[HN Gopher] Lessons from my PhD
___________________________________________________________________
Lessons from my PhD
Author : andrewnc
Score : 337 points
Date : 2021-12-28 17:52 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (web.eecs.utk.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (web.eecs.utk.edu)
| teekert wrote:
| I also did a PhD and this is all true. I realized many of these
| things years later.
|
| I think many of these points come down to confidence. When you
| are in the trenches, you really, really do know a lot, and you
| know it in incredible detail. In fact, in your career, if you
| leave academia you will probably never know a unique small
| "thing" in such detail ever again simply because you will have to
| _make_ something as opposed to _studying_ it. Not even your
| professor knows everything about what you do, and so she may give
| advice that seems to contradict what you think. It is vital that
| you trust yourself enough to speak up. Yes, the professor is
| really smart, and knows more than you, but she didn 't spend 3
| weeks in the lab wrestling with some optical setup like you did
| and you know some things better then her, better than anyone in
| fact. It's hard to admit, I know.
|
| Also, you may really have wrong assumptions about the progress
| you're going to make in the project. You may feel very bad after
| a year of messing around while the prof thinks you're doing well.
| Talk about these feelings. The prof knows what's normal, you on
| the other hand may think you're the next Einstein (and assume
| Einstein wrote something great every other month) and constantly
| disappoint yourself.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Similar to learning software engineering on the job. Once
| you're leaving the baby level you stop being able to take the
| more senior engineers' word as golden. You will know some
| things better temporarily due to recent intense exposure. The
| tricky part is figuring out when that's true and when others
| can see something you can't. This never leaves you I guess.
| patrick451 wrote:
| > It is vital that you trust yourself enough to speak up. Yes,
| the professor is really smart, and knows more than you, but she
| didn't spend 3 weeks in the lab wrestling with some optical
| setup like you did and you know some things better then her,
| better than anyone in fact. It's hard to admit, I know.
|
| It's really not. It was obvious to me about 9 months in that my
| advisor really didn't know all that much. The professors who
| really seemed to have technical chops were either new faculty
| still trying to get tenure, or the rare iconoclast who didn't
| play the game and had a single grad student. The tenured
| professors with large research labs were frankly better
| politicians than they were scientists.
| gww wrote:
| One point that I seem rarely mentioned especially in the life
| sciences is learning when to tell your mentor that you have
| enough to leave. In my experience a lot of labs will try to keep
| their senior PhD students around as long as they can because they
| don't have a suitable replacement and they are cheap labour. I
| know people who stick around for 6 to 10 years to chase after a
| high impact paper (that doesn't often manifest) or they can't let
| their work go and pass it off to someone else, or in the very
| malicious cases the PI won't let them go until they publish
| another paper etc. The department I was in was determined to get
| the average PhD down to less than six years but still hasn't
| reached that point.
|
| The trainees supervisory committee is usually there to push them
| out but in many cases they also have a close relationship with
| the PI and aren't going to force a productive student to
| graduate. Those extra years are rarely useful for their overall
| career prospects.
|
| I think students need to be aware of when they should draw the
| line and move on. Spending three more years in their PhD probably
| won't pay off nearly as much as three years of accumulated
| experience in industry job or in a post doctoral fellowship in a
| new lab.
| nabla9 wrote:
| The value in formal education is mostly reading, writing, and
| thinking skills. How to express and communicate increasingly
| complex ideas to others. PhD is not much different.
|
| There was just a Reddit post saying that 54% of US adults have a
| reading level equal to or below a sixth-grade level according to
| the US Department of Education. Many communication problems can
| be attributed to differences in prose, document, and numeracy
| literacy.
|
| _" If we want to have an educated citizenship in a modern
| technological society, we need to teach them three things:
| reading, writing, and statistical thinking."_ - H. G. Wells
| neom wrote:
| My wife is finishing up her PhD in American History and I can
| tell she's getting bored, at least demotivated reading a billion
| books a week. I've seen this motivation decline in a lot of
| founders as well 4/5 years into their startups, but I've not seen
| much reignite the fire. Can anyone recommend any specific tips
| for staying motivated through a PhD?
| ModernMech wrote:
| Your wife is bored because she's gotten what she can out of the
| program, and the dissertation is a slog. I had the same
| experience.
|
| This is why there is a term for people who do the whole program
| but drop out without finishing the dissertation: ABD (all but
| dissertation). It's the one non-degree people feel justified to
| list on their resume, because it takes at least 4 years to get
| there, and it's still quite an achievement.
|
| I was ABD for 3 years when I got bored, and I almost quit. I
| figured since I had all the skills, it didn't matter that I
| didn't have the degree. It's just a meaningless credential. I
| asked a friend of mine who had gotten his degree whether it was
| worth it, and he said "Don't do it, the plus side isn't that
| great"
|
| Then I went to his wedding. He was the only PhD in his family,
| and his mother made the DJ introduce him as "Doctor". What he
| considered a meaningless credential made his whole family so
| happy and proud. That moment made me change my mind, and I
| finished my PhD.
|
| And you know what, he was wrong about the credential being
| meaningless. Employers look at you differently when you are ABD
| versus PhD. He didn't experience that because he was never ABD.
| Truly it was like night and day. Governments care when applying
| for visas. Grant agencies care. There is also a lucrative
| market for expert opinions, and ABD are not considered at all
| in this market. Credentials matter in our society, even if they
| don't matter so much in the tech sector.
|
| Anyway, I hope something I said here will convince your wife to
| stick it out! If you want a specific tip, I would say take a
| leave of absence. For me I could take up to 2 years off no
| questions asked, and rejoin. If her school has a similar
| policy, she can use that time to recharge, and come back fresh
| and ready to bang out her dissertation.
| euroderf wrote:
| Isn't there an issue that if you take two years off, in the
| meantime someone somewhere else is doing the same topic and
| bangs it out and steals your thunder? Does this kind of thing
| ever happen, or is it more of a theoretical possibility?
| ModernMech wrote:
| It's more theoretical. While it's possible to write a
| dissertation in a short amount of time (I wrote mine in 2
| months), it really should represent multiple years worth of
| dedicated research. For example, I had a figure in my
| dissertation which took 4 months to create, in terms of
| data collection and processing. Just one single figure out
| of several dozen!
|
| That's one aspect is that most dissertations are not very
| impactful. The general idea is that a good dissertation
| should extend the field of knowledge in just a small way.
| It doesn't have to represent a titanic shift in thought or
| be revolutionary in any way. So really most dissertations
| are not supposed to have much thunder at all to steal.
