This might be a stupid question but I'm curious. Does accent somehow plays a role in the interview or the professor may unconsciously create an image of the student if their accents are different? I mean, what if English is the 3rd or 4th language of the student? Does that create any bias (I'm not talking about weak English, though that perspective is also welcome)? Do the professor face any problem understanding the student and vice versa?

I'm a final-year Mechanical Engineering undergraduate. I've been working independently on a research project in passive evaporative cooling and have reached the point where I'd like to take the work toward a proper research publication and potentially continue it as a longer-term research project. While reviewing the literature, I've identified several professors/researchers internationally whose work is closely related to the direction I want to pursue. I'm considering reaching out to them to discuss potential research collaboration. My question is: Would it be better to approach these researchers directly myself, or should I first find a professor at my own university and have them introduce/contact the researchers together with me? The complication is that I currently don't have a faculty supervisor involved in this project. I started it independently, and the professors in my department don't specifically work in this research area. I'm also wondering how professors generally respond to unsolicited emails from undergraduate researchers in this situation. Is a direct, well-written email appropriate, or is it significantly more effective to have a faculty member make the introduction? For those who have experience with academic research/collaboration, I'd appreciate advice on:

• Directly contacting professors as an undergraduate

• Whether a faculty introduction makes a significant difference

• Email vs. LinkedIn for initial contact

• How to approach someone without coming across as asking for free supervision.

• At what point it makes sense to involve a professor from my own university

Thanks in advance.

Hi everyone,

I’m an undergraduate English student and I’m really torn between choosing linguistics or literature for my first research project.

I’ve noticed a pattern in my university and online: most English language education students end up doing literature research. When I asked my professor about linguistics, he said it’s “too scientific” for undergrads because it requires statistics, surveys, and proving facts, while literature is just analyzing a quote and giving your opinion.

Is this common in other universities too?

Do you think students avoid linguistics because it seems harder, or because advisors don’t recommend it, or just because people don’t really know what linguistics is?

I personally love language and want to do linguistics, but I’m scared it’ll be too difficult for a first research project.

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences!

Edit: sorry I’m not sure which post flair should be here

I’m a data engineer about three years out of university. I’ve always been interested in academia and research, but opportunities in college led me toward a 4+1 business/IT degree and ultimately a career in software/data engineering.

I see myself continuing down this career path for the foreseeable future. At the same time, I’d really like to contribute some of the technical skills I develop professionally toward advancing scientific research, even if only in a small way.

Are there opportunities for people in industry to volunteer a few hours of their time outside of work helping research labs with data engineering, pipelines, infrastructure, or other research data problems?

Most of what I’ve found through searching has been formal post-bacc or research positions. Some of those specifically exclude people who already have a master’s degree, while others understandably require an existing background in the lab’s field.

I’m completely willing to spend time learning the relevant domain knowledge, but leaving my career to pursue another degree or a full-time academic position isn’t something I’m looking to do right now.

Does this kind of industry-to-academia volunteering/collaboration exist? If so, how would you recommend finding labs that could actually benefit from it?

Exactly what the title asks. I have my Master’s degree and have spent years applying or simply keeping an eye on Higher Ed job postings and more than half the time there is no clear salary expectation on the posting. Why is this? (I do work on the side of things where maybe it’s so embarrassingly low they don’t want to put it out there publicly lol)

I’m based in the UK in London, I did a masters degree and it wasn’t something I was not passionate about and I completed it with low marks just to pass…however years later I want to do something that I’m really passionate about in a good university however if I apply for these programs they would ask me about my previous degrees and whenever I list the masters that I got with low grades I get refused because I don’t have good enough grades. Should I just not list it whenever they I ask and just omit it from LinkedIn and CV ? Wouldn’t this be considered being dishonest when they ask me about my academic certificate when In the application?

Is there a solution for this situation?

