Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

This thread, tho https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/1122551950522716161 …

Worst case: you spend years doing fun research. Turns out the results aren't worth reading. How does that imply 'shouldn't have done it'?

I think the worst case is that you spend years doing work you don't particularly want to do, because your advisor has convinced you to do that work and you believe that's the only path to the career in academia you think you want... otherwise, difficult to explain the bitterness

Well, yes. If someone wants to apply the boot to *their own* face on someone else's say-so, it's a wholly different category.

I've never been and never intend to be a grad student, so I don't really know the nature of the leverage in that relationship... but I guess I've not known many people to make valiant attempts to enjoy it, at least at any real risk to their progression up the (competitive) chain?

As far as I can tell, if "number of panic attacks" and "duration of general malaise" are decent indicators, getting into grad school and getting a book deal are two of the worst things that can happen to People Who Are Not David Deutsch.

I only accept graduate students who already want to do the type of research we do in my lab. And the best predictor of that is that they started doing such research even before they applied to work with me. As far as I can tell, I have a pretty happy lab.