|
| At that level of specificity, it's possible to know all the
| big players by name and what they're working on. It's easy
| to find your own corner in such a small group, and it's
| very rare for a dark horse researcher to enter the field
| and suddenly steal your topic. It's hard to become an
| expert in a field without being noticed by already experts.
| neom wrote:
| wow this is really great advice! And funnily parallels what I
| see in founders, founders who start their startups for the
| wrong reasons (Sam raised a $3MM seed and I'm smarter than
| Sam so I bet I can raise a $5MM seed. Shit, I raised a $5MM
| seed).
|
| Thanks for the thoughtful reply, I'll share your words with
| her.
| thoms_a wrote:
| Just have to chime in and state that this extremely sage
| advice that is rare to find on HN, where credentialism is
| (rightfully so) looked down upon. Whether we like it or not,
| credentials are a very powerful social signal in our society,
| with very real benefits. If you've spent 3 years in a PhD
| program, you should absolutely finish unless you have a very
| compelling alternative opportunity that cannot wait.
|
| A secret that no one often admits is that most PhDs get more
| out of the credential than advertised, because they aren't a
| von Neumann or a Fermi, whose credentials never mattered
| because everybody knew they were one in a billion geniuses.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > My wife is finishing up her PhD in American History and I can
| tell she's getting bored
|
| [PhD candidate] is finishing up [gender pronoun] PhD in [field]
| and I can tell [gender pronoun]'s getting bored.
|
| I just turned your statement into a template that works for
| every PhD candidate of the last 100 years.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Two things I would add to this that I learned early on in my PhD:
|
| 1. Presentations aren't really about conveying information.
|
| I sat though so many dull presentations, they were very
| informative but I can read a paper quicker than they can badly
| present the same information.
|
| The best presentations were the ones that covered the whys of the
| work, the applications, the next steps, the specific problem
| areas - often these aren't covered in the paper but, armed with
| that extra insight I am far more likely to read the paper and
| remember it.
|
| Presentations are (as the author says) about telling stories.
|
| 2. Show up. So many PhDs waft around not doing a whole lot, and
| so land up being on the program forever. This only benefits the
| uni and is detrimental to the student. I noticed in the first
| month of my PhD that most people did a lot more work at the end
| than the beginning - so I flipped it, worked consistently from
| day one and got done in just under 3 years.
|
| Carry this over to your daily life and it's almost a super power
| for getting stuff done. Consistently showing up and plugging away
| in something reaps rewards.
| DrBazza wrote:
| 100% agree with number 2. A PhD is a job. 5 days a week, 9 to
| 5, or you'll never finish in 3 years. Fastest I saw was 2
| years, which was a guy that put in all the hours. Slowest was a
| guy that took 8 years, 'full time', though he was never there,
| but clearly didn't have a job. Goodness knows how they
| supported themselves for all that time. In the uk you had a
| grant for 3 years when I did mine.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Yep, this was my attitude - I was technically done in 2.5
| years but my uni wouldn't let you submit until 2yr 10 months
| - so I started my first company in those intervening months.
|
| To anyone reading this who is considering a PhD, start
| writing up your thesis as soon as you can, like 6 months in
| if you can and have enough to start. You can always go back
| and change when you've written but it makes life so much
| easier if you're "always writing up" then you're not
| terrified of starting.
|
| Oh and yeah: 9 to 5, full time, give yourself a standard
| holiday allowance and stick to it.
| rgrmrts wrote:
| Thanks for that perspective. I just finished my
| applications last month and am anxiously waiting on
| decisions. I always thought 4 years was the absolute
| minimum.
| pmyteh wrote:
| It depends on the discipline, the programme, and
| (particularly) the country. I did mine in the UK, where
| the funding is for 3 years and the expectation is <=4. I
| managed that (modulo two terms of sick and paternity
| leave) and so do most others in my field. The quickest I
| saw was 2 years 6 months, by someone with an impossible
| combination of intelligence and relentless 9-hour
| productive days. Some take longer (financially and
| professionally problematic), not that many drop out.
|
| In some places in the US taking >8 years is normal. In
| some parts of Europe it's an actual job, with delineated
| teaching responsibilities, a pension scheme and
| everything. In Russia the equivalent isn't even called a
| PhD. It's _not_ a standardised process.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| >In Russia the equivalent isn't even called a PhD.
|
| Are you thinking of Candidat Nauk or habilitation?
| pmyteh wrote:
| Candidat Nauk. As I understand it the Russian
| doctorate/habilitation is closer to our 'higher
| doctorates' (DSc/DLitt/DM etc.) which are rarely awarded
| and are mid/late career distinctions. There's no
| requirement for habilitation here, so PhD is almost
| always a final degree.
| rgrmrts wrote:
| I guess that makes sense - in the EU a masters degree is
| usually required for a PhD which is not the case in the
| US. That accounts for 1-2 years at least.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Yes. The standard "1+3" funding programme covers a 1 year
| MRes or other masters degree with methods training in
| advance of the PhD programme starting. I got mine
| separately, so just had "+3" funding. Like in the US, a
| PhD without funding is normally a bad idea.
|
| Edit: It generally remains shorter than a US programme,
| though. We tell ourselves that our focused BA/BSc
| programmes provide a better foundation than the broader
| US undergraduate degrees, but I suspect the truth is just
| that it's cultural differences.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| I was very lucky to not need a masters, 3 years BEng and
| then 3 PhD. I couldn't have done another year. I was
| dying to get out but the end. My wife did 3,1,3 and I
| have no idea how she did that extra year.
| tchalla wrote:
| > So many PhDs waft around not doing a whole lot, and so land
| up being on the program forever. This only benefits the uni and
| is detrimental to the student. I noticed in the first month of
| my PhD that most people did a lot more work at the end than the
| beginning - so I flipped it, worked consistently from day one
| and got done in just under 3 years.
|
| Amen. PhD is a marathon. Other degrees may be a 100m or 400m
| race but PhD is about consistency.
| behnamoh wrote:
| While I agree with no. 2, I think part of the reason that makes
| me not do it is realizing that I will have to do it all my life
| if I become a faculty. I have seen my friends graduated from
| Ph.D. and they literally told me that their life is basically
| the same, except that they now have service tasks to do on top
| of research. To think that I will always have to plug away and
| not have enough time for family or relationships makes me a bit
| demotivated.
| l5870uoo9y wrote:
| > Lead or be led > If you show up to a meeting/internship/job
| expecting to be told what to do, then chances are someone will
| tell you something to do... Alternatively, if you show up to a
| meeting/internship/job with a convincing game plan, then chances
| are people will get out of your way so you can go do it.
