I think I would be able to get a job hopefully even in a crap economy
Coming from a very skilled person trying to get a job in a crap economy (not a professoring job), I would urge you to reconsider this assumption.
I'm not really sure three months would be enough time to gain real facility in programming? The world of commercial software development is very different from the world of academic programming, and in any case often requires either credentials or specific skills. Thinking of it as a backup career you could drop into without prior experience may not be a good idea.
I asked my ex-bf if he thought that would be enough time. He knows me and how fast I learn and also something about the requirements of working professionally in software; he's in finance now. He thought yes. Maybe he's wrong.
I've talked some to my friends who have or have had jobs in software. I mean, I have the example of a friend who left a PhD program and dropped into it as a backup career -- he might be reading now. Another friend of mine who used to hire in software development in NYC said that they gave people who came to interview programming problems, and if they could solve them, that's how they were hired. So one informative thing would be to ask him for example problems and make a judgment with my ex about how long it would take me till I had facility with that kind of thing.
I would have to target an industry/kind of work and try to get ready for that. Finance would arguably be smart since I have some connections there in NYC.
I can also try a multipronged approach to make sure I'm employed. I'm really, really qualified at this point to have an RA job in a lab in my field. Another possibility is I could get a part-time job there and live longer term with family if it winds up taking longer than three months.
If you stayed in the PhD program, to what extent would your future career path be in academic research? Not having much flexibility about where you live is one of the major downsides of academia, so it's not clear your "I don't like where I'm living" problem would be over when your PhD program ends.
My two cents. Cut your losses and get out of graduate school. And if you are looking for a new guy you should probably stop hanging around with the old guys and you certainly shouldn't be living with one.
Another issue that you might want to think about is, will there be jobs for you in NYC once you get your PhD? If your goal is to live in NYC in the end, you're probably going to have to be ultra-competitive because people want to live there. I mean, in my field it's ultra-competitive for jobs in the mid-West or jobs in tiny little towns in the middle of nowhere. You might be more likely to get a job (A job, not necessarily a good or adequate one) if you don't have a PhD.
If you want to be in academia, I think having flexibility in where you could live is one of the most important traits. If you want to end up in NYC, you probably shouldn't continue with academia.
Regardless, I totally feel for your situation. I'm in a small town in the southeast that I pretty much hate and can't wait to leave. But I'm getting done my PhD much faster because there isn't a lot to distract me. My problem is that most of my connections are now in the southeast so trying to get somewhere else is really hard. At least I'm dating someone great, even if he lives far away. I have a couple friends who have just given up on dating because they don't fit into the culture and the guys here aren't interested in them (or are big fish in a small pond). And then I (because even I'll admit this) go to a big city and I'm like "See! People here are similar to me and flirt with me! I'm not a weirdo."
Leave. Leave now.
It's clear to me from the way you set up the question that you're more comfortable with the vagaries and uncertainties of making your way in a metro environment you love, rich with potential kindred spirits, than you are with the vagaries and uncertainties of your current environment.
And the one thing that you cannot change is time. If you want kids, moving to NYC is no guarantee you'll get them, but you've had two years to find possibilities in your new place and evidence says that hasn't happened. Whether there are "no possibilities" there or not is irrelevant -- what is clearly true is that in your eyes there aren't.
Unless there is some very big factor affecting your ability to support yourself -- you have a long history of spending beyond your means, your family isn't there for you to fall back on if need be -- leave.
He knows me and how fast I learn and also something about the requirements of working professionally in software; he's in finance now. He thought yes. Maybe he's wrong.
He may be wrong particularly if he's no longer working in software and therefore unacquainted with the job market since the crash. If people with CS PhDs are having trouble...
My goal was to stay in academia at a lower level than faculty. There are a lot of people in my field who have staff scientist type jobs. I was going to try to make sure I got the kind of training during my PhD that would make me valuable in that role. I think that if I wasn't trying to get a tenure track professorship I might have more options about location.
The applied component of my program also credentials me for another kind of work which is not very dependent on location. My true idea was to cobble together some kind of combination career, where I spent most of my time in a research setting, but I did the applied work 1-2 days a week. I know people who do this.
therefore unacquainted with the job market since the crash.
You know, I personally know people currently in software who are working in settings that are doing a lot of hiring, or who just left software who are commenting on how many jobs they hear about, etc. I mean, I'll talk to people more, but no one I know seems to think the market is that soft for programmers.
Another friend of mine who used to hire in software development in NYC said that they gave people who came to interview programming problems, and if they could solve them, that's how they were hired.
I'm looking for jobs as a developer now, so this is something I've been dealing with directly. Unless the culture of hiring is quite different in NY from the Bay Area, solving programming problems is necessary but not sufficient to get hired. For one thing, IME challenges aren't pass/fail; there are a whole bunch of criteria you can judge a response on.
If you're really serious about making the jump, find an open-source project *now* and start working on it. Contributions to that sort of thing are becoming increasingly important in the industry; even though I've got years and years of professional experience, it still counts against me that I don't have anything like that. It'll also be a good introduction to writing unit tests, which is one of the more important skills you can have as a developer.
find an open-source project *now* and start working on it
This echoes something else someone who recently switched to software development told me.
9: The software job market is the complete opposite of soft right now. It's possible that the spigots of cash may get turned off soon, but at least for right now it's going gangbusters. CS PhDs aren't the best segment of the prospect market to look at; they're going to be qualified in ways that are orthogonal to the requirements of most developer jobs. The CS undergrad hiring rate is a better measure.
Did you get that PhD-level experience? Because that's almost a selling point - you have the experience but because you don't have the degree, you'll be cheaper to hire.
How easy is it in your field to transfer programs? In some disciplines it's one of those hidden secrets--not hard to do if you're good, a kind of side door into a program, and not widely availed of. In other fields this isn't so true. Maybe you could have your cake and eat it.
If not ... well, it seems like you want to get out, and if that's what you really want then you should do it, especially because the location issue may only get worse. The academic job market does not give a shit about your geographical preferences. Pining to the point of misery for the big city is a very common feature of academic life.
How tied down are you to a physical lab? If your work involves developing software, maybe it can be done from somewhere else? I didn't like the town I was in for grad school very much, but I could do my work from anywhere, so I just spent a lot of time elsewhere. Maybe you have colleagues at other institutions in or around New York where you could spend weeks at a time as a visitor, still working toward your degree? (I realize this is impossible in a lot of fields.) This could be good for short-term mental health and sense of well-being, but if you have four or five full years left it might not be a real solution. (No chance of accelerating your graduation schedule?)
If there are enough jobs that you'd be happy with and could get in NYC with a Ph.D., then you should be able to be in NYC now either having a lower-level job at one of those places or getting a Ph.D. at one of those places. I'd look into things like whether you can get a Ph.D. from a NY area school while working at a lab at one of the non-academic places you'd like to work at. If you want to live in New York long term you should just move there now. What you're doing now is behavior appropriate to someone who cares more about being an academic than about where they live. You are not that person.
You seem possibly too closely still connected to your ex - going back to NY is one thing, since it's been home to you, but Seattle may be a step too far, if what you're interested in is finding someone else. On the other hand, it sounds like you're approaching that as if you were a stowaway, trying to escape your current life. Which I guess you are.
Anyway, it sounds like you want to get out and are just looking for the right time to make the call. Since you don't appear to have that feeling that academia is some sort of calling that you can't leave, and you are actually getting some practical experience already, then it probably makes sense to leave. I'd think you're better off doing it when going back to NYC is an easier option.
How tied down are you to a physical lab?
Trying to finish while living away is one thing I considered. It is a possibility, although keeping the applied component of the degree, which is the whole reason I was willing to come out here, probably wouldn't be (so maybe I should just consider programs in NY where I'd have the grad school community around me). I'd have to be here for periods of data collection, but perhaps I could spend a lot of other time away. The thing is, I just had a pilot fail, and maybe I can try to get up another version of it in the next couple months before I leave in January (?) but in the absence of something that seems to be working before I left that I could then do variations on to finish my degree, I don't see how I could finish while living away.
not hard to do if you're good, a kind of side door into a program
People have mentioned this to me. I don't know what it would mean precisely in my case. I mean, I've done a bunch of coursework and gotten a master's degree. If another program would let me out of coursework, that would be helpful. (But the thing about the coursework I've done is that it tended to gear towards filling the requirements of the applied component, rather than being generally relevant to the field.) Otherwise it seems like it would effectively be starting over. This is the kind of thing my advisor would know most about. Hopefully he is not too upset with me.
Also, I don't really know whether I'm good. I am very highly regarded among faculty in my department. Very prominent people in my field would say warm-to-glowing things about me. The defense meeting for my first year project involved all three faculty telling me how smart they thought I was. The thing is, smart and a nickel won't buy you a publishable dataset, and I don't know what portion of my failure to generate one thus far to research is hard, I'm making bad decisions, or I don't work hard or effectively enough.
Seattle may be a step too far, if what you're interested in is finding someone else
It may well be, but just to clarify: I wouldn't consider moving wherever he went. It does happen that very good friends of mine live in Seattle, including one of the few I went to high school with and I feel very close to. But Seattle even feels small to me, I don't think I would like the weather, I hear hipsters are very thick on the ground ...
I've just left NYC after 8 years too. I know what you mean about there being more opportunities for meeting oddball types in the city than elsewhere. It was the first place I ever lived where people didn't seem to always take it for granted that I was obviously hideous and boring. I went out with really interesting people, and I was not usually the odder of the two of us. In my new home, I'm making friends, but most conversations start with people saying, "You seem really anxious! Are you OK?"
