A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Calling academia "evil incarnate" for that is a bit much.
Yeah, they didn't even mention peer reviews!
no its really not
hobbies becomes
That'll trigger some people's hobby.
If they've not already, for too long, been forced to correct grammar.
As someone who loves science.
I am so glad i decided to pursue video game development as higher education rather then a scientific field.
Granted the illusions in games are gone, every game is now a dull collection of mechanics and The gap between what modern games are snd how i know they could be is depressingly vast.
But at least i can still enjoy hour long deep dives into quantum mechanics and golden ratio. Definitely a good tradeoff.
I discovered at a young-ish age that the adage of "do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life" is absolute, unabashed bullshit.
I used to like math too
when were were counting lil squares on the paper and when were awarded a piece of candy or one of those smelly erasers
but then they were like "hey why don't you just solve this simple problem? its about identifying perpendicular lines on a graph to find an angle measure in a right triangle. but were not gonna tell you what the number is. hell, were not even gonna give you a graph. or a pencil. or a paper. you're gonna have to make your own paper and pencil. and here's a essay for some fucking reason, cause this is math and you need to write a fucking 31 page ESSAY about TRIANGLES!!!!!!!!!!"
that was math for me :)
Uh... I did learn about imaginary numbers in high school. It was part of the ranking test to get into uni, even.
There's a difference between imaginary numbers and all numbers are imaginary.
BIANAM (but I am not a mathematician)
Work is work
Not really.
I hated work most of my life, and then got some good career guidance from a book called "Discover What You Are Best At."
I found a job that used my talents in a way that kept me interested.
You don't have to work on passion projects like art or research to be content.
Just find something where you feel engaged.
I managed to find very interesting jobs couple of times. After a year or two management changes, projects change, co-workers change. Many things make work "fun" and you usually don't control any of it. My last company in couple of years went from nice place to work to corporate shithole with low morale. Hard to stay interested in a place like that.
Yup this is me right now. I work with an amazing team and was really liking my job for the past three years. Then 2 months ago we got a new Associate Director who immediately set herself to bullying, denigrating, and tearing apart everything and everyone. I'm currently waiting to see which comes first; I get fired or I quit.
She's probably trying to pad her resume for her next job.
I was very lucky. The job I liked was in civil service. Relatively low amount of bull from management.
The trouble is that most managers and other higherups are already planning their next job move the day they get hired. They don't care about the people who are working there.
It's still work somedays.
Yes, but there's a big difference between 'man, the job sucked today' and 'my god, I hate this job, nothing good ever happens.'
Your last two sentences defeat what came before..
Work is work. It's not passion projects, it's work. You don't have to love it
You don’t have to work on passion projects like art or research to be content.
Just find something where you feel engaged.
Are you talking about these two sentences above?
Because it sounds like we agree.
I am not sure I understand your point.
I have never looked at math and saw this beauty people describe. Math to me is as beautiful as an angle grinder, it's a useful tool that hates you and plots your demise.
IMO math is fun when you choose to study it.
Also, if you want some classical "beauty" results, look into complex numbers and complex analysis. E.g., Mandelbrot sets are absolutely gorgeous.
But personally, I'm more partial to stuff like Borwein integrals, i.e. when you make "weird stuff" happen with "not very weird" ingredients.
Basically, the above pattern "works" for exactly the first seven iterations, but then it "breaks" for some reason on the eighth!
See that seems like the kind of thing Matt Parker would make a video about, "Someone noticed a weird pattern in some numbers." Like how 2 pi or the fibonacci sequence keep turning up in nature, and I just can't muster up much more than a "...huh" about it. I mean I understand margesimpsonpotato.jpg but if you want me to do calculus you're gonna have to bring me more than "I just think they're neat."
Borwein is incredibly interesting. Thank you for sharing