|
| Wholeheartedly agree.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Unmotivated details are also my pet peeve. I want to know why
| something is important or valuable before I decide to invest my
| time and energy into it.
|
| Other people generally don't care about your personal struggles
| with a problem, so leave them out. Or at the very least don't
| lead with them. Lead with something that piques the interest of
| your target audience.
| graycat wrote:
| Lessons from my Ph.D.:
|
| (1) Role of Math. In most fields of research, the most respected
| research _mathematizes_ the field, that is, makes progress with
| math techniques and results. So for Ph.D. research, try to have
| math play that role.
|
| (2) Ugrad Preparation. To be successful with that role of math,
| have a good ugrad math background. Then maybe get some more math
| from independent study, work in a career, a Master's program, or
| whatever. Likely the math topics that both come first and are the
| most important are calculus and linear algebra.
|
| (3) Find a Good Problem. In your career, independent study,
| whatever, find a good problem to solve. Pick a practical problem
| and intend to get an _engineering_ Ph.D. where a solution to that
| problem is regarded as good research. Make some progress on
| solving the problem.
|
| (4) Pick a University and a Department. Want a department that
| respects applied research, maybe in a school of _engineering_.
| Hopefully the university will state their standards for a Ph.D.
| dissertation, e.g., "An original contribution to knowledge
| worthy of publication." Look at their description of their Ph.D.
| qualifying exams. Do enough study at the ugrad or Master's level
| and/or independent study to be well prepared for the exams. If
| the department offers courses for preparation for the exams, in
| addition plan to take those courses.
|
| (5) Enroll. Become a grad student in the chosen department.
|
| (6) Progress. In your first year, take some courses, especially
| in subjects you already know well. Continue your research. Pass
| the qualifying exams. If you see some opportunities for doing
| some fast publishable research, as co-author, better as sole
| author, do that. Show the department that you have done
| publishable research. Then, sure, technically will have done a
| Ph.D. dissertation (I did that).
|
| (7) Finish. In your second year, finish your research project,
| stand for an oral exam, and graduate. Of course, if there is any
| question about your research being publishable, then just PUBLISH
| it.
|
| Done.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I think a 2 year PhD is very atypical in my field (CS). In my
| experience I learned a different lesson than you when it comes
| to 3 and 4. I found that more important than anything, picking
| an advisor is the way to choose your PhD. They have such an
| outsized role over your experience, much more than the
| University, Department, or even the problem IMO.
|
| To give some context as to my experience:
|
| - PhDs are funded. You get a stipend and tuition is paid for.
| This funding is either through a research assistantship (RA),
| or a teaching assistantship (TA). Either way you are expected
| to devote 20 hours a week to this task, and the rest would be
| devoted to your coursework. Typically you take 9 credits per
| semester for about 4 years, and then after you enter candidacy
| (you're not really considered a PhD candidate until you pass
| qualifiers, before then you're a mere PhD "student") you reduce
| that to a 1 credit "dissertation maintenance" per semester.
|
| - Grant money is the lifeblood of a PhD granting research-
| focused department. Here's how the economy of a typical CS
| department works:
|
| -- Newly hired faculty are given a "startup grant" that they
| use to bootstrap a lab. Their motivation is they want to get
| tenure in 6-8 years. To do that, they will need to justify to
| the Dean that they are capable of generating sufficient grant
| revenue.
|
| -- Grant agencies award grants largely based on published
| research papers. Therefore the primary directive of a new
| academic is to publish research, and use that to obtain grants.
| Hence the phrase "Publish or perish"; if a researcher fails to
| get enough grants when the tenure clock is up, they will
| usually be put out to pasture; failing to get tenure is the
| death knell for a young academic's career.
|
| -- So they hire a couple PhD students as RAs and they work on
| producing research papers for conferences. The new academic
| uses the published research in grant applications (the first
| target is usually the CAREER award). Soon enough grant this
| grant money is flowing to the researcher and they use it to pay
| for all sorts of things. Chiefly though, it is used to pay for
| the stipends and tuition of graduate RAs.
|
| - As an RA, you will be expected to spend 20 hours per week on
| grant funded research. This means you don't have room to
| explore your own research topics! All of the grant money is
| allocated for the funded grant research, not your own whims.
| The best you can do is carve out some interesting angle on the
| research that you can call your own.
|
| - By the time you get to maintaining your candidacy, you're
| already knee deep in publications on the funded research
| project. The path of least resistance at this point is to
| bundle them up into a dissertation and defend it.
|
| - If you have your own research agenda, _now_ is the time to
| execute it as a faculty member at another University. One of
| their primary concerns during hiring will be: "How is your
| research agenda different from your advisors?" You will perhaps
| not be surprised to find that many candidates fresh out of a
| PhD program will not have their own original thoughts yet. This
| is why many departments prefer that a new PhD actually take
| some time doing a postdoc where they can gain some independence
| from their mentor.
|
| Anyway, what I would say is that instead of picking a problem
| or a university or a department, pick a person you want to work
| with for the next 5-8+ years. Like I said, 2 years is very
| atypical. In my department, we have built in buffers that would
| make the minimum I think 3 years with a Master's, and even then
| I think the typical time would be 4 years.
| graycat wrote:
| Interesting description of the _system_ of academic computer
| science research and no doubt crucial for some computer
| science students.
|
| For funding, I got tuition but no stipend.
|
| For an advisor, I didn't want one or really have one. On
| paper I had two advisors, but I brought my own problem, did
| my own research, both for the dissertation and some
| publishable research I did before the qualifying exams, and
| didn't want, need, or get any _advice_ from either of my
| advisors.
|
| The best I got from my Ph.D. work was just terrific,
| fantastically good, powerful, valuable material. But there
| was a downside: I was attacked by some profs who resented me,
| wanted me to fail, and tried hard to have me fail. The actual
| academic work, including the research, was easy; most of the
| effort was just defending myself from attacks.
|
| I do not now nor have I ever had any desire to be a college
| professor. I got a Ph.D. to be better qualified for a good
| career in applied math and computing I had going before my
| Ph.D.
|
| Now I'm in business for myself. Math is not all there is to
| my business, but it is an advantage, likely a crucial one.