But I guess I'm holding out hope that, just as NYC took a couple of years to settle into, so will everywhere else I live. For me, having a family isn't a motivator, so it's hard for me to imagine leaving a career I love to go on more depressing dates with assholes. Sex is a motivator, but you can't tell sexual partners they have to stick around when they have their own families, careers, and spouses to attend to elsewhere.
Missing friends is a real problem, but I've lost so many of the day-to-day friends during my time in NYC to them deciding to do things elsewhere that I can't expect them to stick around for me, so I can't stick around for them. I dunno. I guess what I'm saying is I'm not sure NYC is the only answer to every question, especially the "I just want stable life-long relationships with dependable loving people!" question. Maybe there's a whole truckload of aspiring fathers in NYC that don't live anywhere else. It would surprise me, though.
I would wonder why you wanted to get a PhD in the first place if it turns out to have so little interest for you even while you enjoy doing everything related to it. Did it used to hold some appeal for you that is now gone? I do agree with the above that getting it will make your life even shittier w/r/t choosing where you are; my field has about 40 jobs a year in it, and I moved to the one out of forty places that didn't send me a rejection letter. I just question the wisdom of putting all your eggs in the basket of a town not exactly known for promoting reliable, loving relationships with people who won't move away or disappear.
and I don't know what portion of my failure to generate one thus far to research is hard, I'm making bad decisions, or I don't work hard or effectively enough.
and I don't know what portion of my failure to generate one thus far to attribute to research is hard ...
Maybe I should attribute it to my failure to edit my comments.
It seems implausible to me that coursework would be an obstacle. Either you transfer the courses or the master's degree, or you somehow launder your research into classes (independent studies of some sort). The actual course requirements for my Ph.D. were less than they were for a masters at the same school.
The main issue with transferring, I think, is whether you have a professor who: a) Is politically connected or has friends in NYC, b) Likes you and is willing to go to bat for you, c) understands that it's important for you to leave and isn't offended about getting ditched. If you have someone like that they should be able to call someone and get you into the program you want (assuming it's not way more exclusive than the one you're in).
PITH: I know we've talked about this before, and I keep forgetting why it's impossible to find datasets in NYC. Also, Jesus Christ, you're plenty qualified to make a good transfer if you want to. You just keep saying stuff that makes it sound like you don't want to do it anymore despite enjoying it a great deal and that's what doesn't make sense to me. Why not try out a program in NYC? If you dump it, you'll be leaving the field knowing you don't want to do it.
This can be very field dependent, but in some areas of science a Ph.D. over qualifies you for many jobs. In my own area, I think folks are honestly better off with a Master's unless they're absolutely determined to try for a faculty position.
I just question the wisdom of putting all your eggs in the basket of a town not exactly known for promoting reliable, loving relationships with people who won't move away or disappear.
This makes me consider the question of which cities *are* known for promoting reliable, loving relationships with people who won't move away or disappear. The Bay Area certainly doesn't qualify, and I don't really get the sense LA does either. Maybe Chicago?
26, cont'd: ...and that it's not just NYClust.
28: The pattern I've seen is that you meet someone in some larger environment (unless you met in college) and then you stay together and then at some point leave. Possibly even for the same place!
28: NYC is famously a place people just stop in for a decade, and yeah I think San Francisco qualifies, too. There's also a subset of the NYC population into being really mean in order to teach people a lesson about how mean people can be. Or something. Philly, maybe? Chicago, sure.
Also, we're just older now. Sometimes I wonder if the perceived ease of making strong relationships in the past is not just nostalgia about a time and place, but also for the ease of being young. Dating was really fun and worth it for me until I was about 24, 25. After my mid-20s I had zero positive dating experiences. People are just nicer to young women, and have more to say to them. Making friends gets harder when more and more of the people you meet are in dyadic partnerships, or have no more room for curiosity about other people in their lives, or when you're no longer young enough to be perceived as fascinatingly precocious because now you're just an opinionated woman.
The main issue with transferring, I think, is whether you have a professor who: a) Is politically connected or has friends in NYC, b) Likes you and is willing to go to bat for you, c) understands that it's important for you to leave and isn't offended about getting ditched.
My advisor is politically connected. Whether to people in NY specifically, I don't know, but people in the field love him and he has tons of professional friends. When students in my lab go to conferences people gush about him.
He likes me a lot. I'm scared of this conversation. However, he may really understand. He himself is an exiled New Yorker.
I keep forgetting why it's impossible to find datasets in NYC.
I mean, it's not, with the resources of a lab and money to run your experiment. I should talk about transferring as an option with my advisor.
What happened was: I decided when I was about 25 that I wanted to do this particular kind of PhD program. I was excited both about research and the applied component. I had a lot of prep work to do. I knew I couldn't do this kind of PhD in New York, so I always assumed I'd leave, and I didn't properly reassess when I realized I'd gotten very attached to where I was living.
I would wonder why you wanted to get a PhD in the first place if it turns out to have so little interest for you even while you enjoy doing everything related to it.
I don't totally understand this. My interest was in the professional qualification that would assist me in getting work doing everything related to it (at higher pay than with a master's) for the rest of my life. I can't do the applied work without a PhD. I feel that as a significant loss.
There is a part of me that's been under so much stress about all this doubt about my life that I would like a break, to have a regular job for a while and to think about what I really want. But I need something that will pay me, obviously, a funded PhD program or some other kind of employment.
28, 31: Smaller cities. Boston maybe: though there's a large student population there, many people wind up sticking around because the area has other things to offer. Property values have a lot to do with whether people stick around for the long term -- if it's impossible to buy a house in the Bay area, which it still is, I think, you leave. One of the reasons Baltimore still has some life in it is that it's sucking in people from D.C. who can't afford to raise a family there. Philly is pretty livable, it seems to me, though I haven't spent an awful lot of time there.
(I should also note that without the applied part the degree would be less practical. I would be less employable and more location-bound.)
People are just nicer to young women, and have more to say to them. Making friends gets harder when more and more of the people you meet are in dyadic partnerships, or have no more room for curiosity about other people in their lives, or when you're no longer young enough to be perceived as fascinatingly precocious because now you're just an opinionated woman.
Data point: This has not been my experience.
(Although I can't claim to have been perceived as "fascinatingly precocious.")
I want to say "don't move to a town because you think you'll have better luck dating" because it seems like good advice, but...it was true when I did it. I didn't date anyone for more than a few weeks in the midwest, and then I moved here and things have been, oh, markedly better and it doesn't feel unrelated to place. There are a lot of really interesting people here, and what's more, there are single people past the age of 29 here.
I have found, however, that moving to be near people you love is impossible. People move away, drop out of their own graduate programs or start them, and eventually your best bet of being surrounded by friends is to be in any place for a long time. This makes me crazy, because I have the sick fantasy of living in a huge building with all my friends, but I think it may be true.
No real advice. On a gut level I'm in favor of dropping out of graduate programs because I did and some of my favorite people did and because I've seen graduate school and the job market make so many of my friends crazy and miserable. But if you really love your field and your department, you're in a rare, good situation that it might be a mistake to leave for something a little ill-defined.
On a gut level I'm in favor of dropping out of graduate programs because I did
Oddly, I'm in favor of the same thing on a gut level because I didn't.
I just question the wisdom of putting all your eggs in the basket of a town not exactly known for promoting reliable, loving relationships with people who won't move away or disappear.
I'm just less cynical about NYC than you are. Actually, I'm more than not cynical about it. Symbolically, NYC is The Place Where I Am Loved. I had two major relationships with people there, that, while they were each quite flawed, have become committed friendships.
I realize this is just one experience, but it's worth noting that the single best date I've gone on since I've left NYC was in NYC. I made some plans on OkCupid over last Thanksgiving and I went and had delicious cocktails with this guy and boy did we get along. We had instant powerful interpersonal and sexual chemistry, we had a ton of fun talking, and I got the sense -- maybe illusory, who knows -- that he was actually a really nice guy. He told me what a good time he was having with me, how well I could tell a story. At least he was trying to build me up, rather than break me down. Also, although he let me know that the reason his marriage had ended was because his wife had left him for another man, he didn't let himself say a word against her. He wanted me to come home with him but when I said no he backed all the way off instantly.
I have met people who were mean, tried to pressure me into sex, or both here, too, by the way. It's hard to judge the relative proportions.
reason his marriage had ended was because
Oh, Wolfson is going to yell at me now. Does it help that I know how wrong I've been?
p.s. if you stay, you should read a bunch of Lorrie Moore. She's a New-York-identified person who got a faculty position at Champaign-Urbana and a lot of her stories are about feeling alienated in the midwest. I found them really fortifying when I lived there.
"One of the problems with people in Chicago, she remembered, was that they were never lonely at the same time." -Willing, from Birds of America.
I sort of dropped out, then went back, then really dropped out, then sort of came back. I guess I'm in favor of whatever you can manage to work out. I have debt now for my masters, which I'll finish, so the extended indecision will have to end.
NYC is famously a place people just stop in for a decade, and yeah I think San Francisco qualifies, too.
Not trying to be a dick or anything, but maybe peer groups of childless academics and programmers isn't the best vantage point from which to view these things? These cities have rather large populations, someone's got to be sticking around. Relatedly, Salt Lake seems like it's full of people who came here with the intention of just staying for a while and end up not leaving.
To the OP: seems a bit odd to talk about Seattle as small. 600k or so in the city and a metro area of something 3 million? Not small. Also, east coast weather sucks. The only places with worse weather are truly god forsaken places like Texas.
