Adding to the list:
No. 420: Nigerian Proxy Postdocs.... :)

Ganesha,

Thanks for congratulating me on my "formal" postdoc, I had no idea that you can have an informal, non-resident, or even proxy postdocs to just get paid, hence you can eat and breathe like people like me.

So from what I understand, you have passed your PhD viva and now you are looking to do (or write according to you) a postdoc to get paid even if it involves you doing (or writing according to you) a proxy postdoc for someone else so you can get paid. And that proxy postdoc possibly should come from an american university since it seems the americans have lot of money to waste on proxy postdocs which involves people writing postdocs for others who are not interested to do their postdocs themselves but instead they looking to pay someone else (possibly not even in the US) to do research for them. How ethical and original are these two group of people is beyond me!

I do not know which country you got your degrees from, but I can grantee you that there are not many americans in this forum or out there who are looking to do this kind of business, so maybe you better look somewhere else for this kind of business.

Your post is even more bizarre than any 419 types of Nigerian scams emails I have ever received in my life.

This is a respectful forum, let us keep it clean from this kind of scams. Thanks!

Ganesha
Are you serious? Is your post a joke?
Writing a "postdoc"?
Sitting at home and doing a proxy postdoc for someone else and get paid?

Are you familiar with the concept of "being a postdoc"? And why are you pick word "american" or "american sponsored postdoc"? Are you getting this from spam emails?

Hi Satchi,
It all depends on the subject you are researching. Most science fields require validation of results through experiment (though some like theoretical physics may just need a validation through logical consistency but if it is not testable (i.e. string theory) it is hard to say whether it can be published or not. For instance, Higgs Boson was initially that seemed unprovable in 50s and 60s but then LHC could discover them almost 50 years later. If you do an experimental research, theories with alone do not get published, unless your theory predicts something that can be testable.
It also depends where you publish. High ranking journals usually only published proved theories.

I agree that there are homeless people in all walks of life, however the video I posted in not just a random case. I have seen and heard many of PhDs struggling financially after year graduation, but the universities do not acknowledge that they take far more PhD students than needed just by using misinformation techniques. I do not know about your institution but but when I look at the admission section of mine (which is a top 100 worldwide university) for graduate studies, it says that people graduated with PhD can work in x,y and z industries, national labs, private sector, government etc... which is not a lie but I wonder what would be the number of PhD who would apply to them if the university clearly says that they would struggle financially for years and may end up underemployed (as this is the case for many of us) if the students take the PhD route... Just a thought.

Eska,
I am sorry that the post is disappointing to you. It is just a post from the other side of the ivory tower we do not hear much when we are in our academic comfort zone. Yes I agree that gaining a degree is nothing more than a personal pursue for learning higher and noone becomes reach by gaining a graduate degree alone but I find it is very "naive" to just saying that I spent over 16 years at the graduate, postgraduate schools and two postdocs for the sake of "learning" and "research" and nothing else. There are many ways to do research and learn and becoming academic is only one of them. Frankly speaking, I personally feel that for most of us, becoming an "academic" is the death to our spirit of learning because once become academic, you will be afraid of freeing your mind and you would only follow safe-grounds and eventually you become a part of "established" hierarchy and publish or perish ideology. At least to me the best part of my "research" day is 1 or 2 hours in bed that I wonder around books on completely unrelated topics as I learn much more during this "unpaid and unacademic" period than the other 8 hours of working the lab on specified procedures, and endless reply to editorial nonsense corrections on my papers. I know nothing unknown or extraordinary will come out of my approved and well-respected postdoc research because most of my research was already established by an uneducated and unacademic researcher almost 150 years ago named Michael Faraday and the rest is just micro (if not pico) improvement on applying his laws which he discovered wondering around his own experiment that no one cared. But unfortunately, the fact is that the money comes for these micro-works because the tax-payers and industry is willing to pay for it not my few hours of self-research. My advise to "me" is that If you want to do fruitful research just drop the academia and free yourself!

