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Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student (2001)

Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student (2001)

nicoraga

Comments (21)

  • xhkkffbf
    Best advice: they may call you a "student", but you're more of an employee. You should treat it more like an apprenticeship for a job than some nurturing rebirth. It's not about you. It's about bringing in more money to the enterprise.
  • SA9G
    Fond memories of CMU in the 80's!! They had genuine academics who wanted to solve problems and advance human knowledge. Most cared about their students and wanted to teach. (Sorry to say, I left there for CA weather and getting my masters in an institution of higher earning, or that is how it looked to my immature self back then.)
  • john_strinlai
    >Consider writing what you read as you read it.i would add a clarification for today's students: by hand.typing doesn't appear to have the same power, at least for myself and my students that ive talked to about it.
  • cidd
    Many software engineers in the bay area from abroad pursued Master's or Ph.D. degrees in the US to qualify for the additional 20,000 cap-exempt H-1B visa slots.
  • dang
    Related. Others?Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7997158 - July 2014 (15 comments)Manuel Blum: Advice to a beginning graduate student - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2037676 - Dec 2010 (16 comments)Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student - Manuel Blum (CMU) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=832729 - Sept 2009 (32 comments)
  • qubex
    I remember reading this as an undergraduate student already enrolled in LSE. My God how the times have changed.
  • ktallett
    The key is to make the most of the opportunity and don't take poor treatment as the norm. It is always unacceptable. Plus at some point you will potentially be the world's most knowledgeable person on your very niche area, appreciate that and run with it.
  • BugsJustFindMe
    My advice to a prospective graduate student is that if you can do literally anything else with your life, do that instead. The cost of going through graduate school is only worthwhile if you really need to be there to be happy in your life. Too many people wind up there for not great reasons, and it hurts them both emotionally and financially compared to having done something else.
  • jmspamerton
    [dead]