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Why I left grad school March 2, 2007

Posted by Niels in : Graduate school , 7 comments


graduate_school.jpgI know you left school and getting a PhD, and I’m curious about that. Was studying to get that PhD too strenuous for you or did you decided that electrical engineering isn’t right for you? Why was being social really difficult…was it because you were more of a introvert and/or was it because of all the college work you needed to get done? Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I think it’s great that you made that big step of doing what makes you happy, and I totally dig your new dating coach job!

-Meredith

Thanks Meredith! I talked a lot about my decision to leave grad school in my posts To Be or Not To Be (a Grad Student) and I’m a Grad School Dropout. Grad school was a huge challenge for me, and completing it would have been one of my greatest accomplishments. But it just wasn’t right for me, and as my advisor told me, life’s too short to do a Ph.D. just for the sake of having a Ph.D.

As for my difficulties being social, it’s because I’m an introvert. But that’s a topic for a future post…

Your thoughts?

I’m a grad school dropout November 20, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Graduate school, Personal , 10 comments

Actually, I was already a grad school dropout.  When I took this semester off because my internship ran late, I technically withdrew from Berkeley.  If I went back this spring, I would have had to apply for readmission.  It would have been a formality, but still a bit of red tape that I would have had to deal with.

But after a great deal of thought, I’ve decided not to come back to school in the spring. I came to grad school in the first place because my job offers coming out of college simply didn’t appeal to me.  Once in grad school, I realized that I wasn’t going to end up in academia, leaving research in industry as the obvious choice.  But my summer internship made it clear I wasn’t happy there, either.  In retrospect, perhaps I should have seen this coming, given how miserable I was at all my previous internships in industry, from Cray to ViaSat to Army Research Labs.

More to the point, I looked at the people around me at work and couldn’t see any role models.  There wasn’t anyone with a lifestyle that I could look at and say, “Wow, I hope I end up like him.”

So I had a talk with my advisor today, and he agreed that taking a break from grad school is a good option for me now.  He was incredibly supportive and told me that life was too short to finish a Ph.D. just for the sake of finishing a Ph.D.  Plus, I’m still young.  Life doesn’t have to follow a linear path.

Having such a supportive advisor actually makes me want to stay longer.

But that’s that.  I’m done with grad school for the time being.  Perhaps I’ll discover what I want to do and realize that I really need a Ph.D. after all.  And I’ll come back motivated to finish, which will make the work much more pleasant.  Or maybe I’ll find my true calling and learn that I’ve been in the wrong line of work all this time.  The next phase of my life is a blank slate and I’m excited.

Your thoughts?

To be or not to be (a grad student) November 13, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Graduate school, Personal , 3 comments

Do I really want to go back to grad school in the spring?  Two years for a Ph.D. from Berkeley is hard to turn down, but more and more it’s starting to feel like grad school is taking me toward a destination I’m no longer interested in.

When I first got to grad school, I really liked the idea of being a professor.  It’s still somewhat appealing, but not as exciting as it once was.  At being at Berkeley has made it abundantly clear that I’m simply not smart enough to be a professor at a top-tier university.

But I still liked the idea of doing research, so I spent last summer doing an internship at Philips Research, getting a taste of what research in industry is like.  Philips was great.  I can’t imagine a more supportive, flexible environment, with nearly complete freedom for whatever topics of research I wanted to pursue.  But I wasn’t happy.

I look around at my coworkers, and no one I’ve met in the tech world or academia really has the sort of lifestyle that I envy.  If I don’t have any role models in my line of work, perhaps I’m in the wrong line of work?

What I’m really drawn toward now is entrepreneurship.  I want to be in charge of my own life, my own time, and my own money.  I’m excited by the high-risk, high-reward earning potential.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any big ideas to run with in the near future.

Craig points out that this isn’t a bad thing.  I shouldn’t be leaving grad school to pursue some business idea, because that idea is probably going to go under.  Not possibly, but probably, if the statistics have anything to say about it.  The right reason to leave is realizing that I’m simply not on the right path anymore.  That’s the only way to have future projects fail without secondguessing myself and my decision.

Your thoughts?

Cognitive dissonance dooms another grad student August 1, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Graduate school, Life, the universe, and everything , 10 comments


My first year at Berkeley was incredibly depressing. Part of it was being overwhelmed by the work, part of it was being blown away by brilliant classmates, and part of it was just feeling like none of the professors cared whether we were there or not. I wasn’t alone though. According to the mental health survey that year, 67% of Berkeley grad students felt hopeless at some point in the past twelve months. 10% of Berkeley grad students had seriously contemplated suicide. In case you missed that, let me say it again. 1 in 10 grad students at Berkeley said they seriously contemplated killing themselves last year. About 1 in 200 actually attempted it.

The survey honestly made me feel a bit better. I was more depressed than I’d ever been before, but at least I wasn’t suicidal. I was beating the odds, kinda! And it did bring my classmates closer together. I don’t know a single person in my department who wasn’t really depressed at some point their first year.

So it blew my mind on visit day when the prospectives arrived and all my friends started telling them how great Berkeley was. Who are you people? Weren’t you telling me yesterday about how your fever just dropped below a hundred after you went four days without sleep to make a conference deadline that probably didn’t even matter? Didn’t we talk last week about how incredible it was that I was the only person in our class who managed to maintain any outside hobbies besides research and classwork? And wasn’t I failing because of it?

I guess it was all in my imagination. Prospective students arrive and all of a sudden everyone loves their advisor, the research is fascinating, and you can’t beat the weather. It didn’t make any sense.

And then, yesterday, I read a study on cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance theory states that people are troubled by inconsistency between their beliefs and actions, which motivates behavior to restore consistency. In 1959, Festinger and Carlsmith had participants engage in a mind-numbingly boring “experiment” for an hour, turning pegs on a board around and around. They then told the participants that they needed them to brief the next subject, and to please tell the subject that the experiment was interesting. Half the participants were given $20 for this, the other half were given $1.

Afterwards, the original participants were interviewed and asked how much they enjoyed the experiment. The participants given $20 said the experiment was boring, as expected. But the participants given $1 said it was kinda fun! One measly dollar was not enough to justify the lie they told and the time they wasted. Instead, they reduced their dissonance by rationalizing that they really enjoyed the experiment.

Does this sound familiar to anybody else? A bunch of grad students are miserable for a year. They’re paid a pittance. But they stay anyway. It makes no sense for them to stay. Forced to explain themselves to a prospective student, cognitive dissonance sets in. “Oh, I guess I actually love it here!” they think. Oh, cognitive dissonance, you keep academia in business.

In my next post, I’ll explain how cognitive dissonance made me date Asian girls.

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Your thoughts?

Wherever will I go? Whatever will I do? July 27, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Dating coach, Graduate school, Magazine, Work , 2 comments

I won’t finish my current internship until a month into the fall semester, which means I can’t take any classes at Berkeley.  So why go back?  I’m left with a lot of options for this fall.

Things I want to do:

As far as I know, I can decide how long I want to stay at my current internship.  The work is about the same as what I’d be doing at Berkeley, and I’m getting paid well for it.  Doing my research at Berkeley, however, would give me more flexibility in my hours and the chance to contribute more to the startup with Craig.  I’ve also been interning for a different startup in San Francisco that teaches social skills and relationship skills.  They’ve given me a lot of help and I’d like to become more involved with them.  My support network for self-improvement is much more developed in the bay area, in comparison to Ossining where I just sit in my room four nights a week.

Hmm.  Just writing this up has made my own biases pretty clear.  Gotta get myself back to California.  How soon?  That will have to wait for another post.

Your thoughts?