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Deborah Greenhut's avatar

Congratulations on the degree. Be prepared to have that resilience challenged over and over if you continue to navigate in academe, if it persists beyond the current challenges to the profession. All best wishes on your journey!

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Anonymous Dude's avatar

Good on you for trying to advance human knowledge!

I've tried to convince every single person I know doing a PhD to quit. Being a scientist in the USA is a truly shitty way of life--you wander from postdoc to postdoc barely making a living without even health insurance. (The humanities people have it even worse.) I guess things might be different in Europe where the welfare state is larger--I've heard Germans say it's a living and, without the need to hoard money for a disaster (or your kids' college tuition) like in the USA, you can focus on studying Nature and have a good life.

It's fairly obvious this is a true calling for you. And, it is an honorable one, since without science and the technology it makes possible we would still be dropping dead at 30 from dysentery after working ourselves to death in the fields all day. If we survived measles as kids (wait, that one's coming back). But, I know you had trouble making it here. Perhaps it is, in the end, lucky.

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