I see it as Schrodinger’s internet
I’m at the chiropractor and there’s a college kid in here with his dad and girlfriend. It’s taking all 3 of them to schedule an appointment and the dad is having to ask the kid questions like a toddler while he plays on his phone. Holy hell this world is imploding.
It’s only going to get worse. The parenting I see…
I get irritated when people put down other professionals who aren’t medical doctors, as not being “real” doctors. I had someone try to say a psychotherapist/psychiatrist, wasn’t a real doctor, regardless of if most have a pHD.
To me at least, I’ve always considered mental health professionals as doctors. I call them mind doctors(different from brain surgeons).
Modern customer service…or should I say lack of it. Go fuck yourself, you semi-automated cockwombling excuse for a motherfucker!!!
Psychiatrists are MD’s, so absolutely should be called “doctor.” Most therapists (I think more than 70%) practice with a master’s degree, and should be called by their name or “my therapist.” I always correct people when they call me doctor. Some, like you maybe, don’t care and want to stick with it. I feel awkward, like I’ve claimed a title I haven’t earned, but I don’t fuss with it.
The “Dr. Jill Biden” thing seems to have ignited a storm. Most of the PhD’s I know use it in professional writing (“Jill Biden, PhD”) but don’t prefer to be addressed that way. I do think snotty people who put others down should be corrected when they’re shitting on someone (e.g. “That’s DOCTOR Biden” when someone calls her a stupid school teacher or whatever).
I wish they would establish a standard for PhD’s so we’d all have clarity. Personally I’d rather save “doctor” for medical people and college professors (“doctor” to be used only in class), but that’s just me.
All my university professors preferred to be called “professor”, if they’d earned the title. They seemed to think it carried more weight.
Edit: apart from Dr Dray, because he thought that was funnier.
Hmm, we use “professor,” too. Not sure if that denotes someone without a PhD or they choose which, or what.
Now I’m having a hard time remembering because we called them all by their last names when talking ABOUT them (“Who do you have for stats?” “Gilroy. You?” “Smith.” “Oh, that sucks, I’m sorry.”).
Maybe we use prof more, too, come to think of it.
Isn’t following the introduction of a PhD with “not a real doctor” or similar variant the standard?
It used be that even the PhD themselves would do this if they were introduced as Dr…
You can be a professor without a PhD?
On the subject of Universities, INSURANCE ![]()
Because of COVID, the school/Aetna is doing insurance on a semester basis, which means they’re (Aetna) not refunding the money we paid at the beginning of last semester for full year coverage AND making us pay for the semester coverage AND have continually delayed the enrollment meaning that I’ll have to wait until February (when school starts) to be seen by the doctor.
Note: this isn’t the school’s fault. Also, I’m more frustrated than pissed off
Sure. Most state U’s and some of the smaller privates have master’s level professors. I was invited to teach a Human Behavior class at the local state university (not our flagship, which probably has few non-PhD professors). In community colleges it’s common practice to use master’s and even bachelor’s level instructors. One of my clients teaches a class in elementary reading at the local community college with a bachelor’s. She’s exceptionally sharp, and will probably be a principal eventually, so is a good one to teach skills to other teachers and wanna-be’s.
I believe that still happens. Just as working in a medical setting I was used to people saying “please, it’s Brad,” when I called them Dr. Whatever. Humility is always nice.
Yep. Two of my math profs (shockingly, the best two I had) held Master’s degrees. Super humble guys that actually wanted to teach.
Wow, I guess I’m really spoiled at my school then.
Most of my professors in non-engineering-specific classes made it real clear they had no desire to be there teaching us peasants. Now, engineering classes and professors were a different story. Part of that had to do with how many people were taking those classes that had no business being there. Calc 1 through 3 reduced our class size by 50%.
The plot of math classes with respect of difficulty is exponential ![]()
My calc 3 professor acted like she had no desire to teach, but it wasn’t really out of disdain, it was more that she gave up. 90% of the students taking the course were business/“econ” majors who just wanted to pass. It’s very hard to teach people who don’t care
The STEM majors (and ones wanting to go to econ grad school) took a more advanced version
Combine that with going to a state school that pushed bad students into difficult majors (and gave more scholarships based on income than on merit) and I did feel bad for the professors. We still had a couple bad professors in engineering, but the majority were pretty good. Even had one that wrote the book on Mechanics of Vibrations and would correct math in his notes down to the thousandth on the fly.
The higher education system is horribly broken in a variety of ways and frankly is increasingly more focused on self enrichment and perpetuation than delivering value to students and society at large. The PhD system is a significant part of that and while it’s not entirely fair to blame individual PhD holders for that, a general contempt for advanced academic research is growing and becoming increasingly justified (particularly in certain fields). I’d worry about derailing the thread, but academia kind of pisses me off, so it’s all good.
So is secondary education, so no harm no foul. They push college so hard on high school/middle school kids and neglect trades/trade school/etc. Many go to college that shouldn’t, and only go because they’ve been told from birth to 18 that they won’t be successful without college. Then they fail/drop out and have the college debt without the income to back it up. Meanwhile both my brothers are in trades and our salaries are all a lot more similar than I was told to expect. I’d rather do their jobs than mine, but know that my total earning potential is higher as an engineer than theirs is without extreme overtime, extra vocational hazard, or relocation.
One of my girls managed to bring the Corona virus back with her from the IDF.
Day 5 or 6 of symptoms, not sure. Mild fever (like 99.4 with a lot of aspirin), achy, diarrhea, starting to lose sense of smell. Mild cough. Really, really tired easily.
Like I had a hard day of getting up, showering, and then going to back to bed.
Allegedly day 5-6 or so is the moment of truth. You either have a giant turn for the worse or it stays about like this and you get better in a week.
We’ll hope for and assume the latter, then. Be well.