Current Events > STEM fields aren't for curious people.

(+) Yeah! (+)

That is, by my standard anyway. I'm coming to this realization after getting my feet wet in a bachelor's in a natural science. This is not something for curious people. This is for people with a passion for one thing and one thing only. That's basically the only way you get into graduate school and finish. You must be able to control your curiosity so it doesn't manifest into the real world. You must minimize your sense of adventure; you can't make mistakes. There's no room for real experimentation in the world. You must care about your path all the way through. There's no time reserved for not giving a shit. A good way to do this is to have little curiosity...or perhaps little curiosity for other things besides your field. You can't be a generalist. You can't really be one of those creative types who thinks laterally. I found it paradoxical that doctors would want to spend 80-120 hours a week in a residency to save lives because it implies that they don't think that their own life is worth saving lol. Like, how can you be so passionate about saving a life and not want to live your own life? Wtf? Anyway, that's the rant from a failure in the sciences.

Are you on drugs
---

Well, I'll be honest that I purposely made my topic title that way to attract people to it. I know curiosity is often thought to be the defining trait of a scientist. The unfortunate thing though is that I think a lot of creative types can't make it in a STEM field because I think one of their defining traits is to basically be a **** up lol. This would be me, so no offense. I'm talking about myself here. Obviously there's nothing creative or unique about going home and studying for hours, not partying, not flirting with breaking a law or two, or making other mistakes. There's nothing creative or unique about using the stencil laid before us. The better way to state this is that, the STEM fields are for people whose curiosity is resistant to bifurcation.

RedWhiteBlue posted...

Yeah, unless you actually want STEM you won't do well. I'm an example, too, failed out 2 semesters left for bach in bio.

Sorry to hear that. I should have been more clear that I finished though. 'Getting my feet wet' probably makes it sound like I failed.

Yeah, if by curious you really mean "diffuse and lazy".
---

Curiosity doesn't mean just doing whatever shit comes up on your mind. Curiosity is instead of partying every day and satisfying your basic needs, you sit at a lab for 6 hours mixing small amounts of colorless liquids and infer about how things work they do.

Do you feel better now that you've vented?
---

Hexagon posted...

Curiosity doesn't mean just doing whatever shit comes up on your mind. Curiosity is instead of partying every day and satisfying your basic needs, you sit at a lab for 6 hours mixing small amounts of colorless liquids and infer about how things work they do.

I don't know I got my BSME while being drunk and hungover for basically half my time in college.

I feel you bro
---

clearaflagrantj posted...

I don't know I got my BSME while being drunk and hungover for basically half my time in college.

Tbf, your chances of getting into grad school are probably about as high as TC's.
---

clearaflagrantj posted...

Hexagon posted...

Curiosity doesn't mean just doing whatever shit comes up on your mind. Curiosity is instead of partying every day and satisfying your basic needs, you sit at a lab for 6 hours mixing small amounts of colorless liquids and infer about how things work they do.

I don't know I got my BSME while being drunk and hungover for basically half my time in college.

Sorry I was talking about research aka grad school. Not undergrad.

COVxy posted...

clearaflagrantj posted...

I don't know I got my BSME while being drunk and hungover for basically half my time in college.

Tbf, your chances of getting into grad school are probably about as high as TC's.

That's cool I went straight into my career and now I'm making more than grad school graduates my age because I have actual work experience instead of wasting my time doing dumb bullshit research on studies nobody cares about for shit pay. I'm pretty happy where I am in life, so happy that I don't have to be a gatekeeper of science articles with annoying pseudointellectual garbage on a video game social board like it were the only thing I had going on in life. Like some miserable fucking failure of a human being looking for meaning.

Ouch I don't think you're really as happy as you want us to believe with all that spite.

I'm one of the most curious people I know, and I'm doing fine as an oil engineer.

Whenever there's a new process to develop or technology to optimize my bosses know to put me on it, and I have a blast.
---

Hexagon posted...

Ouch I don't think you're really as happy as you want us to believe with all that spite.