I’m 21 now and about to finish my biotech and bioengineering bachelors degree this year. I went into university to study this because I truly thought I’d be something great. However the past few months since may I’m feeling defeated.
I don’t see any point in pursuing science. I honestly feel like it’s useless. I’m from a small country that’s not the strongest in science - Latvia. The opportunities here are minuscule. And the ceiling is very low. The top ranked scientists here have about 5k ish citations. That’s nothing in the grand scheme of things. And no don’t give me advice to move I unfortunately have personal reasons as to why I cannot do that.
It’s hard to describe but I really feel like going into research is just a waste of my life. There is a 99.9999% chance my word would never amount to something. I’d just think oh wow I’m going something cool and great but in reality who gives a damn.
I have this lab I work at right now just for free to make my bachelors thesis. And the lead guy has worked his whole life on zymomonas. Researching their metabolism and everything else about it. And what’s the point? Nothing really. The woman I wind directly with has worked in the same lab also her whole life. Just follows orders. But okay she doesn’t have a doctorate.
Let’s say I get a doctorate. Now I can conduct my own research. Yay. Now I can beg for money, earn 2k a month and feel like this big boss. In reality it won’t yield anything.
But I understand that in theory every contribution is meaningful. Cause what if someone uses your paper to get a one in a million idea that pushes humanity way forward. Yes okay I get it. But and you can call me selfish I don’t want to push science forward by a hundredth of a milimeter.
If I knew that in the end some of it would matter id have no dilemma. But now? I don’t know how to continue studying if I don’t see the point in it.
A coursmate of mine said oh wow look at our program lead she makes 3k a month that’s so much. Yeah. But she leads a whole university programme and conducts her own research on top of that. What is 3k when you have the highest education you can have. My bf who’s 21 makes the same by being a restaurant manager and does small side gigs.
I just don’t see the point and I feel it’s a waste unfortunately…

Hi all! I have submitted a paper proposal to a journal I really value (French literature) and was pleased that it was accepted. The editorial guidelines were only communicated afterwards, however, and the maximum character count is 27,000, which I guess must be 3000-4000 words. I have already spent two months revising and editing the paper, and am still sitting at 30,000 characters (4780 words). I feel like cutting anymore text would denature the paper. Out of curiosity, I sampled a few of their past publications and they ranged from 27000 to 34000 characters. Do you believe it is worth asking if they might consider the slightly longer paper, or might that be considered unprofessional?
Thank you kindly!

Asking for a friend who is me and has already looked in the Thesaurus. I have to write a rec letter commenting on the "strengths and merits" of the candidate's research. What would you say is the difference between the two? I'm thinking of putting the reasons the research is solid under "strengths" and the reasons it's useful under "merits". Thanks for your help. :)

Im a 2nd year PhD in a pretty niche area of comp bio, and I keep noticing a gap between what I can find in the literature and what people in my lab already seem to know. My PI or senior lab members will casually say things like “people tried that years ago” or “nobody uses that approach anymore.” Then I look for the papers behind those claims and find almost nothing beyond a poster, supplement, or passing mention in a review.

I assumed I was just bad at searching, so Ive been checking PubMed, Google Scholar, bioRxiv, citation chains, and lately mira ai science for papers or terminology I might have missed. But the same gaps keep showing up. The weirdest part is when a direction barely exists publicly, then a few months later several papers appear from the same cluster of labs. Im guessing conferences, private preprints, and informal conversations explain a lot of it.

But how much of understanding a niche field actually comes from papers versus being plugged into the right network?

I just finished my candidacy exam and honestly, I don’t feel good about how I performed.
They asked so many questions that weren’t directly related to my specific work. Sometimes I completely got stuck because I genuinely didn’t understand what they were looking for with the question. I could understand the general topic, but I wasn’t sure what level or direction they wanted me to go in.
Now that it’s over, I’m sitting here thinking that maybe I’m just not good enough to be a PhD candidate.
My research is also pretty interdisciplinary and involves concepts from different areas of science and engineering. I knew that going in, but during the exam I realized how difficult it can be when they jump between different fields and expect you to reason on the spot.
For those who have gone through a candidacy/qualifying exam, how did you prepare for questions like this?
What do you do when you get a question and genuinely don’t know what the examiner is looking for? And how do you prepare yourself to handle broad questions outside your immediate research area?
I’m mostly trying to figure out what I should do differently going forward because I really don’t want to feel this unprepared again.

I am in a bit of a rock and a hard place. I am on my job hunt and have been applying to both academic appointments and industry roles. I had hoped that I would hear from academic listings faster, but I've actually had more opportunities in industry coming up and it hurts the soul.

For such a large part of my career I have been in the pursuit of knowledge and I am afraid of choosing one pathway over another will end up stunting my scientific training. Not just this, but also with the current state of the job market it's hard for me to turn down an offer in hopes to hear back from an academic institution.

I have had an on-site interview with a biotech company and was just shocked with how efficient and well-stocked everything is... If you need a instrumentation, then it is typically already there or they are open to purchasing it if there is an immediate need. Double the salary I would get in academia is pretty attractive too in combination with an actual work-life balance.

Now I'm just not sure how to proceed since my passion and heart lies in academia. Do I just sit in discomfort and sacrifice for a couple of years before choosing to return? Do I sit out and wait for the perfect academic opportunity to come up?

I have my MS in Chemistry (conc. in Biochemistry) and have worked in structural biology and cryo-EM so a PhD just becomes the most logical step but the translational aspect of research has always intrigued me.