Seattle might be worth a shot. Your ideal seems to be a big city with weird people and people close to you and Seattle fits the bill. New York seems fraught in that the first two people you mention as reasons to go are ex bf's, one of who might not even be staying. If the goal is family/baby then my instincts say a town where your circle of people is less skewed towards the ex bf crowd is a better bet.
Maybe you could rent a room in the city that's three hours away from where you are now, and spend the weekends there? It would be expensive, but maybe doable?
Now I think you've idealized NYC. When you go back it's going to be different. You can move anywhere but there you are.
Symbolically, NYC is The Place Where I Am Loved
I met someone once who said that Toronto was too small a town for him. I asked him where he was going to live then, he said the Middle East. I think that 'too small' meant something other than "not enough people living there" but I didn't waste any more conversation on this guy.
Maybe you could rent a room in the city that's three hours away from where you are now, and spend the weekends there? It would be expensive, but maybe doable?
I don't know; that doesn't seem like a recipe for happiness to me. It would mean really damaging one thing I *do* value about living here, which is my fairly active social life and my relationships with my friends, more casual than my closest relationships though they are.
One way to think about it is to skip over the next five or so years and look at where you want to be and what you want to be doing when you're 35, 40, or 45. If you have a firm sense of that, it can help guide your planning and get you through some rough interim stuff. I realize you're saying that the rough interim stuff is precisely the point -- you're not enjoying it, and you're losing opportunities to find a partner. But you would also have some rough settling-in stuff if you switched careers, and it's possible you wouldn't find a suitable partner in NYC. And in any case, in ten years you'll be ten years older. What's most likely to make you the person you want to be then?
I've hesitated to speak from my own experience (as a grad school dropout) because I tend to think that the humanities are rather different from the sciences.
I loved, and still love, philosophy -- I read it for pleasure still -- but once doubts began to creep in, it was, at least in retrospect, a slow, very slow in my case, trend toward actually having the guts to go ahead and leave. Partly the prospective job market, partly the realization that finding a faculty position was going to require the kind of self-promotion that I loathe. Partly something to do with not putting your eggs in one basket: in a field like philosophy, especially if you started grad school late (age 25 in my case), what on earth are you to do with a Ph.D. if you can't find a faculty position? Especially if you have student loan debt.
Ultimately, though, it was my strong realization that I just didn't want to be transient indefinitely: I wanted to be able to have a garden, and cats, and some actual furniture. Too many of my friends with recently-completed Ph.D.s in their early 30s were finding themselves moving every year to yet another post-doc or one-year position, essentially living out of milk crates.
Go with your heart: if it says you don't want to go through with this, pay attention.
I don't think I've idealized NYC. I do see it warmly though -- I became and adult there and met some of the people I care about most.
I expect that dating will be very hard. I just think I will feel more hopeful about the process, and that in some objective sense, my odds will be higher (whether that will result in an eventual favorable outcome, I don't know). I also expect that if my exbf does move away I'm going to be lonely there too, and it will be harder to reconstitute a social network that it has been in my small city here. I am quite willing to trade that way for a higher likelihood of romantic success.
If the next couple of years don't find either of us married, my best friend in New Orleans will probably make a firm commitment to living either in the SF Bay or maybe NYC. Perhaps if it's the SF Bay I'll go back there; that's my hometown. I know it's not the done thing to be chasing your friends around, but that doesn't mean I think it's a totally bad idea. My high school friend in Seattle's ex-wife moved there to be near him. They're not getting back together; they just care about each other.
My best friend and I started talking about this: what we really care about is being close to people we love. It feels honest to admit that and prioritize it, even if it's not your romantic partner.
It would mean really damaging one thing I *do* value about living here, which is my fairly active social life and my relationships with my friends,
True. But it does have the advantage of getting you into a city without requiring you to change your career (which sounds like it's going pretty well). It's not NYC, but I think the difference between one city and another is less noticeable, on a daily basis, than the difference between a city and a small town.
What's most likely to make you the person you want to be then?
The problem is I have needs in different domains that are incommensurate. Staying here is more likely to give me the career I want in 10 years. Moving is more likely to give me a family in 10 years. The timing of family is more critical than the timing of career.
I care more about the family than about the career. I hesitate because I'm trading a known quantity -- enjoyable, fairly practical graduate program -- for an unknown quantity -- I think I'd have better luck dating.
I have the sick fantasy of living in a huge building with all my friends
Tweety and I want to buy a multi-family house! There's a SIX-FAMILY on the market near-ish to our current neighborhood right now. We only need four units rented out: any takers?!
My two cents: stay in the program. The dating market is totally insanely unpredictable no matter where you are, and there's zero guarantee -- or, really, all that much of a likelihood -- that you'll end up in a better family situation by being in NYC than not. Plus, you'll be dating in some version of desparation mode -- you've kind of abandoned your career for the prosepect of dating someone, whch is kind of a bad place to be in while dating anyone.
Other alternatives: (1) transfer to a similar program at a university in NYC or another major city. Is that so difficult (perhaps this was mentioned upthread, I haven't read every comment).
(2) take a one semester leave of absence and go back to NY. If you like it, stay, if not, go back to the program. IME, a lot of people who have spent time in NY and end up in LA get into a mood, usually after two years or so, in which they pine miserably for NY. Then, they go back to NY, decide that it's not really all that and a bag of chips, and come back out here. That's such a common story in the entertainment industry that I hear it at least twice a month and 8/10 times the person who goes back to NY decides it's not all that great and comes back. So I've grown very cynical on this partitcular narrative. I think there's something about NY that causes people who live there in their 20s, especially if they've moved there from someplace else, to romanticize it hopelessly.
53: I won't formally drop out. I would definitely start by taking a leave so that if I decided I had made a mistake I could come back.
(Although, I'm a little concerned about whether that costs money, and if so, how much.)
To the OP; marry "down"? Find some guy with a job but not a career who wants kids & can follow your employable self. Non-bookish intellectuals are great conversationalists.
There are many ways this technique can go wildly wrong, but it is traditional... For men.
I think choosing a city for all your friends to end up in makes lots of sense. The giant conurbations are popular partly because it's possible there. I don't think settled people overlap daters much either within or between cities.
A friend of mine has a brother who is an economics professor at Columbia. Lucky bastard.
21 really makes me think you can't make this decision without having a serious conversation with your advisor. Especially since your advisor is a New Yorker and since you're happy with the non-geographical aspects of your program, it seems like as far as these conversations go it has the potential to be constructive and happy.
Since your advisor is a politically connected type, that probably means that he's aware of more potential options than a typical academic and could help you problem-solve. For example, maybe there's a faster way for you to get to your degree if you're maximizing for graduating rather than maximizing for doing the best possible research. Maybe your advisor has a project he's been wanting to do in collaboration with someone in NY.
|| Steven Miner, father and son, and Kathryn Miner are all rotten, selfish people who ought to be spurned by all polite society. |>
professor at Columbia. Lucky bastard.
Not the way I would characterize people I know with professorships at Ivies, and particularly not Columbia!
59: How good a mother could she be to have raised such assholes?
I would characterize a lot of the tenured professors I know at Ivies as lucky bastards. Junior faculty, not so much, at least at the Ivies where they basically know they're going to be fired after working their asses off for six years.
61: Apparently they were raised by their father.
OT, but DC commenters: what times on Saturdays do parking meters need to be fed to avoid getting ticketed?
Yeah, junior faculty I meant mostly -- 'know' as in, have personal (as opposed to merely professional) relationships with. Though about half the tenured faculty I know also works under stresses I do not envy.
52: If you can wangle me a job at your home institution, I am IN!
I really don't have a sense of if moving back to NY will make you happy (living here makes me happy, but comparative dating possibilities confuse me). But you sound sure. You also sound as if transferring schools to NY will keep you from getting the applied part of your PhD, and that's the part you really want, so there's no real point in transferring -- if you leave your current program you can't get the credential you want.
So how long would it take to get to the point where you could mostly work remotely? If you talk to your advisor and set that as a crash priority goal, could you get there in six months or so, have your cake and eat it too?
This thread is making me glad that 1. I kinda semi-accidentally backed into what seems like an awesome PhD program someplace I already want to be and 2. I was already in a place I was happy to live when that happened and 3. I have no particular illusions about getting an academic job at the end of this and oh finally 4. I'm okay with leaving the vast amount of money I could earn as a programmer over the next couple of years on the table in the hope of future riches/things-that-are-like-riches-but-don't-obviously-involve-money.
66: I think that would first involve Blume wangling herself a job at her home institution.
Dude, factor #5, Already met long-term partner, is also a huge factor in making 1-4 that much more workable. Not that those couldn't happen in a place you also expected to meet a partner, but having that open makes everything else that much more uncertain.
Wow - sounds from the OP and your comments that you should take the leave if at all possible, go back to NYC for a semester, and see what it brings. I sense just too much discomfort with your present situation.
61: He's happily married to another economist and has 4 lovely children. (I don't know how they handle 4 under 7.) They have a lovely brownstone in Harlem, and they get to live in New York. They love their work.
59: The description of the "inappropriate" birthday card almost made me cry. Truly horrible people. That was sweet!
And in econ, he'd have little trouble getting a non-university quasi-academic job, like working for the NY Fed.
Isn't the economics department at Columbia the one featured in Inside Job as rife with the worst kind of corruption and misrepresentation of data?
77: I thought of Inside Job too. OTOH my thought was "I bet Glenn Hubbard loves his job!".
If you're not asshole and you teach at Columbia, I'm guessing your life is actually pretty difficult, no matter how much you get paid.