Nah, he says he's happy. We should believe him.
---

clearaflagrantj posted...

COVxy posted...

clearaflagrantj posted...

I don't know I got my BSME while being drunk and hungover for basically half my time in college.

Tbf, your chances of getting into grad school are probably about as high as TC's.

That's cool I went straight into my career and now I'm making more than grad school graduates my age because I have actual work experience instead of wasting my time doing dumb bullshit research on studies nobody cares about for shit pay. I'm pretty happy where I am in life, so happy that I don't have to be a gatekeeper of science articles with annoying pseudointellectual garbage on a video game social board like it were the only thing I had going on in life. Like some miserable fucking failure of a human being looking for meaning.

wow calm down buddy
---

clearaflagrantj posted...

COVxy posted...

clearaflagrantj posted...

I don't know I got my BSME while being drunk and hungover for basically half my time in college.

Tbf, your chances of getting into grad school are probably about as high as TC's.

That's cool I went straight into my career and now I'm making more than grad school graduates my age because I have actual work experience instead of wasting my time doing dumb bullshit research on studies nobody cares about for shit pay. I'm pretty happy where I am in life, so happy that I don't have to be a gatekeeper of science articles with annoying pseudointellectual garbage on a video game social board like it were the only thing I had going on in life. Like some miserable fucking failure of a human being looking for meaning.

lmfao
---

RedWhiteBlue posted...

failed out 2 semesters left for bach in bio.

Probably should have gone for Pachelbel in psych.
---

i dunno about most STEM degrees but computer science was a cakewalk outside of comparative programming languages and operating system concepts
---

Rika_Furude posted...

i dunno about most STEM degrees but computer science was a cakewalk outside of comparative programming languages and operating system concepts

Bachelor or higher? Any degree is a cakewalk if it's on basic level.
---

Yeah Im in biochem and everyone is dead inside.
---

scar the 1 posted...

Rika_Furude posted...

i dunno about most STEM degrees but computer science was a cakewalk outside of comparative programming languages and operating system concepts

Bachelor or higher? Any degree is a cakewalk if it's on basic level.

Bachelor. US equivalent of 4 years study or w/ev
---

Flockaveli posted...

Yeah Im in biochem and everyone is dead inside.

Not as dead as they will be post grad when they realize the marketplace is already well past saturated.
---

I found it paradoxical that doctors would want to spend 80-120 hours a week in a residency to save lives because it implies that they don't think that their own life is worth saving lol. Like, how can you be so passionate about saving a life and not want to live your own life?

Because we didn't know what we were getting into until it was too late
---

Rika_Furude posted...

scar the 1 posted...

Rika_Furude posted...

i dunno about most STEM degrees but computer science was a cakewalk outside of comparative programming languages and operating system concepts

Bachelor or higher? Any degree is a cakewalk if it's on basic level.

Bachelor. US equivalent of 4 years study or w/ev

I know what a bachelor is :)
(it's a cakewalk)
---

COVxy posted...

Yeah, if by curious you really mean "diffuse and lazy".

this post has been sanctioned by the geneva convention
---

Btw COVxy, do you do any time-frequency analysis?
---

If youre in a relationship with somebody who gets paid too, you really dont need a Stem career to get by in life dude, you can make it fine as a UPS driver or Walmart employee. Still not easy, but yeah. Basically no very normal career allows you to be overly creative.
---

STEM isn't for flighty ADHD people, which is what I'm sure you really mean.
---

Clear is finally not complaining about his life or shitposting and now wants to play the holier than thou card against someone who has done neither

:thinking:
---

scar the 1 posted...

Btw COVxy, do you do any time-frequency analysis?

My lab has in the past worked with wavelet analysis and time binned Fourier analysis, back when we used to do EEG, but I was only peripherally involved in that. Since the vast majority of my work is in fMRI data, the blood signal is too slow to care too much about frequency analysis, we usually just filter off very high and very low frequency data to clean up physiological noise.

