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1500 questions
635
votes
14 answers
How should I deal with becoming discouraged as a graduate student?
I am a third year (starting fourth year in the fall) PhD student in mathematics. I've passed all qualifying exams and am currently doing research. As far as I can tell, I am not doing poorly. I have the good fortune of having a great advisor, being…
Aru Ray
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397
votes
14 answers
How to ask dumb questions
I am having trouble asking questions in seminars, conferences, and public talks.
As a graduate math student I often fail to keep up with speaker and more mature members of the audience at events like seminars and conferences. It is very frustrating…
Vlad
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356
votes
17 answers
Upset by male classmates openly comparing female students according to physical appearance
I'm a female student studying computer science (CS). Some of the male CS students have given me a physical ranking compared to other female CS students, and it has me really upset, but I don’t know what to do about it.
One of the students in…
UhHuhOkSure
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339
votes
12 answers
I don't want to kill any more mice, but my advisor insists that I must in order to get my PhD
When my supervisor pitched the PhD to me, it was all about analyzing "big data". I had BSc/MSc experience in wet-lab biology (mainly culturing cells), however I wanted to branch out into Bioinformatics since I am, and always have been, fairly good…
Wetlab Walter
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319
votes
18 answers
Should I share my horrible software?
After I had published my paper, some people asked me to share the software that I developed. At first, I was very happy that my paper attracted some attention, and I was happy to share not only the binary but also the source code, case studies etc.…
sean
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279
votes
9 answers
How to effectively deal with Imposter Syndrome and feelings of inadequacy: "I've somehow convinced everyone that I'm actually good at this"
Imposter syndrome is a psychological phenomenon wherein an individual is convinced that they do not deserve the success that they have achieved despite (perhaps extensive) empirical evidence to the contrary. Some people with imposter syndrome doubt…
Aru Ray
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272
votes
20 answers
How to avoid procrastination during the research phase of my PhD?
I just finished all of my coursework for my PhD program, and am entering the research phase of my degree with a topic already in mind. I've already started the research, but I'm already finding that I end up procrastinating a lot of my time away. …
Paul
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267
votes
8 answers
A paper I received to review has (independently) duplicated work that we are writing up. How to proceed in light of peer-review confidentiality?
I did some research with some collaborators, and we have been writing an article ("paper A") describing the work.
A few days ago I received a request to review an article ("paper B") that covers most of our work. The authors of paper B have clearly…
Senex
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267
votes
19 answers
Moral dilemma in unwittingly being paid to complete a student's work
I am a computer science freelancer who takes on medium-sized projects I can complete in a month or less. I was approached by someone who wanted a set of 12 tutorials at least 500 words each about certain programming topics with code examples and…
anonymous_display
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252
votes
8 answers
How to read papers without falling into a rabbit hole?
Often while reading a paper, I will see a citation that that seems more relevant than my current one. I'll switch to the new paper, only to experience a similar feeling. Or maybe I need to look something up on Wikipedia. An hour later, I'll still…
jds
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252
votes
8 answers
How do you cite a Github repository?
I am working on a honours thesis and have developed a Fortran library that I would like to cite in it.
In some places they suggest to quote the documentation of the project but this is something I plan to do in the future and isn't done yet. The…
charlespwd
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247
votes
14 answers
Why do American colleges and universities have sports teams?
In the USA, college sports are popular, and colleges may offer scholarship based on athletic skills. Yet, universities spend significant money on sports, and nobody earns as well as the head of the sports team.
Considering that the universities are…
gerrit
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238
votes
4 answers
Sex worker student offering her (lawful) services
One of my students is an escort/stripper and she has offered me (and other faculty in my department) her "services". I am pretty sure my initial reaction of "thanks for letting me know, now can you answer the question about how to calculate the…
StrongBad
- 104,237
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237
votes
6 answers
A published paper stole my unpublished results from a science fair
I'm in junior high, and earlier this year, we had a science fair. My science project was mostly experimental pure math, and came in first overall in our grade.
Today, I was doing some research on a related topic, and came upon a published paper in…
Nico A
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228
votes
15 answers
I believe I have solved a famous open problem. How do I convince people in the field that I am not a crank?
I am interested in the situation where you have a very interesting result. For instance, you have solved a very important open problem. However, you are not known in the field and do not have any remarkable publications. Your supervisor thinks the…
Learning
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