| The math is some math I derived together with some advanced
| pure math, a bit amazing, long in some advanced textbooks but
| not well appreciated for its potential for applications. The
| business is based on computing, and I've written all the
| code, all in Microsoft's .NET (which I like). The _computer
| science_ used is just (a) the heap data structure used as a
| priority queue and (b) AVL trees for a cache. At one point I
| make use of LINPACK -- downloaded the Fortran version; got
| the Bell Labs program F2C to translate the Fortran code to C;
| compiled the C code as a DLL; and call it with Microsoft 's
| _platform invoke_.
|
| I've published in applied math (optimization), mathematical
| statistics (multivariate, distribution-free), and artificial
| intelligence. I didn't publish my dissertation research
| because I wanted, maybe, to SELL it and certainly didn't want
| to give it away.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I'm curious, who paid your tuition? Were you a TA for those
| two years?
| bluenose69 wrote:
| The _topic sentence_ idea is particularly valuable, and it 's
| something I try to pass on to students. I also use latex macros
| to turn this on and off (and to put in margin notes, also). All
| of this advice was so similar to that I give my students that I
| went to the author's homepage here on HN, to see if it was
| somebody I had taught. (Nope, wrong field.)
| teekert wrote:
| I do that too, I tell students to first make a skeleton
| document, with titles that read like a story.
|
| I do the same when programming btw, my function names read like
| a story with their complexities hidden lower in the
| class/library. Yes I have function names that some may find
| ridiculously long but it helps me a lot.
| ivan_ah wrote:
| Would it be possible to share the macro for highlighting topic
| sentences? I'd love to try that out on a recent draft I'm
| working on.
| bluenose69 wrote:
| Sure, I'm pasting it below. Since I might sometimes want
| bold-face, I am also colouring it red, which my journals will
| not permit. (I am not sure how this will format in
| hackernews, but the main thing is that you uncomment either
| of the two `newcommand` lines.) If you want to do other
| things, you might want to use the `\if` method, so that
| altering just one line will let you alter a bunch of
| properties at once. \documentclass{report}
| \usepackage{color} \begin{document}
| \newcommand{\topic}[1]{\color{red}\textbf{#1}\color{black}}
| %\newcommand{\topic}[1]{#1} \topic{Lorem ipsum
| dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.} Praesent
| vel consectetur est, sed accumsan dolor.
| \topic{In malesuada in nulla eget aliquam.} In
| facilisis erat neque, non sollicitudin felis finibus a.
| Sed pellentesque suscipit lorem, quis lacinia mi
| suscipit at. \end{document}
| analog31 wrote:
| I did something similar that was quite useful. I wrote a
| complete outline of my thesis, down to the paragraph level.
| Then I sat down with my advisor and went over it, before I did
| any writing. This had a couple useful effects. First, I knew he
| was in general agreement with my plan. Second, it acknowledged
| that I was in fact in the writing phase and wasn't doing any
| more experiments.
|
| A useful side effect is that whenever I wasn't feeling really
| inspired, I could pick a paragraph at random and just fill it
| in. I would not call any of my paragraphs "filler" but there
| was stuff that needed to be written down, that didn't require
| profound brain work to produce.
|
| Anyway, that's how we're supposed to write code, right? It was,
| 30 years ago. ;-)
| vkk8 wrote:
| I did a PhD in physics and feel like I missed all the great "meta
| lessons" some people seem to learn in their PhD. Mostly I just
| spent my time alone doing calculations either with pen and paper
| or computer. Most of the stuff I did was either suggested by my
| supervisor or was obvious continuation of some previous work.
| Even after I got my PhD I didn't feel like I was really a member
| of the research community or that I had a PhD level command of my
| field. I just did a bunch of calculations, wrote papers on what I
| did and got a PhD. It was almost like doing homework on a really
| long course, but just more difficult.
|
| I left academia after a failed postdoc because I realized I had
| no clue how to conduct research on my own; I didn't know how to
| pick good research topics, or how to manage my time, or how to
| find people to collaborate with, or how to collaborate
| productively with someone for that matter.
|
| I'm not sure if the fault was my supervisors or mine. I'm a bit
| "on the spectrum" and have lots of difficulties with social
| interaction, but I guess so do many other people drawn to
| technical fields and still they manage to navigate the system
| somehow. I certainly never sought for any kind of mentorship
| because I didn't realize it was needed and, also, because it felt
| extremely awkward.
|
| Also, the whole academic system seemed a bit fucked up. People do
| research and write papers because they have to produce something
| measurable, not because the research they do is actually
| interesting or important. I published five papers during my PhD
| and I would say that maybe only one of them was slightly
| interesting or important, and even that could have been much
| better. All of the papers were published in proper, highly
| regarded journals (mostly Physical Review). Towards the end of
| the PhD I started having some vague ideas of stuff that would be
| _actually_ interesting and more worth my time, but also more
| difficult and less certain results. When was I supposed to do
| those? I was still in the mindset that I wanted to stay in
| academia so I couldn't take any risks.
| mrjangles wrote:
| As the joke goes, once you realize it's all bullshit is the day
| they go "Congratulations, you finally understand the field, so
| here is your PhD". Then you just have to decide if you want to
| continue on and get paid to do bullshit.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| To be honest, that's kind of normal and 5 papers is pretty good
| going for a PhD (assuming at least some of them were at
| reputable venues). The truism is that you should view the PhD
| as training you how to do research, but not necessarily that
| the results you produce will be in anyway ground breaking. Of
| course there are exceptions. As you develop it would be
| expected you apply for funding/fellowships to pursue more
| difficult problems etc. and demonstrate more independence.
| wanderingmind wrote:
| The author became a professor unlike the 90% of the other PhD
| graduates, so you need to take all the lessons with a heavy dose
| of selective bias. Most of the things the article talks about is
| the effective processes the author has learned during PhD. This
| is definitely useful in any work where agency is involved.
| However, these effective routines can be learned from a decent
| job in a good organization and does not need a PhD. There is
| nothing in the article that suggests a unique learning that can
| be achieved only through pouring years into an endless pursuit
| like PhD.
|
| In my opinion, there is nothing unique that can be learned only
| through a PhD for a successful career (except maybe for a tiny
| slice of outlier of CS researchers). Most people will be well
| better served to take a job that provides some agency, or better
| try to start a company and fail. They can learn a lot more this
| way without jeopardizing their financial future.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Most of what I learned during my PhD had nothing to do with
| my dissertation topic, grad school, or even computer science._
|
| " _These lessons are so ingrained into me now that I 'm shocked
| when I find out that not everyone knows them! I think they can
| be applied to virtually any office job._"
|
| Taking a job that provides some agency is harder than it
| sounds. As is starting a company and failing without
| jeopardizing one's financial future. (And not everyone is
| really enthusiastic about learning those lessons that can only
| be learned that way.)
