ExponentialDecay

#notaromancelanguageproblems the program looks great - so congrats to everyone accepted! - and interdisciplinary in a good way, but idk if i'd go more interdisciplinary than comp lit, given that comp lit itself is already left of kosher.

It seems to me that the distinguishing characteristic of a good scholar is professional integrity. Professional integrity would not allow the good scholar to make unsubstantiated claims, ignore or misuse evidence, engage in excessive sophistry, avoid answering the question at hand. Y'all are fucking graduate students. Why are you making up arbitrary percentages and throwing around concepts you haven't seen since 9th grade physics? Metabolism research is not your subfield. I suspect it is not even your discipline. Why are you opening your traps (without a single cue from the OP), when what you say can neither prove nor illuminate the subject at hand or the subject that you so eagerly try to foist upon this topic? You have done 0 research on the topic of obesity, body weight, and metabolism. You have read 0 peer-reviewed articles. You vehemently refuse, above all, to listen to anybody who does not agree with your viewpoint. Your knowledge of this topic is equivalent to that which is expected of a first-semester freshman. I am sure that you, like the freshman, have many bright ideas and exhibit potential. But right now, you have nothing of substance to say. So shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down.

Wow wow wow. Put down the sacrificial knife and step away from the scapegoat. The poor girl didn't murder someone. She didn't sell out your best mammoth scout-out to a rival tribe. She's just fat. In my country, people are constitutionally entitled to being whatever body size they are without fearing criminal prosecution. Or are you one of those gross liberals that want to control what brand of twinkie we feed our kids???

bro, you're not even in the life sciences. i'm not sure you have talking privileges in sexual organ categorization.

I'm so happy to find out that teleology is a recognized concept in the natural sciences! The confusion between signified and referent in literary fields is actually pretty common even in published work. But then, in literature, nobody actually knows what any of the words mean anyway.

Some great posts here from future researchers in the life sciences that not only ignore research in body weight and obesity, but show an astounding lack of empathy. I am so excited for the future of medicine and related fields.

Your friendly statsbot from the lit&comprhet board would like to point out: the median income is the income at the 50th percentile. so, exactly 50% of the american population in bracket n make less than the median income. edit: or equal! it can be equal if all incomes in the bottom 50% are the same as the median income! ....i never understood the usefulness of medians in big data reporting (when not used to contextualize the mean).

wait, i'm confused. so is it better to be smarter, or is it not?

I don't discount the discourse on George Eliot. I don't want to engage in it, which is fortunate, because it's not my field. But I wouldn't call George Eliot dumb. Just poorly written and boring.

Well, on a most basic level, because it is one of the natural philosophical developments of Adam Smith's ethics, which we all live by, by the way. Onward, because it illuminates the study of the opposite side of the coin, socialism, liberalism, Keynesianism, all that. Because it has lots of implications for Game Theory. Because its logical tenets are useful for studying the controversies in utilitarianism and neoclassical economic theory, to name a couple. Because Nozick says a couple fascinating things about epistemology, which we all as scholars are implicitly interested in. But aside from that, I am frankly surprised that you, as presumably a future scholar or whatever, can just dismiss a whole discourse like that. I doubt you are knowledgeable enough about libertarianism to speak about it with such aplomb, since, if you were, you would at least admit that libertarianism is founded on analytically sound axioms and does point out a couple of controversies in center-field thinking, and hence you wouldn't be like, WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THIS DURRRR. I am surprised that you have enough passion to spend the rest of your life studying some arbitrary and not hugely relevant literary nonsense, and yet you wouldn't endorse the study of what is, according to you, similar arbitrary and irrelevant nonsense, if not on purely aesthetic grounds, then at least on grounds of figuring out why so many people are convinced by it. I'm partial to Keynes myself because, in his vision, the economist is tasked with making the transition from one economy to another easier for societies, rather than with just studying those transitions, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate the relevance and complexity of arguments from the other side.

OP: I'm trying to decide whether to apply to Cornell, so just out of interest, could you tell me your subfield?

Firstly, Ayn Rand has excellent form. Considering that somebody must give a long philosophical speech every twenty pages, it is astonishing that her prose feels breezier than Stein or Eliot. Secondly, a person who bases their understanding of libertarianism on Ayn Rand, never having read even Hayek or Nozick, or at least the earlier philosophy that informs their views, regardless of whether they consider themselves a libertarian or not, needs to shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down. That said, I think that if George Eliot were never taught to read and had 12 children instead of writing Silas Marner and Daniel Deronda and shit, society would be better off.