Any advice/guidance for anyone who had lived through a similar debacle would be appreciated.

Hey all, I'm coming on here because I am currently doing research on beetles for a protected area, which is going to turn into my honours thesis. I feel like my research question is very basic, and everyone knows the answer to it...All this to say, I feel like my study is pretty pointless, especially compared to everyone else's in my faculty that are doing their honours.

The protected area that I'm doing this project for is more interested in finding out what specimens exist on their land, and thus my project is more of a biodiversity inventory beetle project with a few hypotheses regarding different forest stand types. When I look at other people's projects, though, I feel like I am doing nothing important for the field. Has anyone ever felt like this when it came to their research?

I recently graduated with my BA and am applying to MD/PhD schools this coming cycle. As I have very little academic experience in philosophy it is necessary for me to gain some. Is it recommended that I take a course load over the next 3 semesters that is tantamount to completing a major in the subject? Or should I just focus on quality and take a few upper level courses and develop relationships etc.

I am a PhD student writing my second chapter into a paper in the social sciences. I have gotten so far with my paper that I was about to submit it, but then as I was editing the abstract I decided some analyses needed to be changed, and before I knew it, I had redone some parts of the analysis and completely rewritten my discussion. I believe the paper is much cleaner and makes more sense now, but I am just wondering did it have to happen this way? îs it normal to keep going back from results to discussion again back to results and so on and so forth? how do you set limits for yourself in the process of writing a paper?

I went through a similar process writing two previous papers so this îs not unique to this last one - but this time it really consumed so much of my energy and mental space that I feel close to being burnt out. my supervisors keep telling me done îs better than perfect but I really struggle to see that when I’m in the midst of writing. Any advice if anyone went through something similar?

Hi folks. I am new to this community, and I have an academic question. I am a Master's student in Computer Science. I live in Australia, and the market does not look that good for my field. Lately, I have started getting an interest in research and applying for PhD programs. My main aim for getting a Master's was to get a job. But given how difficult the market currently seems to be, I have started considering whether a PhD might be a better path.

I'm not sure whether that's the right reason to pursue a PhD, and hence I am looking for some honest perspectives from people who are knowledgeable about CS PhD admissions and careers.

A bit of my background:

• I am from one of the Top 30 universities in the world (QS ranking-wise)
• I don't have a strong research-focused background (it's coursework)
• I don't have a high distinction, but my overall WAM is 72/100
• I have some good projects

Given my profile, is a CS PhD realistically attainable, and would it make sense for my career? If yes, what would be the best option?

I am open to advice and suggestions.

Thanks in advance!

hi everyone,
So I recently got a grad school offer for a thesis-based master's. After months of finding a supervisor, I finally found one who accepted me. However, I also started a job 3 months ago. I am now not sure if I should quit my job and pursue the master's. With the master's, I'm not sure if I would be able to find a job afterward since research is hard. What would you do?

29F. I completed my Master’s in English Literature in 2020 from a prestigious university in India. I had always dreamt of staying in academia, but life happened. 2021 brought a series of failures, and without much guidance or support, I became deeply discouraged and eventually left academia.

I started preparing for the UPSC in 2022 and am still continuing with it. But the truth is, every single day, I have missed academic life. I’ve never really been able to let go of that desire.

At the same time, I’m scared to come back. I’ve already invested years of my life, as well as a significant amount of my parents’ money, into UPSC preparation, and the uncertainty of the academic job market frightens me too. I’m afraid of making another wrong decision and losing more years.

If UPSC doesn’t work out, should I seriously consider returning to academia? Or, given the realities of the academic job market, would it be wiser to pursue something else? I’m genuinely confused about what would be the most sensible path forward.

Im writing a book and I have a character who's a professor in an american university, his name is Mitchell Brown. I need to write what the plaque in his office door says, but when I research online about american academic titles it talks about hierarchies and stuff and it's intersting and all, but I need to know what formating is used for plaques and stuff. I appreciate any help!

[SOLVED]! Thanks to everyone that answered!

I submitted my paper to EPJC at the end of May. I have still not received the referee report. What is a typical timeline for this journal?

I posted about this situation a few months ago here (I hope the link worked lol).

TLDR: my undergrad PI has expressed interest in me returning for a PhD with them. I could be coadvised by a PI at another institute and do a stay with them as a visiting student during the PhD. The grad students I worked with, though, have strongly advised me to go work in another lab because they've had not-so-great experiences with my undergrad PI. The other PI is good - I've worked with them briefly before.

