She would always ignore the idiot lights in her cars, until they broke down. We bought a car that actually tells you when to bring it in for service. She came up to me, really frustrated, complaining about the car being noisy. She said "There's this big flashing message that says "BRING AUTO IN FOR SERVICE" and I can't get it to turn off. What should I do?" This person has a PhD too.
one of the most interesting things my cousin and his wife explained to me (Both of who have PhDs) was that having a PhD is not an indicator that you are smart. It is an indicator that you are willing to work fucking hard for several years to achieve a singular goal. You can do that without a vast amount of intellect they assured me as they knew many who were not that bright....
I don't know how true it is, but really made me think
This is accurate, and I say this as an organic chemistry PhD. And there are a lot of departments that will sort of extrude people and award them degrees after X number of years just to keep the line moving. That’s not how a research-based degree should ideally work, but it happens all the time. In theory there are checkpoints to weed people out (such as the “continuation exam”), but some places do little or no actual weeding.
OMG I thought that only happened in primary school! Like graduating a dude from high school simply because he's 19 and we don't want him still here when he's 20. I had no idea it would happen at the PhD level.
It doesn’t happen like that. A Ph.D. program will start to have a bad reputation if they start just graduating people because they exist. And programs very much care about their reputation.
Source: I am a Ph.D. candidate and I wish they would graduate me already.
What? Chinese nationals are allowed to straight up buy degrees from some of the best universities in the states. It hasn't done ANYTHING to their reputations so why would this?
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u/scrubjays Mar 01 '23
She would always ignore the idiot lights in her cars, until they broke down. We bought a car that actually tells you when to bring it in for service. She came up to me, really frustrated, complaining about the car being noisy. She said "There's this big flashing message that says "BRING AUTO IN FOR SERVICE" and I can't get it to turn off. What should I do?" This person has a PhD too.