What is the highest level of education you have achieved?

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What is the highest level of education you have achieved?
Didn't graduate high school 3%  3%  [ 2 ]
GED 3%  3%  [ 2 ]
High school graduate 21%  21%  [ 15 ]
Trade school 3%  3%  [ 2 ]
Associate 3%  3%  [ 2 ]
Bachelor's 27%  27%  [ 19 ]
Master's 27%  27%  [ 19 ]
Doctoral 14%  14%  [ 10 ]
Total votes : 71

QuantumChemist
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25 Sep 2018, 10:39 pm

Esmerelda Weatherwax wrote:
Ph.D., 35 years ago. Took me 6 years. Much of what I worked with had to be kept under nitrogen or argon and COLD, and it was slow going.


Did you work more with a Schlenk line or a glove box with that research?

In grad school, I used both techniques on two of my research projects (both failed), but favored the Schlenk line for the one that I was successful with.



Esmerelda Weatherwax
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26 Sep 2018, 12:31 am

Schlenk, pretty much exclusively, except for a couple flash chromatographies that I ended up running in the cold room with just the manifold. And please don't ask me about low-T NMR, I had nightmares for years afterwards.

My projects were challenging, very, and I went from the lab directly into a technical writing job. I'd wanted to go on and study further, but the two PhDs I was interested in doing postdoc work for - were both moving to different unis, can you believe it. So I took the writing job as a stopgap, but liked it so much that I never went back.

My first boss on that job initially thought I was a little strange - not Aspie-type strange. I'd come in to work in the morning and sit at my desk and laugh in sheer delight, and finally he asked why, and I told him: it was just. So. Nice. to leave my work out on the desktop in the atmosphere, at room temperature, overnight, and come in and find that nothing had decomposed. Sometimes I'd pick up a page and shake it and laugh because the letters stayed on the paper.

I really did have hellacious PhD work. It took about four months for that morning laughter to run its course. For about a year, the guys in the plant would come and get me when they ran into snags, which was a lot of fun, I was kind of a combination mascot and little sister; but then we had a change of management and the new regime frowned on that kind of flexibility. By the end of my career I'd gone so far from my original training that I can't even remember the title of my thesis anymore. That runs in my family; my dad was a ChemE, but worked all his life as an EE. Go figure.

IIRC you've been able to stay close to your original area of study?


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26 Sep 2018, 1:05 pm

Esmerelda Weatherwax wrote:
Schlenk, pretty much exclusively, except for a couple flash chromatographies that I ended up running in the cold room with just the manifold. And please don't ask me about low-T NMR, I had nightmares for years afterwards.

My projects were challenging, very, and I went from the lab directly into a technical writing job. I'd wanted to go on and study further, but the two PhDs I was interested in doing postdoc work for - were both moving to different unis, can you believe it. So I took the writing job as a stopgap, but liked it so much that I never went back.

My first boss on that job initially thought I was a little strange - not Aspie-type strange. I'd come in to work in the morning and sit at my desk and laugh in sheer delight, and finally he asked why, and I told him: it was just. So. Nice. to leave my work out on the desktop in the atmosphere, at room temperature, overnight, and come in and find that nothing had decomposed. Sometimes I'd pick up a page and shake it and laugh because the letters stayed on the paper.

I really did have hellacious PhD work. It took about four months for that morning laughter to run its course. For about a year, the guys in the plant would come and get me when they ran into snags, which was a lot of fun, I was kind of a combination mascot and little sister; but then we had a change of management and the new regime frowned on that kind of flexibility. By the end of my career I'd gone so far from my original training that I can't even remember the title of my thesis anymore. That runs in my family; my dad was a ChemE, but worked all his life as an EE. Go figure.

IIRC you've been able to stay close to your original area of study?



I get this so well. I was working on a PhD and while I liked the subject the methods were outdated. I was forced to dissect out parts of a drosophila which was a nightmare as my hands are not shaky but I’d say restless. And then had to get all the work done on them before the protein disintegrated in their muscles.

I left it and found an IT job and was so relieved to be able to have everything there for ever on screen. And people thought I was going mad at first coz I’d talk to myself about how much I was loving the new job. I figured the IT job was real time results and so was very excited and often worked a lot of extra hours.


