I love grad school!

[philena]

Have I mentioned recently how much I love graduate school? Here I sit, typing on my new laptop,* in a magnificent UC Berkeley library reading room which, although it does not quite rival Harper in terms of magnificence, certainly surpasses it in the matter of not driving you crazy with the humming from the fluorescent lights. I came to this reading

Comments

[annabananaface]

If no one ever did things that were mostly about increasing knowledge without a known direct application, we wouldn't have a lot of things that today are very useful and good for humanity, such as large portions of modern communications technology. Also, we wouldn't have Shakespeare. Or Mozart. So you never know.

[philena]

I know that. But I have trouble imagining that the work I do will ever have a direct application. It's a bit like that question of whether the rich person should donate money to charity now, or invest it all so that later it will be worth lots more, and donate it then. How long should he wait? At what point does the damage done from delaying the donation outweigh the advantage accrued by waiting until your money's value has increased? And then, in my case, if it turns out there is no practical application to what I do, it will be like losing all your investments in the stock market and having nothing left to donate.

[cycling_chasm]

Очень понравился ваш ЖЖ, я вас зафренжу и было бы круто если бы вы ответили взаимно;)

[philena]

Спасибо! Я рада вам понравиться! И я очень, очень рада видеть, что существует глагол "зафрендить." (Да? зафрендить, я зафренжу, ты зафрендишь, т.д.?)