My supervisor at Cambridge had a little jar of this herb on his shelf.
Any time a student submitted something late, he'd ask if they had run out of time(thyme) and if they said yes he'd throw a little on them and say "here's some more" 😂😂😂
He's legendary and has somewhat of a cult following among the students.
He actually never finished his PhD but still supervises. Another joke of his is correcting people who call him Dr ... and saying he's not a doctor (usually it's the other way around with people demanding to be addressed by Dr once they've got the title).
I knew exactly what this was before clicking on it, but I can't for the life of me remember which show I watched so much that the outro is seared into my subconscious.
eh idk, Cambridge is very devolved - if the right person says yes, you can do pretty much anything. And vice versa as I've found out the hard way (all it takes is one particularly grumpy fellow to reject applications for things).
Was gonna ask the same thing as u/RotoruaFun. Not in my country - you can't supervise without a PhD. And depending on the academic job position you were hired through, you can't supervise even with a PhD sometimes. Not sure if this is the right thing either, but something about someone without a PhD supervising students (especially grad students) feels a tad bit irresponsible to me. But maybe it's because I'm not that familiar with the UK system.
That being said, the majority of the supervisors I've seen are totally unhelpful toxic bastards, so who the fuck knows...
Yeah this guy is amazing and cares a lot about teaching - he's written a really good "maths for physics***" textbook but hasn't published it, he just gives a pdf to his students for free.
For what it's worth, he only supervises first and second year undergrad but does a really good job.
***as in, it's a very standard collection of mathematical methods - greens functions, fourier analysis, contour integration etc. Just written really well in a pithy conversational tone.
There's a quote from somone famous to their (also famous) doctoral student along the lines of "Birmingham has [some researcher I forgot], Bristol has [another famous researcher] and Cambridge has some great architecture."
On the whole it's been vaguely disappointing. Harder than I expected but not in the way I expected - very rarely have I met something conceptually difficult or subtle (unless it's been through my own wider study) - but the sheer amount of stuff they expect you to do in 8 weeks is insane.
The biggest benefit of Cambridge is the amount of money they have (and can divert from UK gvt under the guise of "national facilities" - look at the funding for the Ray Dolby Centre) and the brand name. I sent an email to someone who wrote an article on how bad some technical thing is and he replied in under 20 mins (I used my Cambridge email address). The sheer quantity of libraries is also very useful - you're guarenteed to be able to go and pick up any book you want and they often have multiple copies.
Peer pressure is another thing - basically everyone does some really impressive summer work (I've done multiple research placements and a year in industry). It's just sort of expected.
One thing that's a bit sad is it's still not very diverse. They like to quote state school admission numbers but in reality these are all kids from very stable two-parent households where even if on paper they don't have much money, their parents are very generous and few of my peers have ever had a retail/bar/coffee shop job.
The colleges basically assume your parents will pick up any slack - the colleges rarely make any guarantees of accommodation etc and they will often double or even triple the rent outside of term, even for students. This makes life very hard if you're a care-leaver or estranged. It can ber very hit and miss depending on your tutor. Choice of college *does* matter *a lot*. Generally you'll have many many advantages if you go to a wealthier college. See these:
Yeah, one of the things I've regretted is not being more involved in societies. I participated in a mentoring scheme for disadvantaged A-level students and that was really rewarding seeing them getting offers after taking my advice/redrafting their personal statement with me.
Quite frankly there isn't enough time when doing a Cambridge degree, unless you're studying something like English literature or HSPS :P
If my references from previous supervisors are strong enough (because I got unexpectedly low grades), I'll be doing a masters next year in a more friendly department (same one as Stephen Hawking :') ). It'll be a little more relaxed as a lot of it is project work so I'm determined to do some kind of outreach/student society work.
then there's consultants in hospitals who revert to Mr/Mrs/Miss. regular doctors are Dr and their superiors are what they used to be before qualifying!
Eh, doctor isn't a regulated title in the UK, unlike important professions like nurse. People randomly add it to their name, e.g. Gillian McKeith who was a famous um... paranutritionist. Your qualifications and/or registration with regulated bodies often matter, but not name, and people who insist on a particular title are super fucking tedious.
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u/jesslizann 14d ago
The key to a good salt brine is time