So, not really =P.
---

COVxy posted...

scar the 1 posted...

Btw COVxy, do you do any time-frequency analysis?

My lab has in the past worked with wavelet analysis and time binned Fourier analysis, back when we used to do EEG, but I was only peripherally involved in that. Since the vast majority of my work is in fMRI data, the blood signal is too slow to care too much about frequency analysis, we usually just filter off very high and very low frequency data to clean up physiological noise.

So, not really =P.

Alright alright. I'm trying to find a good implementation of the Wigner distribution function so I don't have to do it myself, that's why I asked. I figured it's kinda related to covariance (in that it's also statistics :P) so why not ask.
---

pairing making mistakes, law breaking, and partying with being creative, curious, and unique seems weak
---

scar the 1 posted...

Alright alright. I'm trying to find a good implementation of the Wigner distribution function so I don't have to do it myself, that's why I asked.

I see, never heard of it till now. What's the advantage of it over the simpler methods i know of?
---

clearaflagrantj posted...

COVxy posted...

clearaflagrantj posted...

I don't know I got my BSME while being drunk and hungover for basically half my time in college.

Tbf, your chances of getting into grad school are probably about as high as TC's.

That's cool I went straight into my career and now I'm making more than grad school graduates my age because I have actual work experience instead of wasting my time doing dumb bullshit research on studies nobody cares about for shit pay. I'm pretty happy where I am in life, so happy that I don't have to be a gatekeeper of science articles with annoying pseudointellectual garbage on a video game social board like it were the only thing I had going on in life. Like some miserable fucking failure of a human being looking for meaning.

Yo that's fucking rude man
---

COVxy posted...

scar the 1 posted...

Alright alright. I'm trying to find a good implementation of the Wigner distribution function so I don't have to do it myself, that's why I asked.

I see, never heard of it till now. What's the advantage of it over the simpler methods i know of?

It gives full resolution. Typically wavelets or STFT are limited in resolution based on the length of your sliding window. WDF is essentially the Fourier transform of the local autocorrelation and you don't lose any resolution. There are of course other drawbacks instead, for example you'll get artifacts, and the spectrum can actually be negative.
---

REMercsChamp posted...

clearaflagrantj posted...

COVxy posted...

clearaflagrantj posted...

I don't know I got my BSME while being drunk and hungover for basically half my time in college.

Tbf, your chances of getting into grad school are probably about as high as TC's.

That's cool I went straight into my career and now I'm making more than grad school graduates my age because I have actual work experience instead of wasting my time doing dumb bullshit research on studies nobody cares about for shit pay. I'm pretty happy where I am in life, so happy that I don't have to be a gatekeeper of science articles with annoying pseudointellectual garbage on a video game social board like it were the only thing I had going on in life. Like some miserable fucking failure of a human being looking for meaning.

Yo that's fucking rude man

He will be back to bitching about women like the "Man" he really is. He is a fucking joke and he knows it.

scar the 1 posted...

It gives full resolution. Typically wavelets or STFT are limited in resolution based on the length of your sliding window. WDF is essentially the Fourier transform of the local autocorrelation and you don't lose any resolution. There are of course other drawbacks instead, for example you'll get artifacts, and the spectrum can actually be negative.

Ah, that's cool. My guess is that it would be more sensitive to local noise than the other methods, meaning you'd probably need very clean data.

Good luck on your search! A quick google search tells me that there's at least some simple versions people have deposited for matlab, if the thought of using matlab doesn't make you cringe (personally I love it lol).
---

COVxy posted...

scar the 1 posted...

It gives full resolution. Typically wavelets or STFT are limited in resolution based on the length of your sliding window. WDF is essentially the Fourier transform of the local autocorrelation and you don't lose any resolution. There are of course other drawbacks instead, for example you'll get artifacts, and the spectrum can actually be negative.

Ah, that's cool. My guess is that it would be more sensitive to local noise than the other methods, meaning you'd probably need very clean data.