Isn't the whole post also premised on "just got out of a destructive relationship"? Often IME not the best time to make major life-trajectory altering decisions, since there's the desire to massively overcorrect for everything that could have led to the bad relationship.
81 is true. The town may be a red herring. I recommend blaming the guy.
the vast amount of money I could earn as a programmer
This thread has reminded me that, despite having worked professionally with computers for 12 years, I'm not really qualified for many developer jobs.
It isn't a pressing issue, I like where I live, I like my job, and business seems to be good at the moment (knock on wood) but I do worry about what sorts of jobs I would be applying for if I had to leave this one.
That said, to the OP, much of my job experice has been working for small companies doing contract computer work for other smallish companies which aren't large enough to have internal IT staff* and which need both programming and also help thinking about how to structure their use of technology in their business processes.
It makes me think that there are a lot of smallish businesses who could really use somebody who was (a) capable of basic programming/scripting (b) willing to solve general issues with troubleshooting new software and network issues (c) has good communication skills and can talk sensibly about technical decision making to non-technical people.
The difficulty is that most of those businesses aren't trying to hire somebody like that because (a) it's a hard job to hire for and (b) they don't know how much of a benefit it would be for them to have somebody like that on staff. So you'd probably have to talk your way into a job like that but if you could get one and could do it well, you would loved and would have job security.
But I have no idea how easy/difficult it would be to find that sort of position and would be interested in the opinion of the mineshaft.
* In addition to small companies I've also done a bunch of work for large multi-nationals, which is very different, but I haven't worked with any clients between those two ends of the spectrum.
52: If you can wangle me a job at your home institution, I am IN!
But see 60, 62, 65.
The junior faculty in my lab seem pretty into what they're doing/where they are, but maybe it's all an act.
But there are so many non-Ivy schools in the Boston area!
A friend once characterized Columbia as an institution that combined the worst aspects of bureaucracy and feudalism.
86: OK! I will work at one of them and live in your hippie commune house.
I don't think I've ever heard one nice story about being a student or professor at Columbia. Not a single person I know who has gone there has ever said anything nice about it.
Then there are the sane Ivies, like Cornell, where junior faculty can be reasonably confident that they have a permanent job ahead of them. Of course, they have to live in the middle of nowhere.
89: I know some people who had a nice time of it there as undergrads.
64. apo, here's a link to DC's parking meter hours, etc. They also have a way to pay by phone.
86 But there are so many non-Ivy schools in the Boston area!
I know someone who's very, very good and recently was denied tenure at BU, with no convincing justification. So apparently some attitudes creep across the Charles....
92: Yeah, I have known some undergrads who at balance their resentment with a few happy memories, but they frame everything in the same masochistic terms everyone else there does. "They MADE us read [whatever]! And then they HUMILIATED us! You were ALWAYS wrong! It was awesome!" Gag me.
On the other hand, I had to visit Columbia early on in grad school, and it was my 1sr time in NYC. Taking various trains, I emerged blinking in the autumn sunshine on 116th St, walked into the main square and more or less imprinted on the place like a duckling seeing its mother. It just seemed like the perfect urban campus, and I was completely taken by it.
It is a beautiful campus.
94: Ugh, that just happened in a department I no longer work for. I am fairly sure it was because this prof was just too bright and too demanding, and it made everyone feel she'd be "more comfortable" somewhere else. Very shitty thing to do. I can't decide whether to send a consolation letter, saying I really respect her. Is that salt-in-the-wound-y?
You also sound as if transferring schools to NY will keep you from getting the applied part of your PhD, and that's the part you really want, so there's no real point in transferring -- if you leave your current program you can't get the credential you want.
This isn't quite right. The applied part isn't "the" thing I want, it's a thing I want. If it were the thing, the choice to come to very intensely research-focused department would have been strange. My department both emphasizes research and offers this other credential. Also, I would have to ask, but it seems very unlikely to me I could continue to do the applied part while living away. There's no reason I couldn't do all the substantive work for it, but there are certain kinds of seminars that you have to offer throughout the length of the program to make the accrediting body happy, and while my advisor could conceivably offer to make a lot of allowances to keep me as a student (since word is he hates losing students, and he likes me), the people who run the applied program are not going to do anything that might not smell right to the accrediting body.
There's actually someone in NYC who's in our specific subfield. It's in the realm of possibility that my advisor could set me up in her lab while I remained a student with him. I'm not sure I would be that good at working without the community of grad students, talks to go to, etc., so that would be nice.
So how long would it take to get to the point where you could mostly work remotely?
If I'm right that "have shit that works" is a precondition for doing it, that's unpredictable. Maybe it's not if he plunked me into a different lab. But I have no idea what he'd say about this stuff, and Unfoggetarian is right that I really need to talk to him.
Isn't the whole post also premised on "just got out of a destructive relationship"? Often IME not the best time to make major life-trajectory altering decisions, since there's the desire to massively overcorrect for everything that could have led to the bad relationship.
I totally acknowledge this is influencing me. I'm estimating that it's 5% of my desire to leave. I could be wrong about that estimate.
In fact, *one of the things I hate about living in a small place* is how hard it is to get psychic distance from people. He lives three blocks from me, which is a lot of the reason I did so badly at my attempts to end it, and which now means I still have to walk by his house, etc. Maintaining one of my current social circles means I kind of can't avoid both seeing his girlfriend in person and seeing photographs of her asshole with a metal hook in it, etc. If there is anyone else on earth who's genitalia I'd like to see less of, it's hers. This isn't a reason to leave, but it is one of the many reasons I prefer bigger cities.
Also I am sorry for ending two sentences in a row with "etc."
I don't think I've ever heard one nice story about being a student or professor at Columbia. Not a single person I know who has gone there has ever said anything nice about it.
I know a couple of former Columbia grad students, now Ph.D.s, who liked it pretty well.
103: I think you're confusing use and men's schlongs.
I had a great time as an undergraduate at columbia! I loved living in NYC, and school was fun, and they have a great library.
I guess I got sexually harassed pretty badly by a prof, that was lame, but other faculty helped me work around the problem.
108: I think the department of your major was (is?) famously dysfunctional, despite having one of my all time faves in it (HF).
Maintaining one of my current social circles means I kind of can't avoid both seeing his girlfriend in person and seeing photographs of her asshole with a metal hook in it, etc.
Your social circle is a butcher shop and his girlfriend is a big slab of dry-aged beef? Sounds great to me!
I kind of can't avoid ... seeing photographs of her asshole with a metal hook in it, etc.
Facebook profile pics? Billboards?
also, to the OP, move back to NY, but don't move in with your ex.
my plane is leaving tomorrow night for narnia and I am running/have run out of all my meds, including all the ones you are physically dependent on/shouldn't stop taking because you'll have seizures. I counted wrong? I lost some? admittedly was delayed by the hurricane, but I was running out even before. feel...SO...bad. and I have to wake up in frankfurt at fucking 4am and wake up my sleepy children. HATE this direction. jet lag is worse too somehow. WANT TO DIE. contemplating upgrading to business and forcing my children to lie about it to their dad, but that sounds both really expensive and obviously wrong.
I have to return immediately to work and my partner lectured me endlessly before I left about how my travel plan was stupid and overkill and I was going to suffer a physical collapse on my return and she would be the one to have to deal with everything blah blah blah. at least we're sending her to paris to the maison and objet show, she can have some fun for a change, instead of working herself to death. well, a fun working holiday.
My trade school at Columbia was pretty pleasant, as these things go.
Facebook profile pics?
Quite close, though not quite there.
The ex-bf thing would be strictly time-limited. That would be important for both of us, and I really wouldn't do anything to fuck around with his welfare or good will toward me. It's occurring to me though, that if I could survive in NY with a grad student stipend, I could survive with a half-time job, which is the same amount of money. Maybe it's not strictly necessary to stay with anyone.
PITH, you can probably find some way not to look at someone's asshole, right? I'm new to small-town life, but I'm fairly sure they don't like FORCE you to look at someone's asshole.
Ala, this is exactly what I'm talking about. "Oh, one person in my department sexually harassed me like crazy but other people found a way to make sure he kept his job by making me disappear whenever he was around" is not the same as "I was in a warm and intellectually stimulating community where I was treated like a human being with full personhood."
"I was in a warm and intellectually stimulating community where I was treated like a human being with full personhood."
That sounds like something that the graduate students of the Manchurian Candidate, Ph.D., would say.
I.e., we a found a way for my desire for dignity not to be a problem for someone with enormous income and reputation? Is there something I don't get about how this isn't a terrible academic environment? And that they should have a horrible reputation for treating human beings like shit?
"I was in a warm and intellectually stimulating community where I was treated like a human being with full personhood."
Hotttt.
Pictures of her asshole do get thrust pretty far into my center of my awareness without me doing anything to seek them out other than be in the electronic location that allows me to communicate with and coordinate with people. It's true I could try not to click the thumbnail. I really like many of the photographer's pictures -- he's also going to photograph me (though not in that fashion!) -- and it is actually pretty hard to manage to steer around the ones of her to see the ones I like. I admit that having been made aware of their existence, I get curious. Just imagine that asshole pics were constantly in your FB feed. It's functionally the same thing.
AWB: mmm...that's not exactly accurate but is nonetheless a good point. he was an an adjacent department. I didn't myself want to have to actually do any formal complaint-filing, and my department helped it be the case that I just never had to talk to the person again. but...yeah, ok, not the most rousing validation of a place I've ever heard uttered, on reflection. I stand by my contention that I had fun.