| wanderingmind wrote:
| You can LC for a few months closed door to get a decent SWE
| job in a good company that can provide you enough agency. PhD
| on the other hand requires spending 5+ years in a lab cutoff
| from reality and ending up with no skills to get a real world
| job. Yes you lose some money (mostly other people money) if a
| company fails, but the learnings are well worth the loss of
| money. Its definitely not the case with a PhD.
| ColinWright wrote:
| Invaluable.
|
| I've put that on my list of things to distil, review, and put
| into action.
| th9283749238 wrote:
| There is another, more fundamental lesson, that I learned during
| my (failed) PhD - make sure that the environment suits you. By
| this, I mean do some research beforehand about the supervisor and
| the alumni. If possible talk to one of the other PhD candidates
| in their department and find out if you are compatible with the
| working environment.
|
| This could be hard to do such early in your life, as one does not
| have much experience. Usually it falls in one of two categories -
| either you are someone that can do the work but needs support and
| guidance, or you prefer working on your own, in which case a more
| hands-off supervisor would be OK.
|
| If you are of the former type and find yourself working for a
| supervisor that doesn't offer much support, it will be very hard
| to finish anything, and most likely you will become demotivated
| and drop out. Likewise, if you want to try things on your own but
| your supervisor wants to dictate where to go next, there will be
| a lot of conflicts and even the possibility that they block the
| thesis until it is done their way.
|
| Having other PhD colleagues around and bouncing ideas off of them
| is worth its weight in gold, make sure that there is at least one
| that is working on something similar as you are.
| knolan wrote:
| Solid advice, not just for PhD students. This is also invaluable
| for helping final year/capstone students navigate their
| supervisor interactions.
|
| There's nothing better than a student you wind up and they go off
| and solve a bunch of problems in interesting ways. They're having
| fun, you're workload is reduced and there's even potential for a
| publication. Meetings are indeed about giving feedback and
| learning on both sides.
|
| In contrast other students show up empty handed, unmotivated and
| expect a list of instructions some of which they might attempt.
| You feel like repeating yourself constantly and that they are not
| listening.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| You could have learned all of this stuff at a good mid sized
| company.
| andreyk wrote:
| Nice list! A bit micro on a few points, but nice things to
| highlight. On a zoomed out View, a PhD will teach you a lot about
| the life cycle of creative projects in general - idea inception,
| prototyping, feedback, iteration, presentation. It will also
| teach you perseverance - oh boy, will it teach you perseverance.
|
| At the same time, it will not teach you some things you'd pick up
| in industry - team work in particular.
| anthomtb wrote:
| If I had written this article myself and titled it "Lessons from
| my First Year as a Full Time Software Dev" a lot of the bullets
| would have been the same. Especially the Daily Progress and Get
| Excited bullets. Those two tend to go hand-in-hand given how
| often you need to do a thing with the only tangible reward being
| the accomplishment of the thing.
| hkab wrote:
| Really helpful! I love the 'Managers as input/output machines'
| part.
| xab31 wrote:
| My big eye-openers (some from postdoc) were more about the
| sociology of science than the day-to-day productivity:
|
| - Even the most blatantly wrong and illogical published work can
| only be displaced by another publication that explains/does the
| same phenomenon better; i.e., people are going to keep believing
| in phlogiston until someone shows them oxygen. If you simply
| point out inconsistencies in phlogiston theory, in person or in
| writing, they may well make a variety of unwanted psychological
| deductions about you.
|
| - Similarly, nobody actually enjoys being around critics or
| enduring criticism, and therefore you will observe many senior
| scientists partially avoiding the major downsides of being a
| critic by artfully concealing criticisms inside what sounds to
| the uninitiated like mutual affirmation sessions. You have to
| listen very closely and learn the lingo to pick this up.
|
| - Never question a scientific superior (other than maybe a direct
| mentor or very close colleague) with any other approach besides
| "I have a helpful suggestion about how you can maybe reach your
| intended destination better/faster/more precisely". Regardless of
| where that destination might be, such as off a cliff or into a
| wall.
|
| - The opinion/fact ratio you are allowed to have as a scientist
| is directly and very strongly correlated with seniority, H-index,
| and so on.
|
| - The incentive structure of scientific publication is such that
| there are big rewards for being right on an important question,
| bigger the earlier you are to the party, and little to no
| penalties for being wrong, so long as the error cannot be
| provably and directly linked to fraud. There are a variety of
| interesting consequences to this incentive structure.
| zebraflask wrote:
| That seems to ring true, but - it also seems a bit defeatist,
| don't you think?
|
| "Never question a scientific superior?" Not parsing that
| concept, please elaborate.
| xab31 wrote:
| Very early on, I noticed that graduate students tend to be
| idealistic, postdocs extremely cynical, and faculty
| ruthlessly pragmatic perhaps to the point of occasional
| shortsightedness. Clearly, something about this progression
| is expected and normal. I'm a postdoc now, so I'm right on
| schedule.
|
| I think the way it ultimately works is that you have to be
| disillusioned from the grade-school fairy tales told to the
| public about how science works before you can learn to live
| and work in the environment that actually exists rather than
| the one you wish existed.
|
| > "Never question a scientific superior?" Not parsing that
| concept, please elaborate.
|
| tech < grad student < postdoc < junior faculty < full prof <
| Big Guy/Gal < Nobel Laureate < NIH Director
|
| People above you in that chain will accept limited feedback
| on methods to attain their chosen goals and will greatly
| resent questions about whether their selected goals are
| worthwhile/realistic/rational, or whether their gestalt
| vision of the field's conventional wisdom is correct.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _People above you in that chain will accept limited
| feedback on methods to attain their chosen goals and will
| greatly resent questions about whether their selected goals
| are worthwhile /realistic/rational, or whether their
| gestalt vision of the field's conventional wisdom is
| correct._"
|
| Corporate management has the exact same situation.
