Daily Archives: 2024-10-04

A Field Guide to the University of Kentucky Graduate School

Having now collected two graduate degrees myself, and been related many stories by friends and acquaintances doing grad school at UK, some advice for those behind me.

UK’s graduate school is the absolute archetype of the rule of thumb that, at UK, every individual you deal with will be nice and helpful, but as an organization they’re the most useless, obstructive motherfuckers you’ll ever have the displeasure of dealing with. You will never find an individual to punch in the face when something deserving happens, because responsibility has been diluted sufficiently that there isn’t usually an individual bad actor responsible for whatever bullshit is going on; the problem is that there are half a dozen overpaid people with inflated titles not dealing with the thing, and an assortment of folks in lower-titled, public-facing positions having to scramble to make things work around the administrative dysfunction.
The fact that UK just went into administrative bloat overdrive by dissolving the faculty senate with no concrete plans to replace their functions, then started hiring random assholes who don’t even have the context to know how things have to work to take over matters the senate used to handle has made it even worse this year than usual.

Detailed Notes Below

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No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

Source: Hacker News

Article note: There certainly are unhealthy things about social media, but I think a LOT of the finger-pointing is the traditional, horrible, "Pointing at the things young people do to escape/work around the actual problems in their life as though the workarounds are the problems." We've done a _really through_ job of excluding young people from most public spaces with explicit policy (You'd get CPS called on you if you let your kids have as much autonomy as used to be normal), over-scheduling to meet dubious competitive pressures, and car-centric (sub)urban design. They are facing broadly diminished prospects in careers and home ownership relative to earlier cohorts, climate change is kicking into high gear, they had developmental years in the pandemic... and now there's an increasing mixture of rent-seeking and policing in the online spaces they gather in as a workaround.
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Posted in News | Leave a comment

No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems

Source: Hacker News

Article note: There certainly are unhealthy things about social media, but I think a LOT of the finger-pointing is the traditional, horrible, "Pointing at the things young people do to escape/work around the actual problems in their life as though the workarounds are the problems." We've done a _really through_ job of excluding young people from most public spaces with explicit policy (You'd get CPS called on you if you let your kids have as much autonomy as used to be normal), over-scheduling to meet dubious competitive pressures, and car-centric (sub)urban design. They are facing broadly diminished prospects in careers and home ownership relative to earlier cohorts, climate change is kicking into high gear, they had developmental years in the pandemic... and now there's an increasing mixture of rent-seeking and policing in the online spaces they gather in as a workaround.
Comments
Posted in News | Leave a comment