117: Whereas it's totally normal, to you, for people to talk about how great it is to be harassed and humiliated? I'm not going to act like my graduate program was fun or fulfilling all the time, but the hard part was the work itself, about which my professors were really demanding, not the power-dynamic bullshit. I didn't go home and spend all my time trying to figure out how to prostrate myself more horizontally before the gods I studied with; I was too busy reading and writing.
Whereas it's totally normal, to you, for people to talk about how great it is to be harassed and humiliated?
Pretty sure that the Flip-P was in law school, so yeah totes normal.
Also! just to defend my asshole-viewing habits, I did in fact seriously consider totally withdrawing from the social circle to avoid her and her genitals and I got a lot of pushback from people that went: Midwestern City is too small! You can't let your movements be restricted by your desire to avoid people.
Now I'm curious about what kind of social circle I have to join to see someone's asshole. So far it's mostly discussions of what your husband thinks, or what your wife doesn't like.
I've known assholes I couldn't avoid, but never in that way....
I did in fact seriously consider totally withdrawing from the social circle to avoid her and her genitals and I got a lot of pushback from people that went: Midwestern City is too small! You can't let your movements be restricted by your desire to avoid people.
I guess in the end that's true when you're in a small environment. I can't say I haven't withdrawn from a social set -- or at least from active involvement -- when things I couldn't handle occurred. Though. A person has her pride and self-respect and dignity and all that.
It really depends on how small the place is: is it really the case that there's nothing else going on?
Pith, I'm beginning to wonder if you should give the other social dimensions of Midwestern City more of a chance before you make the decision to take time off to return to NYC.
Is the asshole-piercing set really the marrying with children pool to begin with? If you see what I mean. Of course I understand that that social circle is probably not your only, or primary, one.
is it really the case that there's nothing else going on?
No, not at all. But one nice thing over the past month is that I started very casually seeing a 24-year-old I met in that set (who isn't long-term potential, but at least who is cute and nice to me and stuff like that). He actually just recently didn't respond to a message of mine, so maybe I'm not seeing him anymore, but he's been nice enough that I should give him the benefit of the doubt and poke him in a couple days. That's a small pleasure in my life I wouldn't have had if I'd run away.
I've also socialized with grad students, friends of my old international co-op, friends of my current house, and people I met internet dating.
asshole-piercing set
I feel like clarifying that it was a hook with a nice comfortable-looking rounded point. (I know this because there were also pictures of the hook before it entered the asshole.) Nothing was pierced, except in the sense that any penetration could be called piercing. She was also hanging from the ceiling. Not sure if that matters.
Nothing was pierced, except in the sense that any penetration could be called piercing. She was also hanging from the ceiling. Not sure if that matters.
you do realize you'll just have to tell us.
112: Is there some sort of airport travel clinic (I've seen such things in UK train stations) where you can get a prescription or two filled?
you do realize you'll just have to tell us.
Tell you what? Where you see such things? Oh, it's really not a secret. If this website is something people you know use to meet each other and coordinate social gatherings, you have to accept that the people there are going to have diverse ideas about what to put on the internet. The truth is, I wouldn't mind the asshole pic at all if it weren't hers.
129: Honestly, I think you should give Midwestern City more time. Say, another year. Having wrung your hands about this now, you know what you're looking for: a partner with whom to have a child. (The 24-year-old is probably not him.)
I'm going to guess that Pith would prefer the conversation return to a more helpful direction, and not get hung up on the naughty bits.
Now I'm curious about what kind of social circle I have to join to see someone's asshole.
Oh, it's my own fault for mentioning it. I knew it would be kind of funny as a throwaway line in 100. The thread has been helpful in making me think through some things I hadn't entirely. 115 was a new and helpful thought for me. No reason I can't hunker down on 20k and work on my coding if that's the plan.
134: I agree. But if it weren't for the desire for babies (and possibly a present father?), I would say sure, go back to New York and have kinky sex with strangers all the time while hanging out with your friends and ex-lovers. I actually don't know the BDSM community very well in terms of whether it's possible to meet babys daddy on Fetlife, or if you have to export your profile to Match, and if there's a difference between those things in PITHtown and in NYC. It would be worth researching I think.
I'm getting hung up, as it were, on the baby-having thing. I wouldn't mind if some of the women who occasion this blog who've been of the baby-having mind, and then, well, time has gone on, were to say something.
I'm getting hung up, as it were, on the baby-having thing
I'm not sure if that's worse than by the asshole.
I'm going to guess that Pith would prefer the conversation return to a more helpful direction, and not get hung up on the naughty bits.
I'm sure that's why she dropped it in to the conversation in the manner in which she did, yeah.
140: Try not to be distracted by that, essear!
I had deleted a bunch of things from 133. One of them is that I can't really tell how goal-oriented Pith is. She seems quite so, much more so than I am: I'm not really ambitious, knew I wasn't going to have kids by the time I was in my late 20s, and am not directed toward income maximization. (Happiness is the goal.)
Pith seems to be trying to micromanage, and maybe that's the way of things these days. If having a baby, with a long-term partner (?), is the goal, I don't have any advice.
A goal of getting a partner + a child isn't exactly micromanaging. Nor is it incompatible with occasionally having rounded hooks inserted into one's asshole.
Oddly enough, I don't think I've ever seen a picture of somebody with a hook in their asshole.
143: I meant the trying to figure out the career-track stuff.
I think they call it "family planning" nowadays, right? As opposed to "getting knocked up." More managing, yes, but probably better outcomes.
I'm kidding, but I think one didn't used to have to plan on having babies because it was a default. Now that we're kind enough to have a society that has a place for non-procreative women, procreational types need to say so when they meet a dude.
147 posted before 145, sorry. Wait, but I don't get how deciding to leave grad school is micromanaging either. Is leaving grad school the thing that just happens naturally?
144: Sure. I've never seen a photo of a person with a french fry. Why bother to capture the everyday on film?
Or the making sure you're employable after dropping out, during a recession that is particularly unfriendly to people who have not been single-mindedly dedicated to the same pursuit since age 15?
135: Oh right. I was expecting goatse.
Also, 141 gets it right.
Facebook profile pics?
Quite close, though not quite there.
It's actually a new G+ real name verification requirement.
149: Man's eternal reaching for french fries.
Somehow, despite hundreds of photos of Joe Biden eating sandwiches and ice cream, the internet doesn't seem to contain a single photo and Joe Biden and a french fry. I shudder to think that a non-fry-eater could be so close to the presidency.
150: Well, yes, that kind of micromanaging of career seems to be necessary these days.
Today I passed some people excitedly taking a picture of a squirrel eating some ice cream out of a cone that someone had dropped near the natural history museum.
I see people excitedly taking pictures of squirrels somewhat often around the office. What the hell?
Also, this seems more like rational planning than micro-managing. Micromanagers tend to have things like goals for October of 3 years from now, and these goals affect lunch plans for next Thursday.
goals for October of 3 years from now
Get some food around mid-day, every day. Bring a sweater, if necessary. Assuming it's not raining, do some bicycling. Definitely fail to check out the Ren Faire.
Is the asshole-piercing set really the marrying with children pool to begin with?
May depend on whether you're thinking in terms of standards or targets.
157: If squirrels are around your office somewhat often, the insurance company may want evidence before it pays up again.
The goals in 159 sound about right.
Definitely fail to check out the Ren Faire.
Sifu, there's a piece in the NYT about Burning Man, uh, here. I got bored about halfway through the second page, I admit. Perhaps everybody reads the NYT and has seen it.
162.last: I have no idea what that has to do with Ren Faires, but also I specifically avoided it, because I can think of few things more likely to be hateful than a NYT piece about Burning Man.
158: Also, this seems more like rational planning than micro-managing.
I understand. My life hasn't been rationally planned in that way, and I can only thank my lucky stars that things turned out well enough.
163: I just finished the article. It's chiefly about Burning Man's transition from a for-profit to a non-profit enterprise, and its relationship to capitalism.
165: Apparently, Burning Man is me without air conditioning.
165 cont'd: It's not hateful, that is.
This reminds me that I should start planning which Mission eateries I want to patronize next weekend. Plentiful parking, here I come!
Hey, maybe you'd be able to be seated at mission chinese food without a wait, even.
I really hope I'm not a student of some sort in October three years from now.
My career goal is to be the guy who processes the permits for Burning Man. I could probably get there in three years.
I guess that counts as micromanaging.
Does it affect your lunch next Thursday?
Tweety's 68 is very nice. The riches bit.
Haven't finished reading all the comments, but...
My best friend and I started talking about this: what we really care about is being close to people we love. It feels honest to admit that and prioritize it, even if it's not your romantic partner.
...
I think choosing a city for all your friends to end up in makes lots of sense. The giant conurbations are popular partly because it's possible there. I don't think settled people overlap daters much either within or between cities.
I'm very sympathetic to the OP's comment above, and Clew's endorsement of it. That's basically what I did: after years of talking with each other about how we all ought to move out to California, my best friends and I decided to do it. And I think we're very pleased by how things have turned out, at least so far.
All of which is to say that I endorse that as a medium term if not short-term plan (and I vote Bay Area!). As for the immediate dilemma, I'm with the 16/18 contingent: find out about transfers to NYC schools.
I'm hoping to move back to the PNW from the Bay Area *before* all my friends there have to leave, as it happens. On the other hand, in the Bay Area I have been able to make new, pretty good friends outside school, so maybe I could reboot from even a very small kernel.
I have been able to make new, pretty good friends
One comma short of perfect.
I would just like to stay on the west coast.
