Yo everyone, I'm fresh from the first good night's sleep I've gotten in awhile. I'm ecstatic to finally be finished (I took a longer road than most) and just felt like chatting with you fine folks.

Getting that dissertation done was a real challenge and while I'm happy I finished before George R. R. Martin finished the next ASOIAF book, I have a lot more sympathy now for him or anyone who has to write something lengthy.

Anyone else in a graduate program or recently finished? To those who have gone through the process, what'd you do immediately afterwards? I'm in the middle of a job interview process so I can't quite take a vacation, but I am planning to stick at least a full week somewhere where I travel and do nothing.

Tonight, I'm going to relax and watch The Magic Flute opera with friends which I've not done before.

Hi all,

I am a PhD student focusing in cosmology. I wanted to up the science content here on Tildes, and I thought that one way to do so is to have an informal little Q&A session. As such, feel free to use this post to ask any questions you might have about cosmology specifically, and physics in general.

This may not be as exciting as some other science AMAs given that I am a rather early graduate student, so there may be a lot of questions I don't know the answer to. However, I'm willing to try my best and answer over the next few days, and to let you know I don't know if I don't!

A bit about myself: I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago where I studied physics and mathematics, and then I was a student researcher in a computational cosmology group at a national lab. I subsequently enrolled at UC Davis to continue studying cosmology. Ask me anything about physics, cosmology, or high performance computing!

I also invite anyone else with expertise to chime in as well!

Tildes, I'd like some opinions please! I work in a genetics lab as a research assistant and I've got the opportunity to pursue a PhD under the supervision of the lab director whilst maintaining my current position and salary, with work I'd probably be doing anyway contributing to my thesis.

I feel like this is a pretty good opportunity: I'm not getting any younger and I have a young family, so going back to school to do this on a studentship is not an option, and my employer is willing to fund half the tuition fees and cover materials/ reagents etc. Word in the media is that there is a glut of PhDs at the moment, but I don't have my heart set on an academic career, so I won't be crushed if I end up in industry. I'm based in Europe, so would be looking at taking 3 years for the whole degree, which is coincidentally when my current contract is up.

Has anyone pursued a PhD under similar conditions? What was your experience like? Was getting your PhD worth it (especially in the life sciences/biotech)?

Thanks!