One should not mistake the more casual interaction of normal "workers" with a lack of intelligence. That was my point. That your work in science demands a different kind of appearance compared to the work in retail does not mean that the person is less intelligent and is only into dull activities. I am a bit startled that this is not common sense and that some people really think of themselves as intelectually superior because of a PhD. Might be that the average PhD student in math has a higher IQ but you definitely don't need an above average IQ to complete a PhD in chemistry or biology. I know so many PhD students and also tons of people who just work and they get along really well when we go out. You couldn't tell who works in science and who not. They are playing instruments, they are interested in politics and some of them are also interested in science. I don't see why that should be such a problem. There are tons of intelligent people out there. If you restrict yourself to academia because you tell yourself that only these people could satisfy your needs, then it will be of course difficult to find an appropriate partner. There are tons of male professors who have wives or partners out of science in normal jobs. They don't seem to be bored by them. Why would you? I think it is sad that so many women fulfill the stereotype that a future partner has to have at least the same or a higher social status. Overall, most of my male friends are non-PhDs and I can assure you that they are intelligent. I would bet that every single one of them could have done a PhD in law, engineering, economy and so on.They spent 5 years at a university. Why wouldn't they be appropriate partners? There was just no reason for them to do a PhD.

I find the assumption that the PhD scares people away a bit arrogant, if they didn't confirm that this is the case. Some people have the problem that they define themselves almost exclusively with the PhD and their work and have basically nothing else to talk about. When I'm out and talk to a girl, we spent maybe 2 min talking about jobs. That's the stuff we spent all day with and I don't necessarily need to spend my whole private time talking about it. I'm honest, if a girl's only thing to talk about is academia (not saying that it is like that in your case), then I would probably be not interested as well. That has absolutely nothing to do with intimidation. Even if I do a PhD myself, I am not necessarily interested in your PhD work as a e.g. psychologist. I am out for fun.

I hardly believe that the problem is caused by a PhD. I have several female friends who are PhD students and none of them has a boyfriend that works in academia or did a PhD and several of them got a new boyfriend after starting their PhD. Why would that not work? You do a job like everybody else does. He works at the company, you at the university. I don't see why that is a problem. I don't believe that the guy who went to work with a company after the bachelor is less intelligent than you are, so why would one be intimidated?

IQ has nothing to do with education and most PhD students I met were absolutely average intelligent anyway. I don't really see why you should not find someone on your intellectual level outside of academia. Chances are pretty high that 50% of the people out of academia are at least as intelligent as you are ;)

I don't know how old OP is, but with increasing age it just gets more and more difficult to find a new partner, especially when you are not the "outgoing type". Maybe internet dating can help.

You simply don't get "some" publications before a PhD in science ;) Some students are lucky and get on a paper as a third or fourth author, but even that is not that much of an advantage, as your contribution was usually modest. Every PI will know that you contributed some data (which is nice), but it is usually just luck whether or not they use your data for publication and whether or not it gets published in time to include it to your CV before applying to PhDs. I know exactly one student who managed to get a first author paper out of his master thesis, which is of course great and super beneficial during applications, but he is the exception. Most people don't have papers when they are applying for PhD funding. At this point it is not about papers, but about grades and your research experience (acquired methodology and overall lab time). I am currently in the process of applying for PhD positions myself and have met tons of other applicants during job interviews at grad schools. Never met a single one with a publication. I have none myself and can't complain about positive responses to applications. No worries :) They obviously don't expect you to have publications.

Thanks for that ! Looks promising. Will read it this evening :)

I think it is more about the hard sciences, where you have to be in the lab and also have to present data to your supervisors regularly. It seldom happens that someone is not focused enough as this would be often immediately recognized.



I think this "not able to move" thing is a myth for most of the people. It somehow suggests that everyone who moves has no friends, no family and doesn't care. Most people could definitely move, but it is of course more comfortable to stay at one place. I am pretty sure almost everyone who relocates leaves family and friends behind. That's how it is. That's what you can expect after a post doc when it comes to permanent positions. It is rather unlikely that the same uni you started your bachelor hires you as a lecturer after being there for ten years, although things like that happen sometime. People who change locations often network better. There is a huge difference between some chat at a conference and actually working for long periods with several renowned figures in the field. If you check the CVs of academic staff you almost always find one or two relocations, so I guess it increases the chances for permanent positions. You appear more interesting and obviously show a high level of commitment/dedication to your job. I guess universities like that.

