andrewt

I was wondering if people on HN could share some 'paradigm changes' in the way they look at the world they've experienced.

For example as a student of math, the fundamental way in which I view things could be more or less summarized into three phases:

- Emphasis on 'objects' (high school): E.g. what are the properties of this specific real valued function? Solve this specific geometry problem. Where does this specific function attain a maximum?

- Abstraction to spaces (undergrad): The focus changes to abstract spaces and structures (e.g. topological spaces, groups, function spaces). E.g. Instead of focusing on the properties of one function, we study properties of a function space. A theorem proven about groups in general applies to any example of a group.

- Categorical abstraction (grad school): We can abstract further from specific structures to categories. Many structure-specific constructions (e.g. direct sums of groups, disjoint unions of sets, wedge products of pointed space) can be unified into categorical constructions (e.g. the co-product for those just listed). The language of functors provides a uniform way of talking about mapping one type of structure into another.

Another unrelated major viewpoint change I've experienced is that I've resigned myself to the fact that the world is much more random and uncontrollable than we believe it is. Pretty much all major events in my life have been unpredictable and essentially due to chance. This realization has provided me with more peace of mind, than before when I was much more worried about "making the right decisions".

I am interested in what meta-viewpoints people have experienced, and any changes they've experienced. They can be related to anything: computer programming, science, life, relationships ...

It seems that there is a very strong emphasis on web-startups among the HN community. While I very much value the discussion on HN, I am simply not that interested in web programming for its own sake.

Anyways, I am a math graduate student and I'd be happy to collaborate with anyone who needs a person with a strong quantitative background.

I am sure that many of you have been in this situation before. The short story is this: I am an international graduate student at an American University (a very good one). I have enough financial support to live (ie. the standard graduate student stipend), and have a small fellowship from my home country. However, I am finding myself annoyed by how little it adds up to after taking into account things like rent, the mandatory tuition fee deduction, health insurance, etc. Note that I am definitely not a big spender, and I am very careful with my money.

Due to my status as a foreigner, My options are very limited for pursuing additional funds. I am unable to apply for any US fellowship because they all require at least permanent residency. I am quite dismayed by this, since it seems like there are so many funding opportunities for US residents that they don't even know which ones to pursue. Furthermore, my visa status prohibits me from being employed other than my research assistantship position.

I believe that the underlying issue is that I don't believe that I am being adequately compensated for my skills. I am not being ungrateful - I am very happy to have the opportunity to study here, yet the situation is quite constraining. Perhaps this is the result of the academic philosophy of paying one's dues, and then reaping the rewards afterwords.

Have any of you found (legal) ways around this? For example, working in exchange for equity, finding other funding sources... I am curious to learn about interesting and creative ''hacks''.