Once I talked to an old homeless lady collecting cans and bottles from streets in my hometown (a midsize city in Canada) and she told me that she had BA and MA degrees in some social sciences from McGill university. I could not believe her story but few years later, I saw a book in the local interests of our public library with her picture at the back of the book cover and guess what?, she was the author!

Supervisors are also human being and they get their emotions involved in their work and relation with their students. I do not believe that people can be totally fair to everyone. We can cap our emotions (which is called being a professional) but at one point it will blow up. I found people who hide their emotions difficult to deal with. My former supervisor was the nicest woman in the whole world and super nice to everyone but it was superficial. In reality she was very selfish and did not help anyone one way or another. What really cared was her status before she dropped the ball and moved to a different institute without telling anyone before the move was completed. Her behaviour ruined lives of at least 2 - 3 masters and PhD students, as some internationals who came to do PhD with her but she left them high and dry at the end and moved back to Norway where she was from. One student suffered financially as she could not secure another prof with a fund and therefore did not finish her PhD and moved back to her country after being 2 years in the program. I was the lucky one because I finished my PhD few weeks before she goes on her "sabbatical" from which she never returned. But ask anyone who talked to her, OMG she was the nicest woman in our department!

Have a look at this article and the responses to it:

Good points awsoci, I was aware of the hours need to be spent. But the upsetting thing is that although I did applied for this teaching sessional thing in early winter (without any hope of getting it), they only decided to give the job to me one week before the course was started in september. As result of this short notice, I did not get any chance to develop the course materials and I have to do everything now while I am also a postdoc and need a lot of time to work on my research. They could have decide about who teaches this course much earlier but they do not do that. I have heard the same scenario from many other sessional instructor that you get this kind of job in a very short notice.

Good for him or her but I do not think the student you mentioned falls exactly within the "sessional" or "adjacent" kinds since she has a year contract and a 9-5 job!

Just a factual warning for those of you want to get a PhD to teach and end up as a sessional hire.

I am not shy to tell how much I make!

After applying for tens of jobs, I finally have got a sessional position to teach a second year chemistry class (100+ students) at a Canadian university, but I am already regretting it. They only told me that I got the job, only one week before the class starts and now my days and nights are being spent on preparing the course materials, answering emails and so-called office hours with students.

I am putting close to 80 hours per week and the whole payment for beginning of Sept to End of Dec deal is $6,500 (3500 british pounds) which after tax and x,y and z it becomes close to $3,900 (2,150 british pounds). They also told me that my contract ends in December so if I want to get this job again next year, I have to apply again, submit resume, reference letters, samples of writing and journals, teaching record, etc etc etc etc....

This article tells you all about sessional or adjacent jobs in North America. Read the comments, they are more revealing.

My recommendation: DO NOT FOOL YOURSELF, move on!

This is a universal problem. I do not know about the Europe or UK but in the US and Canada, the rule of thumb is that you have to apply close to 100 job postings to get an tenure type assistant professorship (if you are lucky to find this many job opening!). This article sums it up nicely:

Hi HazyJane
Thanks for the reply. I am in north america. In the US (and Canada) a MA degree takes about 2 years on average. I have seen people have done it a bit shorter but most of the people I know have done it over 2 years. My experimental M.Sc. took about 3.5 years since the supervisor was very demanding, She made me to take 10 courses + 200 plus pages thesis which I spent almost 2.5 years experimenting in the lab. The university I like to get MA from is in the US and is one of the best programs offered in math and they also mentioned in their website that it is a 2 years program which includes 8-10 courses (taught route) or 5-6 courses + a thesis. Online programs work well for some people (i.e. my sister who took an online BA degree in accounting and finished it in 6 years) but I personally like to be focused and get'er done asap. The tuition fee for a good US university is extremely high and for the program like the one I like to take is almost $44,000 per year and there is not scholarship for the people who already have a PhD! How much does it cost to get a MA degree from Open University in UK?