292
My university charges $27K/year and I still had to teach myself everything from YouTube at 2 AM
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
292 points (91.2% liked)
memes
22489 readers
2316 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I always tell people who ask me what I did with my PhD: I managed to get a good education and become a trusted professional despite the schooling system.
The only thing my degree did for me was prove to my first employer that I was willing to sit tight for years and go through the pointless motion of getting a degree. I managed to grind through to the end to get an idiotic piece of paper, and that told him I was unlikely to flake out on him after 3 months on the job. That's all my degree was ever useful for.
PhDs are a little different because they really vary based on your field and on your advisor. (at least in the US and in the sciences.) It's your advisor's job to make sure you learn all that you need to learn to do research. Schooling is just a distraction that you get done with on the side and as quickly as possible so you can get back to research.
In the best cases, your advisor will also introduce you to the research community if you want to be a researcher, or help you get teaching gigs / TAships if you want to be a teaching professor, or help you get internships if you want to do industry. The university is just the context in which you and your advisor work, and the degree tells your peers that you've gained a certain level of expertise.
Consequently, my primary gratitude is to my advisor, not to the university.