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Joined 4 years ago
Joined 4 years ago
Disclaimer: No affiliation or anything.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
Side tangent- I tried to find the author of that quote thinking it has to be a ‘wise man’ of the past (given that it’s not a gender neutral statement), and it looks like that it’s actually from a post apocalyptic book from 2016 that soon after became a meme.
Source: https://www.slanglang.net/memes/hard-times-create-strong-men...
Sibling comment (dmd): > I saw a study a few years ago where people were asked how much funding various agencies get, and the majority of people thought NASA was more than 10% of the federal budget; some even went as high as 25%. (It's less than half of 1%.)
Your comment: > [NASA’s] $23 billion dollar budget is only 3% of the size of the DOD budget.
NASA’s budget is about half a percent of total DoD budget, but that doesn’t tell an accurate story. Most people assume NASA is synonymous with the total or almost total US space budget, but its less than half. You can do the math in 2022 if you would like [0], but in 2013 NASA’s budget was $16.8B [1], and the total space budget was $39.3B [2]. According to that article, in 2013 every other nation was supposedly under a $10B space budget [2], but can’t really speak to the validity of that. I think it’s reasonable to say we spend a decent amount on space compared to others. All that said, not opposed to an increased space budget, more space is good in my book.
[0] https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudg...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
[2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/which-countries-spend...
> Back in 1980s, Yosemite National Park was having a serious problem with bears: They would wander into campgrounds and break into the garbage bins. This put both bears and people at risk. So the Park Service started installing armored garbage cans that were tricky to open—you had to swing a latch, align two bits of a handle, that sort of thing. But it turns out it's actually quite tricky to get the design of these cans just right. Make it too complex, and people can't get them open to put away their garbage in the first place. Said one park ranger, "There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists."
While effort isn’t best depicted as a single value, some attributes of effort that I found making the act of getting a MS particularly easier and more enjoyable involves how professors bend to the life of students, rather than students to professors.
For homework this looks something like how common and easier it is to get an extension, extra help, adjustment of assignment/test, and so on. For schoolwork this looks something like whether class attendance is required, class sessions and professor office hours are time/location specific, and so on.
The original article talks about someone that made the decision to do school in person and then about how there were issues when it became remote. I opted to take an online program offered at a standard institution in hopes of increased flexibility and the same piece of paper at the end.
All my classes were pre-recorded lessons I could watch at my convenience. We would complete assignments and talk about them in a comment thread (usually required to do one OP and 2 comments per week), and also have larger projects etc. in groups. On about half of my classes I asked for and was always given extensions of anywhere between 30 days to complete and assignment to 3 extra months to finish 80% of the class I haven’t even touched yet due to increased demand at work.
As a side comment I’ll say you miss 100% of the extensions you don’t ask for, so if you ever feel stressed for time give it a shot and ask for an extension before the official due date or even on the day it’s due. Especially in higher education, I’ve never heard of a professor not working with a student. At the end of they day they have a financial incentive to keep you in the program.