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| Well, as defeatist as going to work fo a FAANG and not
| expecting that your managers will give a toss about fairness,
| their users privacy, or the spirit of regulations. Life is
| like this. Right now in the African Savannah a lion is
| mauling a gazelle, it happens daily.
| mcguire wrote:
| It is what it is, and it is mostly pretty successful. More or
| less.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| I understand the impulse to not want to be defeatist, but
| sometimes it's both easier and more productive to stop
| running into the same walls over and over and instead find
| the path around them.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| >"Never question a scientific superior?" Not parsing that
| concept, please elaborate.
|
| If you think you've been put on a bum topic or your
| supervisor has put you on the scientific equivalent of a PIP
| with no way up or out your room for maneuvering is limited,
| to put it politely.
| jpeloquin wrote:
| The presentation is cynical, as xab31 themself attests, but I
| don't think it's defeatist.
|
| 1. Bad work only being displaced by good work: everything
| works like this. To replace some useless commercial product
| (take your pick) someone has to come up with something
| better. Same goes for information.
|
| 2. Nobody liking criticism can be rephrased as it being
| important to attack ideas, not people, when you have to work
| with those people.
|
| 3. "Never question a scientific superior" is the first piece
| of advise I think is too cynical. As a warning against
| undermining a colleague in public when you need their
| support, I agree, and that's kind of a restatement of #1 and
| #2. But science really does have a culture of publicly
| debating contentious ideas. You can definitely be more
| critical in an event specifically held as a debate / open
| forum than in a presentation Q&A though, and at a social
| event it's polite to be at least vaguely supportive.
|
| Kind of a tangent to the later points: Day to day scientific
| research is mostly chasing dead ends and other activity that
| is (in hindsight) mostly useless, but there is genuine
| societal value in having a large body of skilled workers
| available. That is, science spends a lot of time spinning its
| wheels trying to figure out the right question to ask, and
| once this becomes clear there is rapid progress. This means
| the papers published in between the breakthrough periods
| aren't really worth paying attention to unless you work in
| that area. Having a lot of scientists and engineers in the
| workforce so we collectively have a decent chance at
| obtaining and exploiting next breakthrough is the point, the
| papers are just a byproduct.
| natechols wrote:
| I agree with most of the GP's points and I don't think of
| them as defeatist, but rather a call for realism when dealing
| with people (versus data, which have no ego to bruise). It's
| very hard to devise a system that rewards individual
| achievement without ever falling prey to classic human flaws.
| The good news is that science over time tends to be self-
| correcting, and all that requires is a commitment to shared
| principles and methods, combined with enough anarchy that no
| one individual can screw up an entire field (Trofim Lysenko
| being the most extreme example, but any bureaucracy can
| accomplish this).
| dhd415 wrote:
| In addition to ringing true, this seems largely in line with
| Thomas Kuhn's thesis in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions
| [0], a book which despite its shortcomings, should be required
| reading for anyone in a STEM field.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...
| ta988 wrote:
| This reflects my experience as well.
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| Young people need to realize that the things we love about
| science: the uncompromising search for the truth, its
| international and no-boundaries character, the ability to bow
| down to evidence, the ambition of the ideas, are just a very
| distilled fraction (basically the highlights) of a what it is
| a very mundane, fragile, political human activity, full of
| petty and lame characters, absurd situations and pathetic
| developments.
| jjdredd wrote:
| > full of petty and lame characters, absurd situations and
| pathetic developments.
|
| Yeh, I wish I could understand this a few years ago.
| Pursuit of truth is not the primary goal of many tenure
| profs it seems.
| jrumbut wrote:
| > The incentive structure of scientific publication is such
| that there are big rewards for being right on an important
| question, bigger the earlier you are to the party, and little
| to no penalties for being wrong, so long as the error cannot be
| provably and directly linked to fraud.
|
| This is fantastic insight and I'd like to thank you for sharing
| it with our group.
|
| Would you agree that the model of rewards for correctness and
| penalization only in the case of fraud is the core feature of
| science? And what separates it from business or politics where
| being an honest failure is worse than being dishonest but
| successful?
|
| Again, this is a great post, and I think you have a fantastic
| future in the sociology of science!
| myle wrote:
| Are you trying to provide an example for many of the points
| of OP above or am I overreading this?
|
| In your message I observe, very careful criticism, uncalled
| praise, admission and defense of a system that excludes most
| criticism...
| keeptrying wrote:
| Beautifully put.
|
| Your observations aptly apply to industry as well except for
| your final one regarding the incentive structure.
|
| Thank you for commenting.
| [deleted]
| cyberlurker wrote:
| All of these tips are good, but the "get excited" one has been my
| secret weapon through life.
|
| A professor in undergrad gave me the tip to get excited or even
| feign interest when reading dense written material in order to
| retain more.
|
| After trying it throughout a difficult class I was amazed at how
| well it worked. I applied it to every other academic thing I
| didn't want to do and noticed immediately how much easier and
| enjoyable school was. I still use the "fake excitement" trick for
| my work all the time.
|
| Also, it's kind of like a Trojan excitement because after I fake
| the intense interest I do genuinely become interested more often
| than not.
| schoolornot wrote:
| It's hard to remain excited when so many professors don't
| prepare for lectures, teach outdated material, rely on question
| banks for exams, and play the part of ball-breakers. I went
| back to school for a different degree program in my 30s with a
| fresh perspective and a much bigger drive from 15 years ago
| when I did my first two degrees. Mind you that it was during
| COVID but what did I get? A bunch of "read these chapters, take
| these exams" kind of lectures. The current education model is
| shot, particularly the PhD degree where you practically grind
| out nonsense for years on end only for your advisor to collect
| the funds and stick their name on top of your papers.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > stick their name on top of your papers.
|
| Maybe you have a more independent mindset having gone into a
| PhD program a little later than most, but the whole point of
| a PhD program (at least in the sciences) is that it's an
| apprenticeship. You study under an established researcher
| using their grant, so it's not "your" paper. You are supposed
| to work together using grant money from your advisor.
|
| If you have obtained grant funding on your own and are
| working independently on a novel research project you thought
| of yourself, then you can call it your paper. But that
| scenario usually doesn't happen, because it's hard to come by
| funding without a good proposal, and it's hard to write or
| qualify for a grant without the training one gets in a PhD
| program.
|
| If you are working using grant money, lab equipment, lab
| space, data, models, software, or methods acquired and
| developed in your advisor's lab, then even if you write an
| entire paper yourself it's still both your names that go on
| the paper. I've had a few like that and was glad to share the
| credit, because it wouldn't have been possible otherwise.
| tasogare wrote:
| I totally disagree with you. Giving a single word
| "guidance" and pretending to read a manuscript is not
| enough to qualify for authorship in most journals
| submission guidelines. Likewise, all the thing about money,
| lab space etc. (which in my case is funded by a national
| scholarship, not my supervisor) has nothing to do with
| research ideas, which is what papers are about. If people
| who are making my live easier as a grad student were to be
| giving authorship, the secretary and the cleaning lady
| would both rank higher than the head the lab. I'm putting
| the name of my supervisor because I'm forced to and because
| I belong to his lab but anyone who worked with him knows
| his involvement in lot of papers is close to 0.