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26 Sep 2018, 1:25 pm

Most of what I've learned has wound up getting applied on project(s) quite different from the intended benefactor. Cross-fertilization between fields is an excellent catalyst for originality. When I'm reading, certain facts just jump out for me, looking like they are worth memorizing because they are widely applicable.
Recently, I have been astounded to learn that two professional metalworkers I know have been operating without knowledge of the basics of metallurgy. They had to memorize a huge number of other data points instead of seeing the simple pattern that generates them and also suggests novelties.
One reason I'm cynical about school was a big project by archeologists to see if Bronze tools could really have made some ancient stonework. Well, they could, even when handled by PhDs who maintained their chisels as if they were steel, which is done completely differently. Too many experts are blind outside their fields, and oblivious to it as well.
I also get laughs from scholars speculating on stone-age cultures, as if the people had just been parachuted in from our times, and not taught by their elders. Actually, you can still hear authentic, live stone-age music at pow-wows in North America, although the feathers are now day-glo.



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26 Sep 2018, 11:54 pm

Esmerelda Weatherwax wrote:
IIRC you've been able to stay close to your original area of study?


For the most part yes. While I am not technically allowed to do actual hands-on research myself in my teaching position (non-tenure track), I am the brains behind some of the research that is being done with college students in a tenured professor's research group. I adapted stuff from my PhD project to do a different target goal than what I had designed it for. It is almost like I should have done that from the beginning rather than what I did. If all goes well, it just might greatly change how computer chips are made and how digital data can be processed on them. There is a good chance that I might get to move up to a tenured-track position if that happens.



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01 Oct 2019, 9:43 am

PhD Biology 2017



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01 Oct 2019, 9:48 am

MSEE


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01 Oct 2019, 9:52 am

BA Speech Pathology/English 2006.



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02 Oct 2019, 7:08 am

Me and school didn't get on. I bailed on it at 16 years old and got a full time job a few months later



Fern
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02 Oct 2019, 10:17 am

Biscuitman wrote:
Me and school didn't get on. I bailed on it at 16 years old and got a full time job a few months later


I respect that. I hated school at that age too. High school kicked my butt.



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02 Oct 2019, 10:22 am

Fern wrote:
PhD Biology

You an' me, sister.


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EzraS
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02 Oct 2019, 10:41 am

PhD in Everything.



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02 Oct 2019, 11:59 am

Have a B.S. in chemical engineering. I will have my Master's degree in 1-2 months. From there I'm switching fields to something more analytical, because I realized wet lab work is hazardous to my physical and mental health. Plan is to get a PhD still.


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02 Oct 2019, 12:23 pm

Fern wrote:
Biscuitman wrote:
Me and school didn't get on. I bailed on it at 16 years old and got a full time job a few months later


I respect that. I hated school at that age too. High school kicked my butt.


I found school pretty straight forward and enjoyable up until senior school and it all became serious and heavy and I found it progressively more and more difficult as I went through. I think puberty played it's part there a lot and likely in hindsight I would say my ASD would have played it's part too (was only diagnosed at 37). I acted up, I didn't want to be there, I walked out a lot, I did little work, (I played football a lot though!). I was just seen as a naughty child and was threatened a number of times with being kicked out but my mum was always in there defending me. By the last year I was drinking and taking drugs, which didn't help my school behaviour at all.

I do think much of my issues at school were because I struggled in a classroom environment and just had no positive answer to it, I didn't know what to do about it, and the answer I finally found was acting up and being a little rebellious. It seemed to get laughs, got me some friends, got me a girlfriend and I felt like I belonged to something, which until then I hadn't done.

I find myself thinking about school life, and teenage life in general, a fair bit nowadays, I think because I cringe so much about who I was back then. For as much as I can point the finger at an ASD diagnosis later in life that likely played it's part, I think it was far more about me not knowing how to deal with things and resorting to a having a bad attitude than anything else :oops: :cry:



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02 Oct 2019, 1:06 pm

I don't wish to intimidate the rest of you but I have an E in AS Law as well as an F in both GCSE French and Art.

I left school at 17 when the head of the sixth form recommended I would be happier elsewhere.

I dropped out of Lincoln Collage (A'levels) Boston Collage (Accountancy) Grantham Collage (Business) Joint Night School (forgotten why I was there) Lincoln Collage again (Access to Uni) and Local Night School (Art).



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02 Oct 2019, 3:08 pm

^ And you became fluffier at ever step, I'll wager. That's your secret.


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