a french exit
(unexpected) updates from england
Hi there. I finished my last exam this week. Assuming all goes well, I’ll finish my program in a year instead of two. While my stint as a grad student was fun, I’m not convinced academia is my calling. I woke up one day a few months ago with the unshakeable feeling that I was in the wrong place. Gave it some time, but decided to expedite the degree to save a bit of money and headache.
Being here is a gift—Oxbridge has so many beautiful traditions, buildings, vibes. For curious Americans, I’d actually recommend coming here to do a master’s over doing a career-break MBA in the US (depending on your goals). Or one later in life. Some students here are 22, and others are in their 50s or 60s! There’s nothing quite like completely immersing yourself in an interesting discipline while also indulging in some of the Hogwarts-y traditions of Oxbridge. It is truly devoid of reality… and I can’t recommend it enough!
why leave?
Every sidequest must come to an end at some point. I learned a lot here (and met some incredible people), but my time is up. I’ve always been curious to explore how linguistics and language science could improve how we build technology for humans (AI and otherwise). Unfortunately, I did not find much support for that here so I’ll keep learning on my own. Oxford is so deeply siloed that people in the same department may never even meet. In my experience, there is limited inter-departmental or collaborative work… and everything is unnecessarily political. There is a silent bitterness about what others are doing, and what others are getting (funding), such that gaps only widen over time. I’m sure every department is slightly different. I’m optimistic that people like Colin Phillips will usher in a new era for linguistics and language science at Oxford.
My primary goal was to sus out the UK and make some friends here. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this place is adult summer camp. It’s Neverland for people with money. Maybe when I’m a little older and more seasoned in my career, I’ll come back. For now, at this point in my life, the marginal benefit of the second year didn’t outweigh the costs. Onwards!
post-mortem
what went well
academic itches were scratched 🧠
soaked up the traditions (see below) 👨🎓
endless couches to sleep on moving forward 🤝
what didn’t go so well
finding advisors to support my research; navigating bureaucracy
balancing contract work, school, research, social, etc.
budgeting. oxford is rather expensive!
what I’d do differently (hindsight is 20/20)
live in an apartment, not a graduate dorm
prob should’ve applied for fulbright or rhodes
ok cool. what else has happened in the last 4 months?
90% was spent writing papers and studying, but here’s the lowdown (get ready for some photos):
sport
played more rugby fives for the university. no concussions this time 👍
ran a few 5ks in parkrun with colleagues
represented Worcester College in golf and swimming cuppers
pickleballin
events
bonus
escaped England a few times — to Croatia/Montenegro, Berlin and Edinburgh
tried to fine-tune a suite of LLMs on a 400k dataset with a single A100 and got kicked from the university cluster (oops)
emailed noam chomsky
the weather does not get better here as much as it may look like it did
~ photo album on instagram ~
what’s next?
I’m in the UK until July 1, then EU until October. There’s a chance I stick around the continent longer, but I may miss in-n-out (and my family) too much. That said, if we’re in the same place this summer, don’t be a stranger.
Anticipating a slew of questions from my family about what I’ll do for work. Will I use this degree? Probably not! I’d like to go back to working on projects that improve how people live, work and connect. In other words, I don’t think writing endless papers on obscure topics is the way to get there. I like to be closer to the action. Graduation is at the end of September, so I’ll work on personal projects until at least then.
I’ll keep the blog going, it’s been a cathartic way to update and share with people I care about. I’ve tried to strike a balance between never posting and inundating inboxes. Let me know what you think!
This post is dedicated to my dad, who may or may not read this. Happy Father’s Day!
All the best,
Zach 🫡