112: and I have to wake up in frankfurt at fucking 4am and wake up my sleepy children. HATE this direction. jet lag is worse too somehow. WANT TO DIE. contemplating upgrading to business and forcing my children to lie about it to their dad, but that sounds both really expensive and obviously wrong.
You could go in the morning to the emergency room and tell your tail of woe - a traveler stuck in a hurricane made a med mistake and needs some help - and they might be willing to give you a very short term scrip to cover the meds it would be dangerous to be without, at least. I'd consider that emergency medical care.
If that won't work, going business class to get back to the med supply seems perfectly reasonable and defensible to me, unless you simply cannot spare the money. I'd think X would get that (since he has always struck me as more unusually good than a typical 'good guy'), although perhaps his patience might be tried a bit.
100: Maintaining one of my current social circles means I kind of can't avoid both seeing his girlfriend in person and seeing photographs of her asshole with a metal hook in it, etc
Oh, man. The metal hook freaks. A never failing rule for the future learned from experience: 'Avoid the metal hook assholes.' In this particular case, I suggest you just ditch the circle. (Yeah, I know you don't want to, and I don't really expect you to do so, but after you get out of this, remember what I said, and avoid those people in the future.) Especially if they regularly and sincerely use the words 'kether' 'Crowley' 'Golden Dawn', spell magic with a k or anything like that.
Besides that, I think Josh is absolutely 100% correct: if you need to develop the chops to get the good prog job, you need to do open source, since it is essentially a production enviroment, and what matters in those environments is production. They don't care if you're 'precocious' unless you're like 12 and precocious, they care if you produce.
In three months of bootcamping, you won't be able to get on top of anything enough to do anything other than get in the door, and in those circumstances, you are very likely to wind up as tech industry cannon fodder and that's almost certainly more awful than what you're doing now. Given your age (elderly by industry standards) and the fact that you want a kid, it isn't going to end well. If you can get skilled enough that the industry people want you regardless of your flaws, you can maybe make the transition.
Per the folks above, just getting disinvolved with the destructive relationship before you make any radical decisions is probably the safest and most successful course.
max
['Luck!']
One of the things I like about my memory of being coder cannon fodder is that it makes grad school seem fairly benign -- and I had a really good deal out of the boom: a genteel sufficiency and only temporary crippling tendinitis.
Two commas from perfect, Moby; a good person is better than one who merely likes me.
Cheerfully, I think my list of hypotheses just jelled into a prospectus, with methods and significance and everything. I need to put in citations, but I'm pretty organized about keeping those, can do a good first cut.
163: You would be disappointed, Sifu. I know exactly the kind of article you're picturing, and the NYT fails to deliver.
The article is about the finances, not about the festival itself. It never occurred to me that the organization running Burning Man was not a non-profit, and could in fact be making money off the whole thing.
179: Two things: the metal hook crowd is admittedly incredibly dorky, but they are also very nice. That's one of the things my stay in Pithtown has taught me. The real offending party wasn't one of them. In fact, I've learned the opposite of "I should avoid them." I should totally hang out with them. Some of them are monogamous and single. I think it would be smart to hang out with them more when/if I go back to NY. (A friend of a friend who spent time with them in NYC also reports that they're nice in NYC, too.)
In fact, I really wouldn't mind being in exactly that woman's position. I might like it; I don't know. I was just trying to be funny, and give people a hook for jokes, not make a big point of how weird they are. The only part of it I definitely don't think I'd like is allowing someone to take a picture that focused very clearly on my genitals and put it online. That would feel invasive and objectifying.
Given your age (elderly by industry standards) and the fact that you want a kid, it isn't going to end well. If you can get skilled enough that the industry people want you regardless of your flaws, you can maybe make the transition.
I appreciate the advice and the wish of luck, but I do feel like pushing back and saying that this is just unnecessarily gloomy for the sake of style. I have before me the recent example of someone who left grad school older than me -- not in the sciences or doing anything that involves coding -- and now has a very well-paying job that he loves. He has a baby and does not work crazy hours.
He spent longer than three months, I know. Although he was also at zero to begin with. Perhaps working on back-end infrastructure for an industry that's business isn't to sell software (what he does) is different, I don't know. He did have an earlier job he didn't like, but the problem wasn't the hours. The three month estimate came from asking someone who knows me, where I am now, and my rate of learning, is an ex-CS academic, and understands something about the requirements of getting a programming job for at least one industry. He also knows that I wouldn't really be able to tolerate working 13 hour days and living on Diet Sunkist and looking at a ticking display of lines of code per hour, or whatever the sweatshops are supposed to be like. It still could be wrong, but when someone is like "mmmmaybe it's possible to make this switch" I discount everything said by that person for gloominess. It's totally possible! No one I know who's worked in this industry thinks this is a bad way to go about securing reasonable employment, and no one I know who knows me thinks I couldn't get a job I liked.
I am also right that even just a little professional programming experience would make me very desirable in research labs in my field. I've also thought about doing Columbia's flexibly scheduled M.S. in stats part-time. If I had an M.S. in my field, an M.S. in stats, and the coding experience, I would be perhaps more desirable as an asset to a lab than a PhD (though I'd make less money), so it's not like deciding I don't want to be in a particular PhD program means I give up this field forever.
I am going to try to reserve the possibility that if I'm totally miserable I can come back.
In any case, my thinking has changed over the course of this thread. I really should be able to get a part-time job -- one I like, even, either in my field or in the sort of non-profit I used to work for. If anything, I think bad economies make it a little more likely that people try to hire part-time people and not pay benefits. That takes some time pressure off, and I can spend the rest of my time coding. I'm in a pretty good position right now in that if I pull the trigger in the next week (which I almost certainly should, but I need to talk to my advisor) about dropping the soon-to-ramp-up applied portion of my program, I have a salary, unstructured time, a month-to-month lease, and someplace to park myself for a little while when/if I move to NYC. It would be easy to look for a job from here. If one came up and I had to leave Pithtown for NYC I'd have a ton of flexibility about when I did that.
I am really pretty sad that I am just at the cusp of starting my applied work and now may never really do it. I was excited. Another option for the far future is the shorter degree that qualifies you just for the applied work.
Whoa. I didn't notice that getting so long. Anyway, thanks, Mineshaft. I did find this quite helpful in sorting out some things.
181: yeah, I know, actually, but I find behind-the-scenes articles about the BMORG almost as irritating, for the same reason (navel-gazing self-referential pissiness overload) I can't deal with San Francisco politics.
One of the things I like about my memory of being coder cannon fodder is that it makes grad school seem fairly benign
Mmmmm. And secure!
Dude, factor #5, Already met long-term partner, is also a huge factor in making 1-4 that much more workable. Not that those couldn't happen in a place you also expected to meet a partner, but having that open makes everything else that much more uncertain.
I read Sifu's comment and thought the same thing.
I think I'm happy I missed the assholes with hooks story.
Those early years of adulthood can be tough. You want kids. You want stability. Yet, you can remember the fun, wild times of youth. Your career isnt really stable either. Everything is in flux. I think many people go through those same feelings.
At those times, it is easy to think that life is so much easier when you get old.
But, it isnt. You just get your sea legs. Sure, sometimes it is easier. Then, it isnt and it sucks. Your life becomes uncertain and crazy.
I dont have much of an idea about what you should do, but I will say it is much easier to nail down your education/experience working a crazy schedule while you are young. I also agree with Witt: life is too short to not enjoy being where you are, whether that is work or location.
It sounds like you miss that time in your life more than NYC.
As I read my comment, I think it sounds almost condescending. I dont mean it that way.
I just talk with lots of people in their 20s who say "I always thought my life would be different."
I talk with a lot of people in their 30s who say "I always thought my life would be different."
I talk with a lot of people in their 40s who say "I never thought I would be at this point when I was in my 40s."
So, weighing in super-late, I think people have probably covered most of what I would say. But I guess, all other things being equal, I'd say go for it, move out of Pithtown (which is hella nice, but also confining -- at least that's what all my friends from there say), go back to Gotham, or another big city, and really focus on finding the happiness you seek.
Plus, aren't half the people in your other online community doing some kind of IT work? Surely there's some more connections to be made there, especially in a bigger market.
And hell, you're still young -- live a little!
Factor #5 should really probably be factor #0, as none of the other stuff would have happened without it. But y'all knew that, right?
Seems like a good relationship. She helped you become a functioning, happy adult, and you helped her become a bicyclist.
Okay, what is the metal hook crowd?
I missed this whole thread.
I only applied for jobs in places I would like to live, which meant I applied to about 5 jobs when my peers were applying to (really) 50-100 positions.
I took a decent amount of shit, or projected that I was receiving a decent amount of shit for dropping out of the research track and heading to teaching. ("But what about leaving your options open?!" At some point it's okay to close your options.)
The big HOWEVER is that the economy was soaring and I got super lucky.
191: Sometimes, when a man and a woman love each other very much, or even when they just meet somebody in a basement that smells of lubricant...
He did have an earlier job he didn't like, but the problem wasn't the hours. The three month estimate came from asking someone who knows me, where I am now, and my rate of learning, is an ex-CS academic, and understands something about the requirements of getting a programming job for at least one industry.
I'll ask again if 83.3-5 sound plausible to other people.
Give them a minute, NickS, they're thinking.
I don't have direct experience relevant to 83 or the OP, but I do have work-relevant remarks.
IMO there is a big mismatch between the requirement-spec-develop model of software development adopted by large projects and most users needs, especially in science. This means there's opportunity for productive work for people who are bilingual, that is, who are able to work out what likely software requirements are on the basis of a few conversations and some email, and then (ideally) implement something basic and/or contribute to properly written software done by a team.