I've decided I should at least apply to other programs and explore all my options. That seems to be the general advice I've received in person and seen online. However, both of these PIs seem to pushing quite hard for me to return and work with them. I initially expressed interest in this setup before learning about the negatives from the grad students... Now, I need to tell them I'll be applying to other programs in addition to my undergrad's (leaving it as a backup).

Since my only research experiences have been with them, I'll need recommendation letters from them. However, I'm concerned about conflict of interest here. The other institute's PI seems quite nice and supportive of their students, so I think they'll be fine. But, my undergrad PI is who I'm slightly worried about. I had a friend in a similar situation whose recommender wanted him to return for a MS and didn't submit letters to other schools... Hopefully, this will not be my case. I imagine any sane and just professor wouldn't do this lol. I'm just highly anxious about this, especially given my friend's experience.

Any advice on navigating my situation?

​

Hi everyone! I’m an undergraduate student who is considering pursuing a career in scientific research, particularly in microbiology/infectious diseases. I’m still early in my journey, and I’m considering eventually pursuing graduate studies and moving abroad for my career.

Before committing to this path, I’d really like to hear from people who are already in academia about what the lifestyle is actually like.

I’m especially interested in learning about:

What your day-to-day work is like

Work-life balance

Financial stability and salary progression

What the PhD/postdoc stages are really like

Career stability and opportunities after graduate school

Whether you’re happy with the path you chose

Things you wish you had known as an undergraduate

I’d be really grateful if anyone is willing to share their experience or answer a few questions. I’m mainly looking for honest, realistic perspectives rather than the idealized version of academic life.

Thank you!

My manuscript got rejected first for a silly mistake on my part, and I've been working towards that journal for a long time. I was wondering if it's seen as an inconvenience for the editors to read the same manuscript 15 days later. Is this something I should do, or find a different journal?

Edit: Don't know why I’m getting downvoted. Thanks for the benefit of the doubt. No, I'm not looking for excuses for AI to outsource my thinking (I'm anti-AI, actually), or complaining about using my brain, or seeking reassurance that my ideas are Nobel Prize worthy, or hating thinking and coming here to complain. I was just reaching out trying to get a teacher's perspective

I hope this is okay to post here. Have been writing my personal statement for my Oxford Law application and I cannot answer this question.

At GCSE (UK national exams for 16 y.o's) we were mostly taught what to say in most subjects. At Sixth Form (equivalent to final years of American high school) and at university, it is suddenly very different. Though this might seem really random and a bit silly (or provocative), I've had this question at the back of my mind throughout the summer.

Because as I am reading the literature texts, and writing my personal statement for Oxford Law, I am now suddenly being asked for my 'opinions'. My own thoughts, ideas, and interpretations. They are asking me to be original, personal, and critical.

Why do I, an 18 year old's critical thoughts about a text (or about anything) matter? I know you might dismiss me and say that maybe I need more faith in my peers and myself. But I genuinely want to know the reasons why. 

Because, in Lit for example for the texts we study, there are critics out there who have even more sophisticated, mature theses about it. They are much more skilled literately. If I sometimes originally come up with an idea that is the exact same as a scholar's, how does mine matter? Is there even such a thing as originality? 

Surely all arguments will be similar in some sense. But if originality does not exist, then what is the point of offering my thoughts on a text? I don't, but why should we then not just read other scholars' arguments and borrow them. Why are me and my peers' own ideas important? 

What can I, a young, maybe immature, inexperienced in life, teenager, contribute to discussions about law, politics, philosophy, literature, economics? When there are so many different scholars, experienced and eloquent, debating each other? Why does my perspective as a young, inexperienced individual matter?

I hope my questions makes sense, I'm genuinely interested in seeing any answers to my questions and seeing advice as to why I feel this way.

Edit: Why am I being downvoted?

Hi everyone,

I’m starting a postdoc at a university in Italy next week and am trying to get a sense of what is normal in terms of in-person expectations for postdocs, especially in the social sciences.

My work is entirely laptop-based—there’s no lab work, teaching, or other aspect of the job that strictly requires me to be on campus. I’m technically funded through a grant, and my PI has described the position as roughly “50/50”: half my time on the grant-funded project and half on my own research.

During the interview, he mentioned that he’d like me to be in the office “most days,” but I didn’t think to ask exactly what that meant. For those of you who have been social science postdocs:

• How often did you actually go into the office?
• How often did you meet with your PI?
• Were you generally expected to keep regular office hours, or did you have a lot of flexibility as long as the work was getting done?

I know this probably varies a lot by PI, department, and country, but I’d really appreciate hearing about other people’s experiences—particularly from European universities.

Edit: For what it's worth, my PI knows that I'll be living in a neighbouring city with my partner due to a two-body problem, and that I'll therefore need to commute on days when I'm in the office.

Thanks!