Maia Ramsden wants to go pro AND get a PhD?!

Harvard will meet 100% of your financial needs, and no matter what you major in you will have good options when you graduate. You don't have to sell your soul and major in Hedge Fund Management just because you're poor.

Id like to read about “astroenvironmentalism” in SF. I hope some people continue to think, write, and build the human thought catalogue. If we are all worker drones on the technological wheel human life gets pretty grey.

They dudes are fine with her pursuing professional athletics but not majoring in humanities at Harvard. Which one do you think has a bigger income upside?

I have serious respect for you and feel like this is a better trajectory for someone who wants a specific career right away after running is over.

A broad base in humanities overall? Sure, but a PhD? Not sure that’s at all necessary or helpful unless academia is the desired route.

Ironically, like you, I was on a similar path in a stem field while training for the Olympic trials. But an injury derailed me around age 25, and I just couldn’t see pursuing a career in the field I was studying in, so I terminated it early. Also, I was really tired of being a skinny ectomorph and had no desire to do the Sunday morning 20 milers anymore.

Subsequently pursued a JD, which I think would’ve been way more difficult to juggle with trying to run at a very high level just because of the workload and mental commitment to do it right. I think a JD would be much more helpful than a PhD in humanities though, for any career.

Let me repharse, she has the aptitude and ability. She would have to go learn calculus, physics and differential equations and everything else required to get in a PhD program.

In terms of mathematical ability, given that she got into Harvard and is performing very well there, she must be better than 90th percentile in mathematics which is good enough for an aerospace PhD. Quite frankly I would be surprised if she wasn't 98+ percentile in mathematics. I have a PhD in mechanical engineering, work in aerospace engineering and couldn't get into Harvard. That is, I think getting into Harvard, especially for undergraduates, is significantly more challenging than getting a PhD.

I disagree that a JD is better for any career. Plenty of careers (author, professor, critic, educational admin) where a humanities PhD - and the network that came with it - would be quite useful.

A PhD can also be an incredibly rewarding process and stage of true self discovery. It’s hard to put a monetary value on those experiences but if someone wants it and can handle it… it’s rare to have opportunity to deeply study what you love, for free. Just like it’s rare to be paid to do a sport you love.

And tell me, please, why Latin, Greek, or Great Books are important. How are they any better or worse than what you call "woke garbage." How they are any more or less pointless? If it's because they are already established or agreed upon as essential, this is an effect of statements like yours, and your reasoning is circular.

The reasoning behind a liberal arts education is that critical thinking skills and (to sound like a broken record) knowledge for knowledge's sake is extremely important. We should be expanding our knowledge over as many domains of human life as possible. And, for the record, this also has immense practical purpose. Ideas about democracy, capitalism, and minority rights, were once "woke garbage" to people in different times. Plato and Aristotle are important, and so is environmental humanities and cultural studies or what ever other boogeyman anti-intellectuals are out to get these days.

This is not to say that there is not terrible humanities scholarship that is poorly researched, poorly argued, and incoherent. Just like there is terrible STEM research that is like that. However, if you are judging that just based on the name of the journal it appears in or the title of the paper, you are not actually engaging with the scholarship in question and determining whether it is "garbage," woke or not.

Her whole aura is incredibly irritating - she has some sort of white savior complex and would of course deny that and stand behind her Harvard degree claiming how other people are just not as "enlightened" as her. Has she checked her (they?) white privilege yet? lmao

Ah, yes, art historians who famously make no money and have no significant clout in museums that house some of the most expensive and important cultural artifacts in the world. Sure, the vast majority of them end up doing something else, but surely art historians play an important role in culture and society?

Ah, yes, sociologists. Alexis de Tocqueville and Max Weber never produced any important work in the Western Canon.

Ah, yes, security studies (the subfield of political science). Research on nuclear deterrence, the causes of war, or the democratic peace never did anything for the world.

The Great Books were the “woke nonsense” of their time.

Pillars of Western (or global) intellectual traditional are defined by the works which document them. It can take centuries to understand which works truly outlined a new, last idea; versus were a flash in the pan.

in 2550 something from the 2020s will be held which a much reverence as Dante.

(Note: the caveat here is that accessibility and ease of producing lit/art is exponentially great than it was 500 years ago so there is a lot more chaff to wade through.)

It's a good thing that our Founding Fathers didn't think philosophy was useless and a waste of time.

I agree on the latter. On the former, I’m simply talking about in the “real world,” which typically involves some type of business engagement or contract or negotiation, no matter what you do. I consider professor and educational admin to be academia, which I already mentioned.

That’s not to say she shouldn’t pursue her passions. Career life probably begins at age 30 for her, which is totally fine.

Look at this arrogant prick. Not "A Prof", but "The Prof". Probably misguides our youth onto these paths to participate in circle jerks celebrating his BS.

Only wannabes get an MBA (master's in BS All of the time). Give me a break. Go for a STEM PhD or go home

slavery is a good thing? That's what the founding fathers loved.

This. Grad school, in many situations, allows incredible flexibility of working hours. Hard to image a better situation beyond full-time pro. Keep the brain engaged and develop a sense of self-worth outside running performance.

I see your point, but in all fairness, I just don’t think this is the case. Dante/Shakespeare/Aristotle etc., though wildly different among each other, are still fundamentally different than what passes for the humanities in most elite universities today. The latter exists almost entirely as a result of a bastardized version of social justice politics wed to a Marxist hermeneutic of suspicion. There is a reason why the style of reading is labeled “deconstruction.” It is parasitic upon the classical predecessors that it paradoxically could not exist without, and is also ironically “utilitarian” in its own way, much like the MBA management theory BS—I.e., art and literature exists for no other reason than to promote social justice and topple “hegemonic structures,” itself a utilitarian approach to art.

Go find out her mothers employment history for the last 25 years and it may explain why.

Edit to add: good on Ramsden though for at least being interested in art and literature at all. She sounds smart and it’s not her fault that the “woke” humanities are the only humanities that most students encounter these days. Again, a fault of conservatives who instead of being the custodians of literary tradition for the young, abandoned it in favor of soulless suburban values.