a literary analytic without sophistry is like a physicist without calculus

re lectureships: at my fancy east coast college, the math and physics departments subsist on lecturers with non-renewable contracts. it's not like the venerable tenured academics are going to teach the calc sequence to freshmen. two years ago, i had the incredible fortune of taking half the statistics sequence without having to do the lab, because they didn't hire an adjunct to conduct the labs, and none of the tenured people wanted to do it. i am completely unaware of the state of affairs in the chem and bio depts, but given the rotation of new faces in the TA and lab tech offices every year, i'm guessing it's the same situation. this is not a bad thing for the STEM phds. in fact, it means that you can get a job in academic STEM without being a "superstar". colleges will always need somebody to teach the goddamn calc sequence, especially now that there's all this hysteria about the lag in STEM education or whatever. on the other hand, if the humanities or social science depts are hiring, it's always for a TT job. we have a visiting lectureship in anthro, soc, and jewish studies, but that's it. does that mean that humanities graduates are better off? no, it means the opposite. it means that the administration is getting the idea that there are no labor-intensive classes in the humanities, which probably means that, when one of the professors retires, they'll just dump an extra class or two onto the existing ones rather than hiring a new PhD (this hasn't happened yet for all of the retirement processes I've witnessed, fortunately). this is just to illustrate that the existence of lectureships is not a determining factor of the health of a particular academic job market. additionally, come on: all of the people we read in our senior seminar, from Benjamin to Barthes, were lecturers for part or all of their careers. most humanities phds outside of the US are lecturers on middle incomes for their entire lives; most STEM phds outside of the US are lab techs, under the same conditions. a PhD is something you do when 1) your employer wants you to get one so he can promote you or 2) when you have nothing else to do with your life. the ivory tower ideal that is decried in these articles has subsisted for the last 50 years on the backs of tax payers who fund government student loans, who didn't mind doing so for the duration of the incredible boom in US middle incomes and, then, the upper-middle income boom of the emerging knowledge economy. all of this was a historical moment. the rest of the world wasn't in on it either.

Okay, cowboy. If your classically-educated ass is gonna yap about markets, it's gonna have to crack open the macro 101 textbook and read up on two terms: opportunity cost and comparative advantage. Opportunity cost is when you decide to attend a kegger instead of doing your calculus homework. As a result of attending the kegger, you get an F in calculus. But, also, as a result of attending the kegger, you meet John F. Kennedy VIII, who hooks you up with an internship at his boutique consulting in Atlanta. Therefore, the opportunity cost of attending the kegger was the F in calculus. The opportunity cost of not attending the kegger was the internship at the boutique consulting in Atlanta. And, if we're gonna be overdeterminist, we can say all sorts of fruity shit about socialization, alcohol intoxication, and the beauty of analytical mathematics as part of the requisite opportunity cost. Back to business. I stated that, given the shitty job market, the opportunity cost of doing a PhD is not so high. That means, child, that you're losing less by doing a PhD now than you would've lost five years ago.That doesn't mean the job prospects of a PhD are equivalent to that of the average person's job prospects. It means that they are less different. Sweet giblets, what institution conferred you your degree? The University of Couch Sophistry? Comparative advantage is when you have two people in exactly the same circumstances, but one of those people always outperforms the other in a particular task. The person who outperforms has a comparative advantage in that particular task. There is actually a great deal of economic literature on this subject, and overwhelmingly it suggests that, ceteris paribus, if one unit has comparative advantage over the other unit, that first unit will always win. What does that mean? That means if you try to beat the 10 year old prodigy at the science olympiad, you're gonna have a bad time. If Britney tries to beat Ella at the jazz game, Britney is gonna have a bad time. If you're boring, demure, and the popular people have never liked you even though you take care to shower twice a day, and you try to break into law or front office finance? Guess what. You're gonna have a bad time. Y'all know I'm gonna whip one out. Y'all know it. in gloriam suam.

you guys, i love this <3 if academia is anything like this, i'm gonna have such a good time!

You know how I know you wouldn't be able to get into HBS? You can't separate trend from circumstance, which is like a huge deal in any kind of business analysis today, even if it is mostly used as a logical crutch. If you're going to make a, dare I say it, scientific claim, you have to hold something constant as a reference point, and you're going to have to assume a reasonable person. An individual who has an offer to Harvard GSAS, HBS, Yale Law, and the NASA mission to Mars is not an interesting case. An individual who has an offer to Harvard GSAS and a normal, undistinguished existence if that condition is not met, is. What the esteemed members of this forum have been trying to tell you is that they are not that Achillean individual. They have weighed their options and they have chosen. You're telling them that they should decline Harvard GSAS and apply 3rd cycle to HBS. Is that what you're saying? I mean, I've lost the point of your argument. That said, the stuff about being too old and weirdly qualified to enter the job market after your PhD is probably true. But hey, I have a lot of alma maters to turn to in the event of calamity.

That was a good gif Here it is: i edited it cos she edited hers and she was like, don't call me bro PLEASE, and i felt bad - but it is a pretty good gif, and i leave it here as decoration. Now, for your salient point. I don't claim to be an academic, but I'll probably become one, which is likely why I am so smug. I apologise; I try to stop myself, but if you'd had my upbringing, you'd be smug too. I completely admit to being a snotty undergraduate with no recourse to data. However, you too don't have data - as in the data you do have don't address my claim. We can just leave the issue on the table and return to our respective caves to find that data/play minecraft, and live to fight another day.