|
| So if someone has done the research and wrote the paper it
| is normal he got credit as first author for it. Whatever
| money is lying around isn't writing paper by itself. The
| monetary compensation is meager enough not to be robbed on
| top of that of what we created.
| foldr wrote:
| There seems to be an increasing expectation that
| undergraduate education should be like high school. By the
| time you start studying at university you should be able to
| study independently. The lecturer isn't there to entertain
| you or to hold your hand.
| XorNot wrote:
| My lesson from my failed Ph.D (graduated with a Master's in
| Chemistry after far too long) is that after the first year take a
| long critical look at what you're planning to accomplish and
| whether you really made the progress you needed too.
|
| I didn't, and simply tried to power ahead on the assumption I'd
| pull it out of the fire: this was absolutely the wrong
| conclusion. You already have a university degree, and you'll get
| paid more in industry: the right answer is to abandon ship it
| you're not looking at a clear path ahead by then.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| A first year is a pretty harsh deadline to set yourself to know
| what you're doing. Most people I know's PhDs only came together
| in the last 18 months of their degree.
| natechols wrote:
| For most people in my program and others like it (molecular
| biology, US) the decision point tended to be at the end of
| the second year, after the qualifying exam(s). This is
| because the first year tends to be full of lab rotations and
| some classes, and you don't really start doing research until
| nine months in.
| jenny91 wrote:
| This is really good and I've saved it to revisit it later. Very
| concrete and insightful. Unlike a lot of meta-posts about PhDs
| that tend to be pretty watered down or abstract.
| austinjp wrote:
| All true. I learned about topic sentences only recently, I wish
| I'd heard of them years ago!
|
| I'll add something else I have realised:
|
| Your Gantt chart is not for you.
|
| I hate Gantt charts - they're out of date the second they're
| created; they take too long to update; there's very little decent
| free software for them that everyone uses; etc etc.
|
| But your supervisor will probably want to see one. Or your
| funder, or examiners, and so on.
|
| That's the point: sometimes you just gotta transform information
| into the format that's expected. From your perspective it may be
| easier to say "I've completed task X but task Y will drag on for
| another two weeks" than it is to update a spreadsheet and render
| a Gantt chart, attach it to an email and stick it in a shared
| drive. But from the supervisor/funder/examiner perspective, they
| need a way to very rapidly assimilate complex detail and spot
| problems.
|
| A lot of academia is about clear communication of complex
| material. Your supervisor probably has several students, as well
| multiple projects of their own, teaching duties, management
| duties, and so on. Your Gantt chart is for them, not for you!
|
| Simple and obvious in hindsight, but it really helps me put aside
| the grinding resentment I feel whenever it comes to updating a
| Gantt chart :)
| pezzana wrote:
| Missing from this actionable survey is the skill of answering
| questions that haven't yet been answered in the secondary
| literature (books, reviews) or even primary literature
| (journals). This is, of course, what research and a PhD is all
| about in the end.
|
| In my experience, this fact was the #1 reason why some peers
| dropped out of PhD programs. They joined expecting a continuation
| of undergraduate education, which consists largely of
| recapitulating what appears in the secondary literature. Instead,
| what they got in graduate school was the expectation that they
| would be producing the primary literature. That's a very
| different game.
|
| It was a game these peers discovered they hated playing. Nothing
| in college can prepare you for the isolation of spending your
| time becoming the world's expert on a narrow technical topic.
| Your usual reinforcement mechanisms of approval from family and
| friends gives way to slight comprehension at best. Then there is
| all of the alone time doing research requires. But I suspect the
| hardest part of all is the seemingly endless lineup of dead ends
| and false hope. Not only is success not assured, you often have
| no idea whether the result will have any utility even if you
| succeed.
|
| Then, just when you've gotten the hang of this finding answers
| game you discover that the real expectation is to be the one who
| formulates good questions. The kinds of questions that, although
| they will certainly involve dead ends, will ultimately pay off in
| some meaningful way. Very little in a bachelor's prepares you for
| doing this. It's a hard-won skill that comes from a round or two
| (or three or four) of months (or years) spent answering questions
| that nobody cares about. A lot hinges on your relationship with
| your advisor on this one.
|
| The PhD isn't just a bachelors degree but harder. It's a
| completely different animal. The skills in this article are very
| useful toward that end. But there's a lot more to the story when
| it comes to skills for finding answers to those unanswered
| questions, and formulating worthwhile questions without answers.
|
| The benefit of all of this work and discomfort is that you come
| away with the ability to answer worthwhile questions that haven't
| yet been answered. And that's a highly transferrable and
| applicable skill.
| OccamsRazr wrote:
| And this makes everything else in the survey easier. Topic
| sentences and presentation skills are useful but most important
| is having something original and substantial to say. The rest
| follows and is easy by comparison.
| mizzao wrote:
| > The benefit of all of this work and discomfort is that you
| come away with the ability to answer worthwhile questions that
| haven't yet been answered. And that's a highly transferrable
| and applicable skill.
|
| This is why I have come to see that PhDs can in some cases make
| excellent founders. Source: CS PhD turned founder ;-)
| tchalla wrote:
| > In my experience, this fact was the #1 reason why some peers
| dropped out of PhD programs. They joined expecting a
| continuation of undergraduate education, which consists largely
| of recapitulating what appears in the secondary literature.
| Instead, what they got in graduate school was the expectation
| that they would be producing the primary literature. That's a
| very different game.
|
| Hit the nail on the head. I would like to add one point though
| - it's not just the unanswered questions, one sometimes doesn't
| even know which questions are unanswered.
|
| Typically, up until a Ph.D - you are given a question and then
| asked for an answer which more often than not exists. Suddenly,
| in a Ph.D - not only do you not know the answer, you don't know
| the question too. The craft to come up with an important
| question, create a well-defined scope and then answer the
| question from different perspectives is the heart of a Ph.D
| program. The true skill is the ability to "learn to learn". The
| transferrable skill is to probe around for questions which are
| important, define them and then go ahead to answer them.
| tasogare wrote:
| From my experience failing my PhD it's not so simple. The
| head of my lab have a bunch of topics he want to (make other
| people under him) investigate, sometimes really precise. One
| of the PhD student literally got his thesis question handed
| down after an experimented researcher worked on it for 6
| months. Other like me had to found one themselves. It's
| obvious that the first student got a head start of about a
| year. The irony is he is now in difficulty writing his
| thesis, despite having published the required number of
| papers, which is not too surprising since he didn't get the
| problematic by himself.
