whilst half asleep, who knows! Slightly concerned our paper hasn't been reviewed properly but their other comments seem legit. What are some of the strangest reviewer comments you have received back on a manuscript? xD
|
My first publication. In the middle of a very positive review (recommending acceptance), my reviewer hit a paragraph towards the end of the manuscript where I did some vague speculation on what might explain the data I reported. To be honest, I was kinda stretching into a subfield I didn't really understand that well, trying to get "theoretical" without really having the background to pull it off. When I read that draft paragraph now I seriously cringe. Anyway, in the middle of this really positive review, suddenly the reviewer says "this paragraph makes absolutely no sense, it's frankly embarrassing, and it should be removed." Just fucking brutal. Once I recovered from the shock, I realized they were right, and I did exactly what they suggested. Ended up getting published in that journal. Fast forward 8 years: I know exactly who that reviewer was (*very* senior person in my field who I admire a ton), they've supported my career ever since, and we're also good friends.
|
"The editorial quality of this manuscript is poor, way below the standards of a X journal paper".
|
End of preview. Expand
in Data Studio
README.md exists but content is empty.
- Downloads last month
- 5
Size of downloaded dataset files:
6.26 MB
Size of the auto-converted Parquet files:
6.26 MB
Number of rows:
18,409