The slow descent into postdoctoral madness

If you wont read any more posts or comments from me, youll realize that my descent into madness was a swift one. Im a last years phd student (in fact 6 months to go and 3 more months hopefully to write) in biology who is grasping to his last bit of sanity at the moment all the while sailing through the troubled waters commonly referred to as the "terrible last year". With work piling up from the last 2,5 years, multiple projects requiring attention and people expecting me to perform well, there is also a constant dread for my future career so the pressure is coming from the past, present and the future ready to gang up on you any time of the day. A general phd in life sciences (and i dont count medicine because its not a real science, sorry early falcon) includes 3-5 years of laboratory labor, depending where you live and how fucked or blessed you are with your supervisor. After the terrible last year, you are kicked out to write your thesis and depending where you life you can be lucky if youre still hired by then or if they lay you off to write your thesis on welfare (social programs yeeaahh am i right ?) By then you are ready to defend your thesis and earn your well deserved title, unless you have decided to quit at any of those moments, which i have seen people do from first year right up to only having to write everything together. Afriend of mine recommended me to start writing a journal book but im terrible with such things and early falcon pressured me into posting and commenting here once in a while. So my post will mostly evolve around me struggling to stick to my last bit of sanity in this weird and exciting times like rose to that door in titanic and the weird struggles to face that only make sense in the world of a more and more unhinged phd student.

Again, if however you wont read any more posts or comments from me, youll realize that my decent into madness was a swift one...

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I can't believe that Oberlin College would actively partner with an organization that is abusive to their employees. Furthermore I find this type of behavior from academic professors also deplorable. Like they are not even doing research themselves on the type of company they are with.

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I finished my first self-published book today and it was awful

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Okay, honestly, I'm all for self-publishing. I think it's really cool that there are people out there who maybe didn't train as writers for half their lives but can still get their story out there. However, I think there is some merit as well behind publishing houses. They edit your books so that you don't end up publishing incoherent garbage.

Anyways, I read Private Dancer by Stephen Leather. I also happen to be Thai and my family also happens to be from the Isaan region, a place which he really just tears apart in his book. He essentially depicts us as incestuous, unfeeling, barbaric, uneducated, unwilling to change, lazy etc. The fact that this book was so highly touted by the Bangkok Post and others is really shameful. I guess the foreigners aren't depicted as really the good guys either though, so I guess in a sense, Stephen Leather just hates everybody.

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yeah, I get it. Hating a country is pretty controversial nowadays, especially in the woke era. And to be clear, I think racial injustice/gender inequality are totally valid things to speak about (and in fact will be the two things I discuss here), but I fear we have gone into the opposite direction: basically now we can't criticize anything. It appears, at least to me, nuanced is dead, and you're either far right or far left. I think rather, we should be able to criticize things otherwise you come out with people who go way the opposite of the spectrum (dudes like Andrew Tate).

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if you're not white or black (and a man), stay the fuck out of France, because you will have a really bad time. Hell even if you are white and black, make sure you don't get caught in the "wrong" hood. I have heard from many colleagues about the harassment they can receive if you enter the wrong neighborhood, with many people usually shouting at you but also there is a real risk of getting jumped.

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