So yes to both 83 and the OP question whether a crash course would be useful. Being the software middleman probably isn't a long-lived thing, but it's a productive living for a while, and definitely not a dead end. 83 basically describes a consultant focusing on small business, I think.
My background for context: I do something between science and scientific programming now, but worked as a programmer in a large organization after my PhD in physics. I haven't looked for work in the recession, and my organization's hiring is now slow, so I don't see what types are looking now.
I'm combining comments 100 and 192/194 in my head, and finding myself thinking "please be true, please be true." In a just world, there would be pirate hook-hand fetishists posting their pictures to Facebook.
Not that I need to see these pictures, apo, so put your link away.
I just skyped with my advisor, and it was indeed as happy and constructive as Unfoggetarian predicted it would be. It probably would have been smart to talk to him earlier rather than doing all this juice stewing.
He affirmed that he cared about me, wanted me to be happy, that he and all the other faculty thought I was very good at this work (and that I was a student, not a junior professional, and that working experiments and papers weren't the appropriate measure of talent), and that he would support me and try to help me in whatever I did.
His overall recommendation for a plan of action was to
-keep the applied part of my degree at least for this semester so at the very least I would have had that experience, and would have known what I was giving up or know if I wanted to find a way to pick it up again in the future.
-continue to talk to him about my evolving feelings over the course of the semester
-continue to strategize about a way to accelerate my degree, and possibly move me physically to New York. He thought we/I should prioritize getting a paper out this year (this seems to conflict a little with keeping the applied portion). I asked him whether it would be smart to try to figure out a very low-risk project to make that happen and he said yes. In my subfield, there's an obvious way to adapt things that are already known to work in the broader field, so I should look in the broad field for something that seems moderately interesting and easy. He could then use that paper as a concrete piece of his introduction when he contacted people he knew in New York, and asked them either to take me as a transfer student or to just provide lab space/a community while I continued as a student at Pith U. He thought I could potentially train undergrads to do a lot of data collection and not really have to be there.
-ask another faculty member in our program, also an exiled New Yorker, about the website where he met his wife, who's a grad student in another department here. It involves some kind of screening and is used more by academics and professionals, apparently. My advisor said it wasn't eHarmony when I expressed skepticism that I would get on with the eHarmony crowd.
So, that was productive. I'm not totally sure about the practical value of this degree without the applied part, and I'm not at all sure it's okay to give even two more years to Pithtown for (degree - applied credential) + (forecasted risk to my personal life). So for me to really be on board with this, I feel like it needs to include the plan to move me to NY at least. But I do feel like it makes sense not to do anything precipitous, let him think about who he knows in NY, try to come up with a low-risk project, and see if it makes sense to try to cobble together a paper and have him help me get to New York while continuing to do at least part of the work that I like best.
At some point it's okay to close your options.
Truer words were never typed. You don't live forever, at least not in this comment thread. I'd go so far as to say at some point, closing your options is often the adult thing to do.
83: It makes me think that there are a lot of smallish businesses who could really use somebody who was (a) capable of basic programming/scripting (b) willing to solve general issues with troubleshooting new software and network issues (c) has good communication skills and can talk sensibly about technical decision making to non-technical people.
This, and the difficulty of convincing an organization that they can/should hire such a person, are entirely true. Probably weekly my wife has a story about something in her job that could and should be automated, instead of taking up half of her day, but requires a bit more programming chops than she's got. I keep thinking such a role cold be sold as a "software blacksmith", but that may just be because her employer has actual blacksmiths and seems to have figured out the utility of having random-metal-part-fabricators around, and thus might understand the analogy.
upgraded to business and not lying to husband x. he said "just don't tell me how much it cost." win-win. I've corrupted him from his oregonian/grad student-ly frugality but not enough that he wants to know details like that.
he really is an absent-minded professor--after we had a talk about cutting back recently (we've decided to move to a way cheaper, smaller place, which is a good idea) I was feeling guilty that I had just that week bought an hermés scarf in duty-free, but then I reflected that he would never notice, so it didn't matter. whereas if he had just bought, I don't know, expensive shoes or something (unlikely) I would notice right away.
and now I see it's hermès. sorry neb.
203 and 83: This is essentially how I found myself in the book trade long-term. I'm not a programmer, properly speaking, by any means, but I could put together (and now, continue to maintain and update, on an as-needed basis) a relational database system for online selling that's been invaluable. But I fell into this, to be sure, from the ground up. Convincing like small businesses that they would benefit enough to dish out a salary, or at least decent consulting fee, for a similar service would really be a case-by-case matter.
I imagine neb would have to be shilling for some august, forgotten, british clothiers, if anything. god, right next to me is what my aunt is using as a side table in her guest room, a louis vuitton trunk from the 30s, for real, with faded travel stickers in french and everything. SO JEALOUS. I think she inherited it from her mom.
Mexican airports sell meds OTC, just add an extra leg. Or buy him $400 boxers:
http://usa.hermes.com/p_boxers_boxer-shorts_men_87285_107503_107503_167526_127527_10202_10052_-1
204: Glad you resolved that, alameida. I'm thinking you and husband X have an understanding about these kinds of things, even if the terms of it aren't always entirely clear to you.
For $400, the boxers should come with an extra leg.
Neb shills for Louis Vuitton?
Don't tell Kreayshawn.
Little bitches wear that shit so I don't even bother.
208: I imagine neb would have to be shilling for some august, forgotten, british clothiers, if anything
Good point.
If you would dress like a gentleman, you must do one of two things; either study the subject of a gentleman's wardrobe until you are competent to pick out good suits from freaks and direct your misguided tailor, or, at least until your perceptions are trained, go to an English one. This latter method is the easiest, and, by all odds, the safest. It is not Anglomania but plain common sense to admit that, just as the Rue de la Paix in Paris is the fountainhead of fashions for women, Bond Street in London is the home of irreproachable clothes for men.
Trying to transfer programs seems an answer, especially if there's any chance you can take your funding. If you're looking for NY specifically, it might be tricky, but if you're just looking for any big city where you can feel more comfortable and search for a partner then there are at least a dozen major universities to try for.
Whoops, OP problem solved and discussion has moved on to ass hooks.
Watch out for the fetlife crowd. Heavy drama, very poly.
Heavy drama, very poly.
Maybe that's what she's looking for.
Pith - if you're who I think you are, I've sent an email to your old blog email acct with some thoughts. I wish you luck with your decision, and it sounds like you have a really supportive adviser, which is great.
re: 215
Bond Street? Surely not.
222. Yes, at that date I should think so. Where would you go, Saville Row?
re: 223
I was thinking more Bond Street now, which seems to be mostly big chain shops and brands that I wouldn't associate with 'gentleman's' clothing and it doesn't jump out in my head as the canonical place for men's outfitting.
I've never bought those kinds of clothes in London,* though, so not sure where I would go. Various places round Mayfair, I suppose -- inc. Saville Row, and Jermyn Street. Although I expect I'll be corrected by the longer term London residents who really do know where to go.
* I still work in Oxford, so it's easier to shop there. And it's not as if I'm head-to-toe tweed and bespoke tailoring anyway.
FWIW, I'm under instructions from my wife to find a new sports-jacket/blazer so any tips from Londoners most welcome.
It's true I could try not to click the thumbnail
But since when has *that* been a reliable way of keeping bits of the Internet you'd rather not have in your brain out of your brain?
I got a really nice pale blue cordlane from Uniqlo that looks pretty much exactly like the top half of the Kitsuné SS11 "cocktail suit" but ~£300 cheaper, but that's probably too late to be of use and not really ttaM's style.
re: 227
Maybe not pale blue, no. But I've liked some Uniqlo stuff in the past.
http://shop.uniqlo.com/uk/goods/069476
Doesn't look bad.
Jermyn Street is good for suits and jackets and things. If you look and sound military enough you can talk them into giving you stupendous discounts. (We are talking "David Niven" rather than "R. Lee Ermey" here.) If you want something a bit casualer then Muji isn't bad, there's one on Oxford Street.
ttaM looks a lot like David Niven, you can't help noticing.
230: and that's another mental image that needs adjusting. I've been picturing him looking like David Sole.
Heh at Niven. Posh-sounding, English, rake-thin,* and debonair. Definitely all of those. Ahem.
* not quite as un-rakelike as I was, down about 16/17lbs on the year and a good 10 - 12lbs even since earlier in the summer.
Now I'm imagining R. Lee Ermey on Saville Row.
"You call this a vented pleat you shit-eating piece of scum?"
Also, are there still British people like David Niven left? I'd sort of assumed finding a Niven type these days would be like coming to America expecting to meet folks who sounded like Humphrey Bogart or Katherine Hepburn.
Maybe that's what she's looking for.
No! Not at all, but I guess what I've found is that in Pithtown, even the non-FL crowd is heavily poly, at least when I consider the kinds of people I could get along with -- weird, high-key, unconservative, mildly hard-edged in some ways while being basically nice.
I guess the point of hanging out with the FL crowd is that I don't mind the dorkiness, I share a sensibility with some of them, and so far I've found them super nice. And they're not all poly. The 24-year-old (his message back to me just got lost, by the way) is monogamous, really incredibly nice to me (I suppose in some ways I have a low bar, but still), and very low drama. He's not going to be a baby daddy, but he came from FL.
Damn, Pith's advisor is smooth.
