I successfully got 2 middle aged cats to do this. They have both since passed and I have two new cats. I haven't bothered to train them, but I think it's because my wife cleans their box and I haven't thought about it.
The first two cats did this almost effortlessly. They didn't give us any trouble because we changed steps slowly.
I believe you, sounds like a bit of a bother to train the new cats as well. Makes me wonder though if once one cat was trained, if you got a new kitten whether it could pick up the behavior from the trained older cat. That'd be pretty great - the gift that keeps on giving.
That's definitely not the case, given the long queues (and low chances) for H1B and high barrier for O1 visas. I might as well get an L1 working in industry after all.
I would be less than "definitely sure" about that. I know lots of folks firsthand whose primary motivation were that. This is obviously very country-dependent. If you are in a country with presence of say FAANG offices, sure you'd go for L1 or EB1C. Not everyone is that privileged. Not to mention during the Trump era, F1 visa was one of the only exempted ways to get your foot in the door for various countries.
(There's also OPT, btw, which is critical in the process, and H1B lottery chance, assuming a US Masters degree, was more than 50% last time I looked at it a couple years ago. O1 (and even EB1A/B) are not that rare for well-published PhDs, and EB2-NIW is quite easy for any PhD worth their salt, I'd say.)
Thanks for mentioning EB2-NIW, I didn't know that before, and I'll definitely look into it. Regarding O1, one of the PhDs I admire most failed to get an O1 despite his success. I guess publishing papers in our fields is kind of hard and maybe some fields are more easy to get an O1 than others :)
I'm such a `force multiplier` as you mentioned. I'm in the gap between genetic programming, machine learning. It's very hard to have skills across biology, math and programming, and unfortunately, I'm someone who has to have all three to join my prestigious lab, whilst my peers are significantly less skilled than me. I feel grad school is kind of a scam for us immigrants because locals who have good recommendation letters can go to the same lab with much fewer skills. I do resonate with what you say and wonder if I should quit my PhD to go to industry.
Author here---maybe you find my response to the parent post interesting. What you are describing is something I also experienced: a good name can open a lot of doors for you, and academia is certainly not as meritocratic as people might think it is.
I read some anger and disenchantment in your comment. Feel free to reach out in order to get another perspective on your situation. In any case, without knowing the specifics of your situation, and being a more or less anonymous internet stranger providing unsolicited advice, I would suggest you don't do anything hasty. Getting a PhD can be useful in certain domains; at the same time, if you are not engaged and---dare I say it---happy with your overall situation, it might be time to move on.
Whatever you do: the world is big and, with a little bit of luck and foresight, there are additional opportunities to be found! Best of luck to you :-)
Indeed, thank you for your kind reply. I resonate hard with your first paragraph :)
I do feel anger sometimes, but after all they're pleasant folks to work with, and I feel I shouldn't blame them just because they're born in richer places than me. I'd probably still finish my PhD :) But I do admire your resolution to become a professor, as I have been nothing but impatient with teaching other people things I understand. Your blog does have many insights that are rare in academia, with so many people rushing to get more papers published. I hope you'd have a successful career as a professor.
I come from a non-academic background myself (although being born in Europe certainly simplified things...I am mentoring students from India, for instance, and was shocked to learn about the high cost of even applying somewhere---but that's a different story), and have the feeling that academia is closed off against these sort of backgrounds. Despite academics trying very hard to think of themselves as being 'heterodox' and 'challenging the status quo,' most just follow along with the system. I don't want to assume a self-aggrandising position and believe that I alone can change the system, but maybe I can point out some issues at least...
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