Signup date: 21 May 2007 at 8:24pm
Last login: 14 Dec 2010 at 8:25pm
Post count: 298
Hi Lostinoz,
I can't argue with your reason number 4 (fair enough), and I'm certainly NOT encouraging you to quit, but look...
- your parents will NOT commit suicide if you quit. Now if they're really into it, they might blame you or something, but it's a different story... If it can console you a bit, mine would throw a massive party if I did quit. They think I look too good to waste my time studying and that I should focus on getting myself a rich husband, probably older too, and more clever so he's interested in me in the first place (you can't outshine a man, it's a well-known fact). I'm not kidding.
- your reason number 3 is typical of someone who is slightly depressed and needs a holiday! What does "better" mean to you?
- I disagree with your reason number 1. Quitting is very different from failing.
I think you need to try and get over it. Take a break perhaps? I'm quite serious - I'm not talking about staying home doing nothing, but you know, a weekend over at a good friend's or in a nice city you've always wanted to visit... I personally need a weekend away on every regular basis, I don't even wait for the blues to settle in. I'm going to York next, I hope before Christmas, then to Spain in February to see some friends, and probably to Cyprus with my family in March or April :)
Because I see you all doubting so much I think I'll write my own reasons though - in case I end up losing a bit my enthusiasm too at a point, it could be nice to come back to this:
1. I love my topic. It's the most fascinating topic in the world :p
2. I like research and, even if I'm not sure what will happen after the PhD, I want to enjoy the time I have ahead doing it.
3. The studentship pays more than my previous job.
4. I can't quite think of a job I'd do for more than two years apart from novelist, singer in a rock band... or academic. I find a PhD would be useful for career development in those three jobs.
Calling myself doctor is not a reason because I don't intend to stay in the UK all my life and, in my home country (and many others) you only get to call yourself that if you are a medical doctor. My family had quite a laugh when I told them ... making up stories about me writing prescriptions for a daily dose of Chaucer and so on...
For the images, if you can reduce the quality for now, I thought maybe you've got Photoshop on your Mac? Or somewhere on campus? (Sounds silly but most of the Macs I've used in unis had pretty much all the Adobe suites I can think of on them, expect for Audition).
With Photoshop (or an equivalent anyway) you can actually decide of the exact size of your pictures, really. Just make a copy of them for safety and work from the duplicates. Open them with Photoshop, then click File (I think) > Save as. You can change the format, some are more size efficient than others (eg .gif) and even for jpeg you can decide of the quality you want on a scale 1 to 12. This makes a significant difference in size in the end.
Hi Montezuma :)
Perhaps you'll have seen that I figured it out earlier... but it's really good to know it's not THAT old... well, in the grand scheme of things... and I've not been using Tiger for that long, I typically got it just before the release of Leopard pretty much - so I can forgive myself, lol.
I'm not sure about journals, but in literary publishing it is really quite common that writers rewrite whole passages... In fact I once met a publisher who told me they expected that to happen and made bets in their office about how much exactly would be re-written.
For a journal, as long your corrections do not affect the content or the length of your paper, I don't see why it'd be a big problem.
KB,
The fact that this man in your department has an IQ of 180 is useless.
Nevermind saying it anonymously on a forum like Cleverclogs, but saying things like that to people in real life (unless asked) is actually NOT smart. It's the best way I know to attract jealousy, contempt and hostility. I mean, I saw a documentary not long ago about a girl who went about saying she was just so beautiful, and it was so hard to be as beautiful as her because men looked at her all the time and so on, and she was surprised when she only reaped people's spite. It's the exact same thing as insisting on the fact your IQ is higher than average.
It turns out I am one of those who do not believe that IQs mean much at all, and I objected to having mine tested for a long time - my school back in the days kept insisting I had it tested, they said if it was as high as they imagined they could get me transferred to some kind of school for geniuses where I could 'integrate' better... I fail to see how singling me out even more was an answer to the problems I had then... and I'm now fairly sure I would not have scored as high as they expected.
I mean, if you take an IQ test online, it will not be precise, but it will give you an idea of what an IQ test can test. Maybe it is called intelligence, but it is only one form of it. If you're a scientist you may find it difficult to accept, but there surely is a big gap between being able to think logically and being clever. It doesn't seem so because admittedly, most people who can think logically are clever, but also because our conception of intelligence is a discourse governed by science. And evaluated officially by it, in the form of IQ tests...
Hi Maria,
I think you've had very good advice from the others and I agree with all of it.
Things are not catastrophic. You can tie your hair up for a start :) And there are a lot of things you could do that are much worse. I, for instance, on my first 'real' presentation, kept a hand, flat, on the top of my head. For twenty minutes (- I have a very weird body language, naturally, I've had to work on this so much and it's still far from being good!). The lecturers were making notes all the time so they didn't notice (I think one of them only put his head up once I was finished), but my fellow students were certainly watching. I only stopped when a few of my friends in the front rows started to mimic me!
I did pick that up however:
Has anyone read the Guardian today?
I quote:
'Among sex workers themselves there was little surprise that a well-educated woman like Magnanti had got into prostitution. "Loads of people who work in the sex industry are academics – education is a very expensive habit," said Catherine Stephens, an activist for the International Union of Sex Workers who has been a sex worker herself for 10 years. "At a brothel I worked in, I think I was the only one not doing a PhD."
The full version of the article is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/nov/15/diary-london-callgirl-phd-student-brooke-magnanti
No comment :-(
Love it:
'The linguistic construction of history as such asks to be read as the discourse of the nation-state.'
I could totally use that. Pretty much as such. :p
I mean in any case I'm going to make a note of it and a few others and recite them to my friends at the pub tonight during the game - it should be a good laugh :-)
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