I'm mildly worried about the extent to which I'm being, well, managed. But it won't hurt to spend four months and then evaluate how the new plan is proceeding. My eggs are not all going to die before January.
Meanwhile I did write to the other faculty member about the dating site (he knows me from class and he's also the director of various things relevant to me, including graduate training), and rather than responding with whatever it was called he said, "I'll be happy to meet with you about these issues." So now I have to have a meeting with more faculty about my love life. It's a little ridiculous. And I'm starting to wonder whether my advisor was just being crazy strategic (which would be in character) and the website was never the point. He just wanted to get someone involved who is physically in Pithtown right now to herd the wayward calf.
Edguy, I'm sure I'm who you think I am. I will see if I can still check that account. :-p
I have a friend from college who sounds just like Jimmy Stewart; it's weird. Even weirder, his first cousin is partly famous for having a throwback accent -- K@thleen T/urner.
re: 236
I don't even know what would count as a Niven type, these days. Posh people still exist, but the default posh accent isn't the same.
Sandhurst and the public school system are alive and well. FWIW.
223: Yes, for those who have not clicked the link the quote is from Emily Post, 1922. I liked her discussion of the "House Suit".
The house suit is an extravagance that may be avoided, and an "old" Tuxedo suit worn instead. A gentleman is always supposed to change his clothes for dinner, whether he is going out or dining at home alone or with his family, and for this latter occasion some inspired person evolved the house, or lounge, suit, which is simply a dinner coat and trousers cut somewhat looser than ordinary evening ones, made of an all-silk or silk and wool fabric in some dark color, and lined with either satin or silk. Nothing more comfortable--or luxurious--could be devised for sitting in a deep easy-chair after dinner, in a reclining position that is ruinous to best evening clothes. Its purpose is really to save wear on evening clothes, and to avoid some of their discomfort also, because they can not be given hard or careless usage and long survive. A house suit is distinctly what the name implies, and is not an appropriate garment to wear out for dinner or to receive any but intimate guests in at home. The accessories are a pleated shirt, with turndown stiff collar, and black bow tie, or even an unstarched shirt with collar attached (white of course). The coat is made with two buttons instead of one, because no waistcoat is worn with it.
I guess I was just thinking of someone who looks and sounds like David Niven, which means that my comment doesn't make much sense. Is Sandhurst still "posh"? That seems odd in the modern world; West Point very much isn't. I guess one of the princes went to Sandhurst -- Harry?
So now I have to have a meeting with more faculty about my love life.
You don't really need to worry about things getting out of hand until "Get Pith hooked up" appears as an item on the agenda for the next faculty meeting.
233: down about 16/17lbs on the year and a good 10 - 12lbs even since earlier in the summer.
I'm down about 20 since about the time of the Teo Pittsburgh meetup. Not enamored of low-carb, other than it's efficacy. I will even dare speak my goal, which is 50. Which would still leave me at a weight i would have shuddered at at age 30.
Hmm...
OK, I walked right into that one.
re: 242
I'm not sure if I'm the right person to ask, but my impression is that Sandhurst is still fairly posh, yes.
re: 244
I'm not doing any specific thing. I'm counting calories in a somewhat desultory fashion, and avoiding [most of the time] certain sugary foods and drinks. It seems to be working, but it's fairly slow. Still, I have another 25lbs or so to go, so I'm nearly half-way.
247.last: Yes, the key for me is whether I switch to a sustainable diet and lifestyle that maintains my weight after I reach the "goal". Past experience is that that is the hard part for me.
Sandhurst has a higher percentage of posh than many places, but it's by no means exclusively so any more. There are still "army families", who tend to be posh because they've been army families since the days when you purchased your commission. But they don't define anything any more. The default posh accent in Britain now reflects the conscious efforts of the upper classes in the 60s to 80s to sound more plebeian than they were.
The poshness of Sandhurst is probably a good thing. The total disconnect between American elites and the military is IMO a problem -- it makes them both romanticize the army and be willing to use it casually.
re: 248
I don't lead a particularly unhealthy life, and I eat fairly healthily 95% of the time anyway: a decent amount of veg, not huge amounts of fat, etc. The revelation is how far I had to cut my calorie intake before I started losing weight. I burn far fewer calories than I thought I did -- presumably part of getting older, and not having a full thyroid -- so the only real long term lifestyle change I need to make is a reassessment of portion sizes.
250. This was in fact the public rationale for the system of purchase. The Officer corps should have an interest in the constitution and laws of the country; who has such an interest? people with money (and ideally land); therefore by making military commissions a commodity with a price set at a level that only the wealthy can afford, we ensure that the officers corps has such an interest, and therefore will not get involved in politics like those damn Roundheads.
251: I think this is a lot of it for me as well (especially *no* nighttime snacks). I think the low-carb stuff works for me in good part simply due to the relative scarcity of snackables.
253 -- Works for be because 'thou shalt not' is easier to self-police than 'you know, a smaller portion would be a good idea' -- for me any way.
Going back to low carb when the Rainier cherries are done, maybe a week or two hence.
Genuine low-carb eating makes me crazy and miserable. No rice? No couscous or bulgur wheat? Can't do it. As it happens I don't really eat a lot of bread, and I don't particularly miss pasta so I've cut down on those.
254: Yes, this too. None = 0. "A few" = 20.
255: Bread is the biggie for me. Plus eat less of what you put between two slices of bread (for instance peanut butter). However, I do call this "the greasy fingers diet".
I seem to remember some dating site being heavily advertised in certain alumni magazines. It may have even been discussed in a thread here years ago. Maybe it was so old, it was actually a matchmaking type of service, rather than a website.
I just ate half a pound of bison steak for breakfast, but even I am getting tired of my posts on this subject. Low carb/paleo does work, though, combined with some exercise.
Also, this
He thought we/I should prioritize getting a paper out this year (this seems to conflict a little with keeping the applied portion).
seems to be classic academic thinking. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that. But "you can write your way out of there" is advice/encouragement I've heard people give to those who have found themselves working or about to work in locations they know they want to leave.
257: I think I remember this, from like the NYRB. The Right Stuff or something? Limited to graduates of certain institutions?
Re 258
The point isn't really whether it works, but whether I can live on it. Which I can't. I've no doubt it works for other people, though, but not for me.
261: I can't eat like that either. Low carb aside, eight ounces of meat isn't enough.
So old, there aren't many comments. Via a slightly less old thread.
If I deny myself carbs I just fill up on cheese. Carbs are probably better.
Still, I have another 25lbs or so to go, so I'm nearly half-way.
Good for you!
If my experience is any guide, though, if you do make it the rest of the way, don't be surprised if you find that you still have weight to drop. When I weighed my heaviest (250-260 lbs., at 5'10"), my doctor at the time looked at me and told me I needed to get down to ~180 lbs. Then he stopped and said "No, if you do that you'll be skin and bones. Go for 195."
Here I am at 169 lbs. this morning (I think the last time I weighed this little was when I was 14), and I still have love handles and a noticeable (if small) pot belly. That said, you'd never be able to tell if you only saw me when I was clothed.
You've lost 91 pounds? Good lord.
I have lost more than 91 pounds, but not at the same time.
Does this feel like a sitcom cliche to anyone else? Men discussing diets! What next, women discussing football?
Not actually faulting the participants. Faulting the sitcom writers.
266 is really impressive. To 261, you've gotta do whatever works for you.
Basically, if I stop fast food and after dinner snacks, I drop ten pounds and murder a few people in a rage.
267: Yeah, when I think about it it's kind of terrifying. 10 freaking inches off my waist! (I didn't lose it all at once; it's been an 8-9 year process, and for most of that time my weight's been stable. It's just that when I really put the effort in, I can lose a good 30-40 lbs. pretty quickly.)
272: Good exercise equipment in jail, from what I understand.
Have you checked yourself for tapeworms?
Re 266
I have a specific goal: a particular weight class. Making thay class is more like 13 or 14kg off, but that is a longer term target. Current target is a few kg above that.
Last time I was in Germany there were ads on TV for a dating site for academics and people with "Niveau."
276: Why do you think Germans use shelf toilets?
I would also like to clarify that I'm not constantly (or even intermittently) shitting blood.
278: Is there a treatment for niveau?
10 freaking inches off my waist!
If I cut ten inches off my waist I'd have a waist like this (having watched a Fred Astaire movie a couple of months ago I noticed that he really was unusually slim).
(Heebie, maybe if you can get all the gals to talk trash about the Steelers you can get Cala back to the U.)
281 -- Actually, I think someone more skilled at humor than myself might be able to create a good turn of phrase using shelf toilet and Niveau. Moby?
I can never remember if shitting blood or pissing blood is worse. I suppose both should be taken as a bad sign.
282: Fred is the only man who can (could!) wear pleats.
284: I already did a "niveau" thing.
So old, there aren't many comments.
Just four commenters on that thread: Ogged, Ben, Michael, and me. Seven and a half years later, only two of us remain and we're both spotty.
But who could deny we're gritty survivors? Or inertia's bitches.
288: There's medicine for spots now.
288 reminded me of Jeremiah 13:23. Looking at it, I see an amazing discrepancy between translations of the final sentence.
That is, it looks like later versions are a form of cheating, trying to get out of 'total depravity.' No comment is intended regarding bw, apo, or their departed fellows.
258: combined with some exercise.
Yes, I find it really works best for me in conjunction with lifting in addition to my exercise. I also try for some daily physical yard/house work which is a regime I'd certainly like to extend beyond the diet.
237.7: If that doesn't work for you, just send me an updated email address to my address linked on these comments, and I'll resend it.
As long as you both are on the same planet.