| jjdredd wrote:
| Wow, those who could find their own research topic were
| lucky. I've never seen anyone in my environment get that
| much freedom. The supervisor sets the problem and the
| student must solve it.
|
| Edit: I was under the impression that even the postdocs are
| hired for a specific task.
| rabbits77 wrote:
| I recall the same things. I remember being bitterly envious
| of students that seemingly were given topics to examine
| while I had to spin my wheels for a good year or two coming
| up with my own ideas to explore.
|
| Looking back my perspective is very different. First of
| all, my ideas generated a minor spike in publications for
| the lab all centered around my work. After I graduated I
| continued to advise new students to continue what I
| started.
|
| I now think in these teems, which might sound cynical but
| simply reflect the vicious nature of academia.
| 1. The students given topics, the ones I was jealous of,
| all kind of sucked. They were given topics to advance a
| short term goal and gtfo. It may seem paradoxical or cruel
| but a savvy advisor will maximize both short term and long
| term gains. I was a long term bet, the others were short
| term plays. 2. I benefitted greatly from being
| forced to identify my own topics. This is the one skill
| that I use every single day. Every hour of every day. As
| time goes on the ability to evaluate ideas deeply and with
| some speed effectively defines what it is I do for a
| living. 3. Students given topics were cheated
| out of more valuable long term skills for the lab's short
| term gains. This is not always universally true, of course.
| Some super stars really can crank through a deep serious
| topic quickly and continue on to generate novel research if
| their own. One such person may appear in a university
| department once every ten or twenty years, they are
| extraordinarily rare. 4. I was well aware of
| the exploitive nature of grad school, did it anyway with a
| clear head for what I wanted to get out of it and my only
| disappointments came from when I giddily let my guard down
| and expected more than what I already realized would be
| forthcoming. A specific example, my advisor would use my
| conference paper acceptances to fund their own personal
| travel and vacations; I was not allowed to present my own
| first author papers. Silently tolerating that sort of
| bullshit, in part, allowed me to graduate.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _A specific example, my advisor would use my conference
| paper acceptances to fund their own personal travel and
| vacations; I was not allowed to present my own first
| author papers._ "
|
| That's really very bad. Learning to present to your peers
| is an important part of the process, as is getting your
| name and face out in the field.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Wow, not being allowed to present your own first author
| paper is pretty bad - unless someone else contributed a
| lot of the work and was made second author + presented?
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Suddenly, in a Ph.D - not only do you not know the answer,
| you don't know the question too.
|
| Mirroring what tasogare said: There are a lot of research
| professors who will not give you the flexibility of finding
| the question. They often are paying you to be an RA, and will
| want you to work on _their_ topics, not yours.
|
| This may vary per discipline. In the circles I was in, this
| was the norm, though. Some professors were open to you
| choosing your own topic, but the "contract" was similar: If
| they are funding your research, then you should work on your
| own topic "on your own time".
| yt-sdb wrote:
| I'd frame it this way: a good senior researcher knows when
| to give a junior researcher the question or not. First-year
| grad student? Pair them off with a postdoc for fast
| iterating on an established project. Fourth-year grad
| student? Push them by letting them flounder a bit and learn
| to find their own questions.
|
| I agree that in practice, this simply varies a lot by
| discipline and advisor.
| tchalla wrote:
| I know what you and tasogare refer to and I've seen it
| happen. I had to fight to change my thesis topic 3 times
| and also change advisors. Of course, it is not simple.
|
| I wouldn't change anything from my initial comment though.
| Flexibility is not binary - it's a gray scale. If you have
| ZERO flexibility, you should accept the implication that
| such a Ph.D will be stripped of some valuable lessons. On
| the other hand, you can always decide to not do it and move
| to a different professor. You could also decide if the
| broad area is ok with you before you take an admission to a
| lab.
| mcguire wrote:
| This is all completely true.
|
| " _Then, just when you 've gotten the hang of this finding
| answers game you discover that the real expectation is to be
| the one who formulates good questions._"
|
| And that is where I personally failed.
|
| On the other hand, there's that _funny moment..._
|
| One of the things I've heard repeatedly from pilots is that
| first solo flight changes everything. Before that, you're just
| some human. Afterwards, you are some human _who can fly._
| Everything is somehow different, although I 've never seen
| anyone really successfully describe how. I suspect it's
| different for everyone. But then I'm not a pilot.
|
| In your dissertation defense, someone whose knowledge and
| intelligence you respect immensely will ask a difficult
| question. When you answer that question confidently and to
| their satisfaction, the world is a different place. For one
| thing, you're no longer student and teacher; you are peers. But
| that's not all it is.
| jiggunjer wrote:
| Those dead ends are negative results. While not easily
| publishable they can form the bulk of a thesis. Many people get
| demotivated because they treat a thesis like a journal
| publication. I, for one, was glad I finally didn't need to sex
| up the language to convince some editor.
| mybrid wrote:
| YMMV. What I learned from experience that I already knew from
| education is that absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is a
| real tension when picking a graduate school. Do you go with the
| topic of interest and a tyrant? Or do you pick an amenable
| advisor that's in a different research field? I guess one can get
| lucky and find both but that wasn't an option the year I applied.
| The thing about graduate schools and research domains is that
| there a typically only a handful of choices if one is lucky. The
| other thing I learned is graduate schools never admit absolute
| power corrupts absolutely and when one points that out one is
| immediately ostracized. Go along to get along should be a sign
| over ever graduate schools doorway. Or dog eat dog.
| edu wrote:
| This is really good advice, with actionable tips for once. Bravo!
| evancoop wrote:
| The "lead or be led" trope is apt, and certainly became the
| paradigm of my doctoral years. I might, however, amend this
| slightly. There's another idea of going rogue too soon or too
| late (https://matt.might.net/articles/ways-to-fail-a-phd/).
|
| Students, new employees, and other inexperienced folks need to be
| led initially, and then rapidly, transition into a self-directed
| paradigm. Success emerges if and only if the advisor and student
| recognize the need for this transition at a similar moment. The
| alternative is either the student who runs down rabbit holes
| repeatedly despite being guided elsewhere (those students tend to
| at least get SOMETHING done and while they take forever to
| graduate, do find some interesting results along the way) or the
| student who after a couple years is still just reading papers and
| waiting to be told what to do (these students often fail outright
| as advisors get fed up with the hand-holding).
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