However, if you have a nature and a science paper after your post doc, people won't give a fuck about the fact that you stayed at the same university. In the end your record counts and outstanding work will be always better ;)

I still think that it will increase your chances (on average)

Depends on the PI. In my opinion (!), it can make a difference. For instance, I was at a job interview for a gradschool that had 8 open positions and got over 150 applicants, which I was told is not even the tip of the iceberg. Chances are high that there are so many qualified applicants that they prefer someone who didn't have a break. However, there are several PhD students here in the forum who worked out of academia for several years and returned later to pursue a PhD. Therefore, it's definitely possible.

Any special reason why you took a 2-3 years break when you finished your master in 2013? It might also depend on your explanation for that. It won't make it easier, that's for sure ;)

Regarding the review : Forget it. I never heard of anything like that in science. I highly doubt that you get through the peer review process, no matter how good it is. This is done by scientists who proved to be experts in the field. With just your name on it, it will most certainly not pass. If you can get your name on a paper, great, but review is not really an option.

No, in my opinion it is not. Germans and French can be considered as the same race. How can you be racist if you restrict your disregard to one single country? He never mentioned any other countries. He is maybe hostile to Koreans or Indians or whatever, but that does not make you a racist in my eyes. This whole debate gets a bit out of hand.

How can you not see that this is not racism? If you hate Germans but have no problem with French, then you are not racist. So what has this all to do with diversity or racism?

Of course his statement was stupid, but I don't really get why you have to be so super aggressive and provoking all the time. Just relax. We live in free countries with a freedom of speech. Just deal with it.

Well, it was not really a guess, but more a handy example to show that you can dislike a whole country without being racist. A racist would probably dislike Japanese too. Generally a racist should hate all races except its own, which makes the point bullshit.

PS : If it is not Chinese then everyone knows, which country you mean. There are not so many countries that are referred to as "overpopulated". You should have said nothing ;)

I thought maybe Human Resource People?

I also wondered where that racist thing came from but remembered now that he posted something about his disregard of people from a certain overpopulated country. But I disagree here, I think you are not a racist if you just dislike one specific country. It is stupid, but not racist, if you e.g. don't like Chinese, but get along well with Japanese or Koreans.

I never doubted that it has an impact on the supervisors. But is the fact that it does not even more reason to submit in time instead of insisting an extension so that the own comments will get included?

In general, I agree with you awsoci. Of course supervisors are humans too ;)

Nevertheless, it is more about the fact that he claims to do stuff and doesn't do it, even though he has the option to drop it due to the circumstances. It's okay if you are not able to correct a thesis under these circumstances but then stop insisting on holding back submission until you are done with the corrections or at least initiate the appropriate steps for a extension. It is also suspicious if he is correcting other people's work at the moment.

The job thing is always annoying and adds pressure but you have to do it like this. Otherwise you are jobless for months.

Well depends of course if the manuscripts are already done or not ;) In the other format you have to write the manuscripts AND something for the traditional thesis, so I always considered it less work (of course still a lot of work).

I never heard of word limits. I don't think we have something like that. I also found it strange that they seem to have a minimum amount of words for master theses in the UK. Reminds me a bit of school. I think this is so much topic dependent....should be more about the content, but well, that's how it is :)

Ah okay. I was not familiar with the term "literature review". So far, I just saw two types of theses. The "traditional" one that basically was one long paper (introduction, material&methods, results, discussion) and the "article compilation format" where a introduction is followed by the published papers and manuscripts and a conclusion chapter in the end. These article compilation theses were in total rather short and often not more than 100 pages, while the traditional ones were sometimes up to 300 pages (of course comparable subjects). In Sweden, almost everyone did it in the article compilation format, as their PhD often takes 5 years or longer resulting in at least 2 publications and often several manuscripts that are not yet published (which is quite a lot for that field of biological science). I always considered the article compilation as less work, as you already have papers and manuscripts written and just copy/paste them into the thesis.

Thanks for the info !

Can somebody explain to me what the difference between a literature review and a general introduction is? Why do you have to put a lot of introduction in data chapters? Is it due to the fact that they are basically papers or is that a general feature?