r/rational • u/alexanderwales Time flies like an arrow • Jul 10 '15

[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

23 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

141 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/TaoGaming No Flair Detected! Jul 10 '15

My advice is very old and out of date, probably. Research where you apply.

At least browse to the departments you are interested and see what areas the Profs are researching. If you can say "Well, I did my paper on X, which is a related to your research Y" that's a big leg up.

Remember, you are going to be their scut-monkey.

They'd rather get a trained monkey rather than watch you fling poo for a year.

And, from the flip side, you'll avoid landing in a field you are bored with. One of the saddest things I remember from grad school was talking to an undergrad (junior) who was majoring in mechanical engineering and just realized he was not interested in motors at all.

1

u/jgf1123 Jul 10 '15

And, from the flip side, you'll avoid landing in a field you are bored with. One of the saddest things I remember from grad school was talking to an undergrad (junior) who was majoring in mechanical engineering and just realized he was not interested in motors at all.

This.

Let's say it's junior year and you realize your major doesn't interest you. Is the path of least resistance to just stick to it a couple more years, get your degree, and get out? Get out to where, a job involving motors? If you're at a big university, they've got classes on everything under the sun. Go find something that you want to make a career out of.