this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Just get a programming job

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Done, but I am simply so much better than all the IT majors… I feel superior.

Watch my latest YT livestream where I coded a JavaScript interpreter just using Haskell and a french press : https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=B7D-gmfeBYIZNeVE

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

There's a typo in your code at 13:37 just FYI.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Get a job programming video codecs. Then you get to feel superior and inferior at the same time. Also eternally frustrated by doing things that help everyone and no one, and that you can never finish. It’s the best of all worlds.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago (2 children)

For real. I made the life mistake of getting a PhD but managed to turn it into an asset by doing fairly straightforward finance programming shit that scares people.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

doing fairly straightforward finance programming shit that scares people.

The reason it's straightforward to you and scary to others is because you have a PhD. Even if it's not in finance, you gained abilities in reading documents, extracting useful information, integrating knowledge, teaching yourself skills, building tools, and generating reports. To most people, those are difficult things.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If only there was a way these people could teach themselves these skills, even without access to a doctorate program!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

People absolutely can. It's just a lot easier when you have guidance from an expert advisor, multiple peers to help you out, and an established pathway to focus several years of your life on doing so.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

To be clear, my PhD “advisor” was a hindrance to my education, work, life, and career. I succeeded despite my ”advisor” and broke all contact upon my defense.

1/3 of my entering cohort left without degrees. Not atypical.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I'm sorry to hear that. I'm glad that you survived it though.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

Im an actuarie, so I can't say that I have problem finding job, but I prefer programming and every task I'm assigned I spend all the time necessary to do it in python.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

and develop inferiority complex

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

That's what I did, in the end. But in the mean while I got to study something I am passionate about.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 7 months ago (1 children)

A superiority complex? I find it quite simple actually

[–] [email protected] 29 points 7 months ago

My superiority is purely real, with no imaginary components

[–] [email protected] 46 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Hey now. Us physics majors can just do less efficient engineering work.

...with an inferiority complex.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Less efficient, but superior engineering! Eventually. For large values of later.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Only if it's a spherical frictionless cow, which all things are

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Hey now. Us physics majors can just do less efficient engineering work.

I feel like you guys are better than us at a lot tbh.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (2 children)

You guys have a superiority complex? That must be nice!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

As a chemist, all I got was a shortened lifespan.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Need to make a new compound? Use a carcinogen

Liquid/liquid extraction? Carcinogen

Neutralize a reactive compound? Carcinogen

Clean your glassware? Believe it or not, carcinogen.

Chemists have the most applicable skills of any science majors, and it's all because of carcinogens.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

To quote an old professor: "there isn't a lab table dirty enough that a little benzene won't clean it!" Fortunately for us (and him) 'they' wouldn't let him do that anymore.

He also habitually turned his head sideways when working with, say, ether, because you dont want your pipe to set the fumes on fire.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

Seriously. As a biologist, my education was general enough that I learned how little I know about everything, instead giving me an inferiority complex.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Add history majors

I have an ex friend who was condescending 100% of the time, despite being constantly being unemployed/working retail.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

When you see the bigger picture, but not what lies directly in front of you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

As an history major, better than everyone on this site° , your comment give me a sensible chuckle

Thanks

° Hosbawn op. cit.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The smart ones went into finance

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago (2 children)

There are smart people in finance?

[–] [email protected] 44 points 7 months ago

Yes, they just lack morals and empathy.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but they don't have finance or business degrees.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I was tutoring maths to students enrolled in the economics program at a uni. And... Wow. Yeah...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

When it comes to the U.S (it doesn't seem to mention employment rate) Mathematics was 11th place in the highest paying majors 5 years in according to an NY Federal reserve study last month: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/14/highest-paying-college-majors-5-years-after-graduation.html

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Hey look, it's my mom!(tried to be a math teacher, could never secure anything but substitute, refused to move outside the city for employment on another city, refused to "work beneath" her, my family was mostly single-income from my dad growing up)

Rant ahead: feel free to SKIP

She finally got a job when she had 0 calls in a year for a substitute position. Working for a hospital (hypocritically because of someone she knew getting her the job when she had been raging against that very thing in teaching positions for years) in their government insurance area. Or "beneath her" as she would have once said.

It gave me no small sense of Schadenfreude to see her "stoop" to my level after years of "I told you, you should have gone to college" the sheer unmitigated gall of which I clearly still hold a grudge over. I wanted to go to a tech school for welding. I could still have attended my AP science electives before going to welding class. And since nobody ever set a cent aside for college, it would have given me a way to pay for it if I decided to go. And most importantly I would probably have had my own house by now. Welders in this area get paid quite well. Especially if you can get in one of the factories nearby, they've got the best medical plan I've ever seen but apparently they're owned by some European company so it makes sense.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Your mom sounds annoying lol. Hopefully youa don't have to put up with that shit anymore

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Oh for sure. Especially since she's a conservative Christian.

It's weird hearing uneducated bullshit coming from an educated person's mouth, like seeing a deer walking on its hind legs. You know something is wrong and you should probably leave before it notices you.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

I'm in this photo and I don't like it.

I'm two classes away from both a math and physics degree, and I'm planning to go back to school for computer science once my slumlord finally writes a new lease.