The original 2021 greeting. It also included a 3-minute-31-second recording, but the export contains no playable audio. The full written greetings and that year’s invitation are retained below.
The Year of the Ox has arrived. PhDSciNet has worked with the strength of nine oxen and two tigers to send these wishes to everyone following us:
Here it comes!
To PhDs just starting their programs:
May your courage swallow an ox; charge ahead like a newborn calf unafraid of tigers. Study diligently, like hanging books from an ox’s horn, and master research as expertly as Cook Ding carving an ox. May your doctoral achievements be as numerous as an ox’s hairs!
To PhDs in their third year and beyond: dare you answer, “When will you graduate?”
There is no trick to raising cattle: plenty of water and feed. Eat and sleep well, without sadness or agitation. Your breathless days will pass; effort is not wasted and hardship refines you. May you master the past and present, reach expert understanding, and find graduation no longer as distant as a rhinoceros gazing at the moon!
To PhDs and postdocs committed to academia, may your papers:
Never vanish like a clay ox in the sea, nor meet editors like ox-headed underworld guardians or monsters. May reviewers avoid irrelevant questions and impossible suggestions, like leading an ox down a well. May your talent reach the stars, and your future works fill whole carts and rooms!
To PhDs and postdocs ready to leave the academic pit: once decided, stop getting caught on an ox’s horn over it!
Soon put the working animals to rest and embrace the wide world of life and love. Research is vast, but life is greater. To wear cloth, undo the bundle; to enjoy roast meat, prepare the ox. If you cannot enjoy life now, you only leave it for others.
To PhDs and postdocs seeking faculty jobs:
Sing your ox-horn song in the job market with towering courage. May an outstanding job come without requiring the strength of nine oxen and two tigers! May the days of hardship in cattle blankets and exhausting toil be gone for good!
And to professors already thriving: may your students be diligent scholars, your conversations never like playing music to an ox, and their manuscript drafts no more like impossible hornless oxen or horned horses. May you soon lead your field!
Dear research friends, the world becomes awesome only when our lives are awesome!
Disclaimer: please forgive any creative misuse of idioms, proverbs, or poetry. We are simply deploying the advanced rhetorical technique of exaggeration. Do not ask about errors; if you do, you are right!
Next, please enjoy:
A promotional break!
In 2021, PhDSciNet will keep working to bring you better content.
Would you like more people to understand your research?
Would you like to explain a scientific idea to the public?
Would you like to share an interesting story?
Or would you simply like a conversation?
Please volunteer for our weekly PhDSciNet interviews. Places are offered in order of signup!
In 2021, let us hear your voice.
Sources and editorial history
Restored from a complete historical article exported from the PhDSciNet Official Account.