You wouldn't get into HBS. In fact, I wouldn't bet on you vs. Fuqua. Shit, how can you even pretend that somebody who is a good researcher would be a good businessperson? Have you been drinking too much of that study-whatever-you-want-because-all-skillsets-are-equal Kool-Aid?

http://lawyerist.com/dont-go-law-school-now/ So, graduatingPhD, today, March 9th 2014, the world is more globalized than ever before. What does that mean? That means that a huge market has access to a huge labor force of diversified skills and backgrounds, all of whom, as individuals, are trying to become top dogs. What does that mean, you ask, in real terms? What does that mean for me? For you, graduatingPhD, this means that if a law firm or department can get a software or a bunch of Indian dudes in Bangalore to do its doc review or its more elementary cases, they will forgo you and your fancy Yale JD, because just the life support of your biological organism on the East Coast of America will cost them 5-10 times more than the Indian guy's net worth. That means that, if you want to get that corporate law job with that 6 figure salary, you will have to be damn good at what you do. You will have to be in the top 75% of your class - who will all be insufferable know-it-alls like you, so you can't be all, WELL I DOMINATED MY COMP101 SESSION AT UMinnesota. You will have to schmooze those recruiters like you are begging them for your life. You will have to not burn out in the first 2 years of your tenure at Fancy Law Firm. You will probably have to be a man. You will have to keep climbing higher and higher, because those within a cohort who are not promoted get thrown out. Tired horses get shot. There is a shit ton of lawyers with fancy degrees running around right now, and those ruthless corporate firms will exploit that - if you've read Marx, you will know what I mean. Yeah, you could probably do a little better for yourself getting off the corplaw ladder than off the PhD one - you know best, of course, since you're graduating it. Don't think I misunderstand the gravity of your predicament, or of the predicament of anybody else on this forum. I've tried a lot of things to distract myself from this low-paying, low-prospect shit they call the humanities PhD. I've done the STEM and I've done the semi-STEM. I've done internships. I've looked at professional schools. I've gone through a lot of highly competitive programs, both within a discipline and across the board, and I've learned that 1) I am brittle, and so pressure breaks me, and 2) it was clear, when we were 16 years of age, which of us were going to be the brilliant economist or physicist or engineer or medic, and that was not me. For a lot of significant or superficial, inherent and assumed reasons, this was true. If I could be born again as a 6'5 dude named Kenley who was good at rowing and statistics, I'd take the chance. Yo - if I could go back a few years and fix literally two things in my life, I'd do it. But I'm here now. One thing - I'd say the only thing - that I learned is that life is a series of failures, and the way you become successful is you aim higher and you fail harder, and you try again. I learned that from my coach by the way, guys. Can't overemphasise the importance of sports in my personal development.

i'm not attacking you. i agree with you. i am unconvinced by the thesis that a humanities degree offers an advantage in the average situation, however. i will present data when you present data. hopefully by then, i'll also be getting paid to present it. additionally, i'm not sure that saying that getting any MA is gonna make you better off is enough of a corollary. if you're making an argument about specifically english degrees, you have to control for english degrees.

bro, it's great that you found your way. may we all found ours. however, general statements are less about the individual and more about the masses. what i'm questioning is whether a general statement, such as "getting an MA in English will, on average, make you better rather than worse off", is viable in the case of the English MA. indeed, the verity of such a statement is irrelevant to anybody who should be getting an MA in English - but that's the rub, innit.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SOMEBODY REPLIED!!!! ily. I haven't considered Canada - thanks for letting me know! UBC is in a beautiful area, I hear. I'm worried about applying to the UC system because funding. I don't think you can do effective population study without a strong quantitative base, but I'm more qualitative by nature. If I could, I would do Land Economy at Camrbidge - but, funding. If I may, what quant courses have you taken? Do you slant more towards stats?

Oh, if only sociology were considered STEM... I'm the resident joke of my economics department, but bear with me: is an English MA worth the opportunity cost of 2 years of your life? That's not such an easy question. You could say, it's worth it if you're getting a funded MA and losing $10 000 of Starbucks tips/year doing it - that's not much of a loss. But suppose you have a person who would, barring the MA, had gone on to an entry position at a marketing firm, then gotten an MA in something else, which afforded him a higher payoff in aggregate dollar terms than an MA in English would have. This is significantly stretching the metaphor, but philosophically speaking, the cost of lost opportunities is still opportunity cost. I don't know - I'm probably wrong. But it seems to me that rushing into an MA without knowing its consequences is a brash thing to do. But yeah, I'm checking with adcomms that their PhD programs confer MAs after comps.

Oh yeah, and Yale Law entails $150 000 in non-dischargeable debt - and that's just tuition, kids! Not to mention, you can have the grades and the acumen to get into both the Harvard PhD and the Yale JD, but you might not have the skills necessary to perform in one or both of the jobs that follow from those degrees. A lawyer, besides being intelligent, articulate, tenacious, and all that, needs to be charismatic, dominant, most importantly have contacts - whereas an academic needs to be able to contribute originally to a highly professionalized discourse and be well-groomed enough to not be thrown out of the conference room. A lawyer is not a glorified teacher. The hours, the responsibilities, the skills and promotion criteria in the two professions are as different as if - as if they were two different professions! God damn, ladies and gentlemen. If you read the law school blogs out there, you will find that it's not all that cut and dry in the law profession either.