Random Fashion Thoughts (Part 3: Style farmer strikes back) - our general discussion thread

[LA Guy]

Cucked again.

Anyway, I sorta feel like this is mostly about top schools cause I assume when we talk about academia, we're talking about research careers. Teaching is likewise grueling, stressful, and underpaid, but I think teaching and research are two different career trajectories.

If you go to a "lower tier" school, you can still get a good job, but it tends to lead you towards teaching. It's harder to get a research job if you come out of one of those schools.

I think few people today have the sort of 9-to-5 work routine people enjoyed a generation or two ago. Most people I know feel work pressure all day long, so this isn't unique to academics. But I do feel academia can feel like a monastery sometimes. It's very totalizing, especially if you're on a research path.

I was talking about the faculty at lower tier schools, who are definitely research oriented, for the most part. Four year colleges are another matter altogether.

 

[smittycl]

I agree with you, but fwiw, that is from the experience of a Stanford grad student, and Stanford has a reputation for having a grueling graduate program. I have two friends from college (university, for fellow Canadians) both a year younger than me, from the same undergraduate program that I was in, who went onto the analogous program that I was in at Caltech. And a head-to-head comparison of the programs was that while my graduate classes were considerably more difficult conceptually, their schedule was much more of a grind than mine, and their research structure much more designed to (in my opinion) unnecessarily induce stress.

As @the shah said, the intellectual capacity spans the gamut. However, I think that at least in graduate school at least, in engineering and the hard sciences at the top programs, you find out pretty quickly whether you have that grind in you.

At second and third tier schools, or anything outside about the top 50 or even 25, the mode of the distribution of both intelligence and work ethic is definitely well to the left. And I think because the outliers tend to be in the top tier institutions, it's easier in the second and third tier schools, especially as a student (faculty have much more contact outside of the institution), to have an inflated assessment of one's own abilities.

When I was at Harvard as a postdoc, my wife (then girlfriend and then fiancee) was finishing her doctorate, and she followed her advisor to Harvard for his sabbatical. Because the Math and science buildings are wll pretty much adjacent to the Law School, I was regular at the gym with Noam Elkies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Elkies), and still run into him from time to time when I accompany my wife to conferences. My wife also knew Maryam Mirzakhani (RIP), the first woman to win a Fields Medal, aby all accounts a brilliant mathematician, and super nice to boot. When you talk to people like this about pretty much any intellectual subject, unless you are invincibly stupid, you realize that (or at least I realized that) there are levels to this game, and you will never be there.

My wife is part of that game. She's a PhD Engineer and well placed in her field. She works extremely hard and exists on a different intellectual plane from me sometimes, okay always. I love being the anomaly at her gatherings and events, the fit (ego, sorry) former Army guy, current Govt. schlep and liberal arts major. Luckily we all have great conversations and get along well. Her European colleagues are the most fun as they dress well and love watches. She's been so immersed in her career field over the years that it leads to funny situations. One time at Le Coloniale, a really good restaurant in midtown Manhattan:

Wifey: "Why is this place French-Vietnamese fusion? What connection do they have?"

Me: History major faceplant "Umm, where to begin....?"

90 minutes, several cocktails, and appetizers/dinner later I had brought her up to speed.

 

[sinnedk]

Yeah, someone in the sales alerts thread just posted it.

12/26 it looks

 

[hendrix]

The OTT grind culture of US post-doc research ---->>> ridiculously exploitative and underpaid post-doc grants, and ultimately fraudulent research that wasn't even useful to begin with, and were answering what are engineering questions more than actual scientific questions (at least within biology).

Don't @ me.

 

[zissou]

All I will add to the conversation is that this waiting-to-hear-if-I-got-tenure purgatory fugue state bullshit is the worst ******* experience of my life. Only four more months of waiting.

 

[javy]

All I will add to the conversation is that this waiting-to-hear-if-I-got-tenure purgatory fugue state bullshit is the worst ******* experience of my life. Only four more months of waiting.

you should watch "a serious man," it could be worse

 

[robinsongreen68]

when i first joined i looked at @Fuuma and was like "i could never be that swaggy", and it remains true 10 years later.

i've met quite a few nxtlvl fashun forum guys now and tbh they're mostly just socially awkward dorks who tell anecdotes about people burying shoes in their gardens
(i fall in this category too ofc without even being well dressed)

 

[dieworkwear]

Wifey: "Why is this place French-Vietnamese fusion? What connection do they have?"

Me: History major faceplant "Umm, where to begin....?"

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Not sure what you mean by "we don't."

What I mean, speaking as a tenured professor with experience of universities in Europe, North America and Japan, is that my experience is that academics neither work especially hard compared to many other folks - although some certainly like to imagine that they do - nor are we particularly cloistered. That's all.

 

[LA Guy]

All I will add to the conversation is that this waiting-to-hear-if-I-got-tenure purgatory fugue state bullshit is the worst ******* experience of my life. Only four more months of waiting.

I remembered when my wife was waiting on hers, and it was pretty awful. But once you get it, the job is really yours to lose, and you have to do something pretty egregious or just plain dumb to lose it. If you keep your mouth shut about political issues, (especially if you are on the right), and don't get into sex scandals, you can pretty much browse Styleforum for life.

 

[smittycl]

On the flip side I get doc-splained all the time on my lack of understanding of general physics and such.

 

[clee1982]

some data are harder to fake than other, would think EE is pretty hard to fake..., and b.s. math gets smell out pretty fast, doesn't mean all EE research are quality materials, bunch useless or non original extension on existing stuff as well, but hi at least it's real...

 

[Fuuma]

i've met quite a few nxtlvl fashun forum guys now and tbh they're mostly just socially awkward dorks who tell anecdotes about people burying shoes in their gardens
(i fall in this category too ofc without even being well dressed)

Did you just imply I'm a dork :'(

BRB, burying boots in my garden...

 

[Benesyed]

I've met spope and gvzvdh(random letters) and they were both cool

 

[Benesyed]

Unpopular opinion: I think there Rosen/Snow collaboration but I liked STG more. More my style.