The key is to make the most of the opportunity and don't take poor treatment as the norm. It is always unacceptable. Plus at some point you will potentially be the world's most knowledgeable person on your very niche area, appreciate that and run with it.
I don't know, it really depends on the person. Writing things out by hand doesn't help me, and I don't see any difference at all between handwriting and typing
I'm not saying this is what's happening to you, but in my case this is exactly what I believed for many years.
And then it turned out that typing-vs-hand-writing benefits being equal was in fact due to how atrophied my hand-writing skills were.
I've learned that once I got back into fluent hand-writing in a flow-state, the benefits for learning, memorizing, and understanding, were so overwhelmingly superior to keyboard-typing, that I resented the cognitive handicap I had placed upon myself for literal decades.
Now I always carry a tiny spiraled notebook and a Rotring pen. They're as indispensable and practically useful to me as my smartphone.
I just...could never see myself EVER going back to using a pen or pencil (in fact, I would need to dig for one, I don't even have one at my desk at the moment). What exactly are you even writing that you need to carry a notebook on your person at all times? For me it was the opposite, I complained I would never use cursive in college/as an adult, and that I would just type everything...which is exactly what happened. Hell, outside of doctor's forms and signatures for those, I can't really recall the last time I even needed to pick up a pen or pencil.
My advice to a prospective graduate student is that if you can do literally anything else with your life, do that instead. The cost of going through graduate school is only worthwhile if you really need to be there to be happy in your life. Too many people wind up there for not great reasons, and it hurts them both emotionally and financially compared to having done something else.
This can be good advice if worded a different way: only go to grad school if you really love doing research. If you love research, then the right graduate program is the best place for that. Getting a PhD was the hardest thing I’ve ever done but I don’t regret a single day of it.
Many software engineers in the bay area from abroad pursued Master's or Ph.D. degrees in the US to qualify for the additional 20,000 cap-exempt H-1B visa slots.
Related. Others?
Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7997158 - July 2014 (15 comments)
Manuel Blum: Advice to a beginning graduate student - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2037676 - Dec 2010 (16 comments)
Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student - Manuel Blum (CMU) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=832729 - Sept 2009 (32 comments)
The key is to make the most of the opportunity and don't take poor treatment as the norm. It is always unacceptable. Plus at some point you will potentially be the world's most knowledgeable person on your very niche area, appreciate that and run with it.
i would add a clarification for today's students: by hand.
typing doesn't appear to have the same power, at least for myself and my students that ive talked to about it.
I don't know, it really depends on the person. Writing things out by hand doesn't help me, and I don't see any difference at all between handwriting and typing
I'm not saying this is what's happening to you, but in my case this is exactly what I believed for many years.
And then it turned out that typing-vs-hand-writing benefits being equal was in fact due to how atrophied my hand-writing skills were.
I've learned that once I got back into fluent hand-writing in a flow-state, the benefits for learning, memorizing, and understanding, were so overwhelmingly superior to keyboard-typing, that I resented the cognitive handicap I had placed upon myself for literal decades.
Now I always carry a tiny spiraled notebook and a Rotring pen. They're as indispensable and practically useful to me as my smartphone.
I just...could never see myself EVER going back to using a pen or pencil (in fact, I would need to dig for one, I don't even have one at my desk at the moment). What exactly are you even writing that you need to carry a notebook on your person at all times? For me it was the opposite, I complained I would never use cursive in college/as an adult, and that I would just type everything...which is exactly what happened. Hell, outside of doctor's forms and signatures for those, I can't really recall the last time I even needed to pick up a pen or pencil.
I remember reading this as an undergraduate student already enrolled in LSE. My God how the times have changed.
My advice to a prospective graduate student is that if you can do literally anything else with your life, do that instead. The cost of going through graduate school is only worthwhile if you really need to be there to be happy in your life. Too many people wind up there for not great reasons, and it hurts them both emotionally and financially compared to having done something else.
This can be good advice if worded a different way: only go to grad school if you really love doing research. If you love research, then the right graduate program is the best place for that. Getting a PhD was the hardest thing I’ve ever done but I don’t regret a single day of it.
Many software engineers in the bay area from abroad pursued Master's or Ph.D. degrees in the US to qualify for the additional 20,000 cap-exempt H-1B visa slots.