6 freaking months...so sad right now...
so David Ng of The Science Creative Quarterly and The World's Fair fame wrote a piece entitled: "Hypothetical question of the day: How long do you figure your post graduate degree would've actually taken if everything you did, worked?."
needless to say i am extremely depressed with his results.
i love how in science this is completely accepted...can you imagine another career in which a 5% success rate is allowed?
"i am sorry we only deliver 5% of babies successfully."
"i am sorry i only win 5% of my cases."
"i am sorry i only make 5% of my customer's meals."
"i am sorry only 5% of my products work."
"i am sorry only 5% of my buildings stay standing."
"i am sorry only 5% of my students graduate."
oh science, i don't know if this is why i love thee or hate thee...well actually it depends if it is a "magic fingers" day or not!
well here's to 54 months of crap intertwined with 3 months of genius...yay grad school!
needless to say i am extremely depressed with his results.
so this means that in my 5years of graduate school career [i hope?] about 3 months will be the actual work that gets me my PhD, awesome, freaking awesome...
Several years back, myself and some colleagues (all in the molecular biology genre) had a discussion about this over some drinks. Specifically, we tried to calculate how long our doctorates would have actually taken, if we assumed that all the experiments we did in our theses worked right off the bat. Always with the first time success, reproducible results in triplicate no problemo, no troubleshooting required, or literally, a case where we had "magic fingers" for the entire length of our graduate career.
And so, if we assumed that taking courses was not factored in, and that we would have about 3 months to actually write up the damn thing, we all agreed that our Ph.D. would have taken somewhere in the 6 month range to complete. 6 freakin' months!
Anyway, in the end, I took just over 5 years, which means for the 3 months or so of "thesis bound" results, there also existed about 54 months of "non-thesis" bound results. And that is like a 5% success rate - which ultimately means that, really, you just have to work one day every three or so weeks, and as long as you pick the right day, you'll still get your degree in the normal length of time.
i love how in science this is completely accepted...can you imagine another career in which a 5% success rate is allowed?
"i am sorry we only deliver 5% of babies successfully."
"i am sorry i only win 5% of my cases."
"i am sorry i only make 5% of my customer's meals."
"i am sorry only 5% of my products work."
"i am sorry only 5% of my buildings stay standing."
"i am sorry only 5% of my students graduate."
oh science, i don't know if this is why i love thee or hate thee...well actually it depends if it is a "magic fingers" day or not!
well here's to 54 months of crap intertwined with 3 months of genius...yay grad school!