Good luck on your search! A quick google search tells me that there's at least some simple versions people have deposited for matlab, if the thought of using matlab doesn't make you cringe (personally I love it lol).

Well there are of course windowed versions of it that mitigate a bit of the noise. I don't actually need very clean data - the entire benefit in my case is that with a high-res time frequency spectrum it's possible to get a good idea of the data quality :)

And yeah, there's a MATLAB toolbox that I'm tinkering with a little bit, but it's not so simple as it would have you believe, and not a lot of people seem to have had similar use cases to mine in the past. So we'll see if I figure it out. (I'm working pretty exclusively in MATLAB except for the very occasional Python script that I still call from MATLAB)
---

Ironically, at some level, experimentalists sacrifice some degree of creativity in many instances because so many things already have a standard protocol in the literature, and God forbid you do too many new things at once in one paper.
---

8-bit_Biceps posted...

Well, I'll be honest that I purposely made my topic title that way to attract people to it. I know curiosity is often thought to be the defining trait of a scientist. The unfortunate thing though is that I think a lot of creative types can't make it in a STEM field because I think one of their defining traits is to basically be a **** up lol. This would be me, so no offense. I'm talking about myself here. Obviously there's nothing creative or unique about going home and studying for hours, not partying, not flirting with breaking a law or two, or making other mistakes. There's nothing creative or unique about using the stencil laid before us. The better way to state this is that, the STEM fields are for people whose curiosity is resistant to bifurcation.

Im a CS PhD candidate and I spent the first half of college very debaucherously haha...

Ive also paid the police too much of my cash too often during this time.

Youre right though, to make it though you need to buckle down at some point and be serious.
---

clearaflagrantj posted...

COVxy posted...

clearaflagrantj posted...

I don't know I got my BSME while being drunk and hungover for basically half my time in college.

Tbf, your chances of getting into grad school are probably about as high as TC's.

That's cool I went straight into my career and now I'm making more than grad school graduates my age because I have actual work experience instead of wasting my time doing dumb bullshit research on studies nobody cares about for shit pay. I'm pretty happy where I am in life, so happy that I don't have to be a gatekeeper of science articles with annoying pseudointellectual garbage on a video game social board like it were the only thing I had going on in life. Like some miserable fucking failure of a human being looking for meaning.

Damn lol.
---

clearaflagrantj posted...

That's cool I went straight into my career and now I'm making more than grad school graduates my age because I have actual work experience instead of wasting my time doing dumb bullshit research on studies nobody cares about for shit pay. I'm pretty happy where I am in life, so happy that I don't have to be a gatekeeper of science articles with annoying pseudointellectual garbage on a video game social board like it were the only thing I had going on in life. Like some miserable fucking failure of a human being looking for meaning.

Do you need a hug?
---

True

clearaflagrantj posted...

COVxy posted...

clearaflagrantj posted...

I don't know I got my BSME while being drunk and hungover for basically half my time in college.

Tbf, your chances of getting into grad school are probably about as high as TC's.

That's cool I went straight into my career and now I'm making more than grad school graduates my age because I have actual work experience instead of wasting my time doing dumb bullshit research on studies nobody cares about for shit pay. I'm pretty happy where I am in life, so happy that I don't have to be a gatekeeper of science articles with annoying pseudointellectual garbage on a video game social board like it were the only thing I had going on in life. Like some miserable fucking failure of a human being looking for meaning.

Oh yeah dude, you seem real happy.
---

As a stem major

Who plans to go into research

I wouldn't have chosen my field if I hadn't been curious

And I find my curiosity has been rewarded through the cool stuff I'm learning
---

Rika_Furude posted...

i dunno about most STEM degrees but computer science was a cakewalk outside of comparative programming languages and operating system concepts

Tbh I've never heard people complain about these two classes until now. Usually the weedout classes are algorithms or computer architecture
---

Im finishing a masters degree in electrical and electronic engineering this year but I dont give a single shit about engineering. You dont need passion for STEM to do well in STEM.
---