Mueen Nawaz wrote:

> 	Second, you've been doing research all these years. Being curious and
> learning stuff - especially technical stuff - is virtually research. All
> that's left is to do some new interesting stuff in it. And generally
> your adviser will guide you through that.

And most of the things I post here are of the form "who do I find out 
about X?"

> 	And when you've spent time working on something, then trust me, you'll
> probably have more difficulty trimming it down than trying to fill
> space. Just look at your own Haskell evangelism!

Yeah. Just look at my own Haskell writings. The short ones are OK. The 
longer ones tend to end up getting muddled, no matter how carefully I 
try to write them.

> 	Seriously. I think it's the best advice you've been given. You get paid
> to do all the fun geeky stuff your adviser wants you to do. And it's not
> that rare that you'll also want to do it too! You'll be around smart
> people (which *may* make you feel stupid for a while, but that'll go
> away). And not sure about the UK and Europe, but (many) campuses in the
> US have a good social environment. Lots of great speakers visit campus
> and give talks - spanning the whole spectrum from science to politics.

Sounds positively utopian.

You'll excuse me if I'm a little skeptical... I was promised that 
college would be like this, and it wasn't. I was promised that 
university would be like this, and it wasn't.

You'll recall that I currently earn very little money. Am I likely to 
end up earning even less doing a PhD?

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