This blog post by Scott Aaronson on crying babies at conferences, and the comments to the post, are both hilarious and thoughtful (not necessarily at the same time.) Scott and his readers discuss topics ranging from suggestions about funding childcare during conferences, the difficulty involved in getting tenure during the childbearing years, to the fact that 'academia has the “trifecta” of low pay, long hours, and tenure pressure."
I thought I knew what the definition of ABD was. It was exactly the same as defined here in Carnegie Mellon's University Doctoral Candidate Policies for All But Dissertation (ABD) : After the completion of all formal degree requirements other than the completion of and approval of the doctoral dissertation and the public final examination, doctoral candidates shall be regarded as All But Dissertation(ABD). I have, though, occasionally run into the term ABD being used as a somewhat disparaging designation for one who fulfills the formal degree requirements of the Ph.D. but never finishes the dissertation, and then quits the program. Most recently, I saw it in What They Didn' t Teach You in Graduate School: 199 Helpful Hints for Success in Your Academic Career , by Paul Gray and David E. Drew. Number 9 of their helpful hints is one that I strongly agree with: "Remember that a Ph.D. is primarily an indication of survivorship." They go on to say, "You stuck wi
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