spectastic

c'mon.. there are no filters here.

teammates want me to smoke weed for the first time and test my functional threshold while high and see if it enhances performance and/or recovery....

i pretty much stopped listening to my parents when i was 16. don't even try to explain shit to them anymore. just accepting that they don't know shit.

the first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club the second rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club third rule of fight club, someone yells stop, goes limp, taps, out, the fight is over fourth rule, only two to a fight etc

glad to see people are still evolving

guy in my department recently committed suicide (not certain, but that's the likely cause of death). I've been depressed before, but suicide is a whole other level that I don't understand, and hopefully never will. The brain is pretty complicated, and problems like these go deeper than getting up and getting some exercise. Inner demons need to be dealt with directly (I've had my share). I can't really help you other than to feel sympathetic and wish you the best of luck. I think the reason why you posted here in the first place is because you need a channel of release. Go talk to someone about it.

best to find multiple people that you can potentially work with. try not to take the first/only offer either. also it's unclear why you don't feel fit in. is it the research, group dynamic, department, adviser?

I interpret 9-5 as a steady work schedule (it could also be 9/80, or 4/10, or some kind of 40 hours/week give or take) where you show up for a period of time, work, and go home to enjoy your free time (which i likey much), while in grad school that number is definitely north of 40h/wk (with much higher standard deviation, which I guess is what is referred to as "freedom"), and that salary is waaayyy south. that said, having autonomy in the workplace (which I agree is a huge perk of grad school) and having a 9-5 aren't mutually exclusive. some of the most successful companies with some of the happiest employees have 9-5 schedules, and part of their strategy is to allow some kind of freedom for their employees to do whatever they want work related during some of their work schedule. 3M is a great example in that they allocated 10-20% of their employees' schedule to think about ideas that are completely unrelated to their current projects. This was how the post it note was developed. Here's the thing.. at least in my field, you need to be there in person to communicate with your team, and anything worth accomplishing is most effectively accomplished through teams or groups, not through individuals. so unless the job can be done completely individually, most jobs will require you to show up when others do. Also, not everything that's interesting to work on is necessarily worth working on. the people paying you money expect to see a return on their investment. that goes for academia too. in that regard, you will never have true autonomy to work on what you want, and expect to be compensated for it.

if avoiding the 9-5 is one of the main reasons for you to pursue academia, then I think there are better long term solutions. look at the people in your field with PhDs. what kind of schedule do they work? I think unless you're in Australia or Europe or something, owns a company, or can work from home, 9-5 is pretty hard to avoid. The people who I've met who work from home and have that kind of freedom are always software developers or website builders. anything that requires you to show up is probably going to be a 9-5.

and yea, most of the things on the lists are not unique to grad school at all. If I could work in the areas I want to work in without a PhD, and not hit a ceiling in 10 years, I would not be doing a PhD. It's an investment, and it's not glamorous, at ALL.. out of all the trivial things listed, like being able to travel, meeting like minded people, the NOT 9-5 (which isn't that bad btw..), I would trade all of these for an industry salary with benefits and 2-4 weeks of paid vacation plus sick days and holidays in a heartbeat. you get near full autonomy in what you want to investigate, and access to resources that enables you to grow as a researcher faster than anywhere else. that's about it in my opinion.

people in general are basics. they go to work in a job they hate, buy things they don't need, in order to afford nice things, so that they can impress people they don't like, and post that shit on social media to make their lives seem awesome. no wonder so many of them are on antidepressants. this is as much true for people in academia as anywhere else. a lot of people stumble into a phd without a real incentive to really be there. I kid you not some of them want to spend 5 years of their lives and opportunity cost from a real job just to have a "PhD" on their resume. interesting people are everywhere though. you just have to look harder.

you don't need grad school to have meaningful conversations.. There are way more interesting people in the real world who have much more diverse experiences than grad students. most grad students I know are boring AF.

boy do i have stories for you about dipshits behind the wheel. I'm a cyclist, and I deal with these idiots almost every day. Too many close calls.

people got stabbed on campus today. all over the news and social media. not cool.

did the fucktard get arrested for hit and run?

oh hell yea

these type of stuff are highly dependent upon the program, group, field of study, etc. but.. 1. relatively little politics and few red tape: when I worked in industry, it was absurd the amount of work we had to go through to justify simple company expenditures. In academia, I sometimes have to ask for my adviser's approval, and it's done. If I need to make modifications to one of the instruments I'm using, I don't have to setup a meeting and consult with 5 different safety, maintenance, operation managers approvals and take a fucking week to get it done. I can do it right now because I'm a level headed individual who understand the risks of the chemicals that I'm working with better than anyone else who can help me. Having that freedom is awesome, and something that only really happens in academia 2. being around like minded people. I used to work around conservative, close minded people in east texas, where new ideas are rejected because it's easy to do so, and thinking about new ideas is apparently too much mental gymnastics for them to handle. When I ask people why we're doing things a certain way, it pisses me off on the inside to hear "because that's the way it's always been done." It's like they're just showing up for a paycheck and couldn't care less about what their work. I don't want to be in that environment. Part of what excites me about research is I get to do new things. And if it works, I'm the man. Those are two main things that I enjoy. I'd like to say flexible hours too, but right now, I'm spread pretty thin.. I also really like the city I live in, but that won't be true for a lot of other grad schools, which might be located in the middle of nowhere.

any 1 hour commute is a pain in the ass. I did this for a while when I was in industry. lost 10% of my waking hours being stuck inside a box listening to npr. would never do something like that again so help me god on busy days, when I was tired and overworked, I found myself wanting to doze off at the wheel. a coworker told me he would sometimes take micronaps on the highway there are better ways to chill and relax.

pulling all nighter for homework. motivation in the shit. productivity low. currently watching buzzfeed worth it episodes of two guys enjoying awesome food, and wondering what it would be like to be finger sized and riding my cat like a small horse. fuck i'm tired.

i ran from a cop today. fuck cops

yea, grad school classes are supposed to be more tailored to your interest. but I would even take that with a grain of salt. a lot of programs require you take certain core courses that might be just as worthless as undergrad glasses. my program allowed me to take whatever I wanted, and even then, about half of my classes so far have been learning about stuff that i will never, ever use or become interested in (fuel cells? give me a break). that said, I did learn a lot of interesting and relevant stuff. i personally don't volunteer unless the rewards (eg. meeting new people, fulfillment of work, broader impact, skill development) is greater than the cost in time. and most volunteer opportunities don't meet this criteria, for me. you already have a lot of extracurricular. If I had that much to do, and worry about classes, and worry about TA, and research (if applicable), I'd shoot myself.

oh bless you taxhawk.

oh yea, tax's due.

we all have a type. I figured out I interact better with athletes, outdoors people, and I like to talk/learn about practical social issues. I also learned that I don't like interacting with the party hard balls to the wall people, who talk and complain about random shit all the time, not to say they're bad, but it's just not the type of environment that I thrive in. you have a type too. from what I've gathered, you're not being very selective on who you want to be your friend. you're just kind of spilling seeds everywhere, hoping something would grow. I think you should think about who you are, and the types of people you want to hang out with. it's like a lot of things in life, if it's too easy to get, nobody will want it. In my department, there are only a few people that I feel like I can be real with. I'm not exactly a socialite who's a hub of connections, but I'm perfectly ok with having a few people that I can really rely on. that's just my take on this.

it's easter. I should go to church for once. but I have homework due.. should I pick homework over Jesus? I mean he'll understand, right?