[HN Gopher] The unexpected poetry of PhD acknowledgements
___________________________________________________________________
The unexpected poetry of PhD acknowledgements
Author : zsrobinson
Score : 320 points
Date : 2024-07-17 17:44 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (science.anu.edu.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (science.anu.edu.au)
| cratermoon wrote:
| The design is nicely done, too. I expected something very
| academic, this was interactive.
| pc86 wrote:
| I'd imagine there was a way to do this without completely
| hijacking scrolling between cards, though. Perhaps it was just
| loading additional content slowly due to HN traffic, but with
| the majority being text it should probably all be loaded up
| front anyway.
| navane wrote:
| I think it broke on my phone, perhaps as it lost interest,
| but that made the site a nice 1.0 experience.
| ethan801 wrote:
| I also often find myself reading the acknowledgments whenever I
| read a thesis (though I try to save it for the end as a reward
| for myself).
|
| If anyone is interested. At Harvard, most Ph.D programs submit to
| DASH, meaning that you should be able to read any non-embargoed
| thesis from the past 10 or so years at
| https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/4927603/browse?type=dateis...
| bzhang255 wrote:
| _Acknowledgements have a quality which is hard to describe.
|
| They feel like they've been drafted a hundred times in the head
| of the author, but then put down on the page in a hurry, the
| clock ticking on their deadline.
|
| Like, they're trying to tell you the most important thing they've
| ever said - at the very moment the ship is pulling away from the
| dock._
|
| A lovely read. I also have an affinity for dissertation
| acknowledgements and I think this entire piece really captures
| why they feel so special :)
| mturk wrote:
| My now-spouse, then-new-SO, proofread my thesis for grammar,
| clarity, etc. At the time, I had written my acknowledgments, but
| after the proofreading, I added a thanks to her to it at the end
| just before submitting it and finalizing it.
|
| But, I was a bit careless, and my post-proofreading addition,
| designed to thank her for improving and checking my grammar, ...
| was a sentence fragment.
| euroderf wrote:
| Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ?
| mauvehaus wrote:
| It's always the late additions that get you. Our wedding favor
| to our guests was a cookbook of recipes we collected with the
| RSVPs[0]. About the last thing I added was an About the Recipes
| page which included the following paragraph:
|
| We have edited recipes for length and for typographic
| consistency, but we've done a bad job of it. This is in part
| because we did much of the editing with a drink in one hand; if
| we hadn't it never would have gotten done. We hope that we've
| successfully retained the color and character you put into the
| recipe while making the finished cookbook look at least
| somewhat consistent _rhoughout_.
|
| [0] I cannot begin to describe how much work this was. If
| you're reading this and thinking "how lovely", you've been
| warned.
| gerdesj wrote:
| Would you mind sharing that fragment?
|
| I'm a 53 year old en_GB speaker and writer and long term owner
| of a copy of "Usage and abusage: A Guide to Good English" and
| long ago decided to boot the bloody thing into the long grass.
|
| You and I (and every other interaction involving English)
| decide how English is spoken or written. At least Partridge
| uses the term "guide" for his treatise. There is no such thing
| as a pure English, finely polished and honed to a razor edge
| and delivered with equanimity. I think the best we can all hope
| for is to be mutually understood.
|
| Given all that, I don't think I've ever heard of a "sentence
| fragment". It sounds like a grammar sin, probably funded by the
| lower circles of hell. I attended several very posh schools in
| the UK as well as the standard education system hereabouts and
| I don't recall that term being used. Perhaps I was asleep at
| the time.
|
| I've done a quick search and this is dreadfully fluffy:
| https://www.grammarly.com/blog/mistake-of-the-month-sentence...
|
| I'd love to hear what "sentence fragment" really means: to whom
| and why.
| leplen wrote:
| English sentences need a subject and a verb. Often a sentence
| fragment missing a verb (like this).
| BlackFly wrote:
| What nonsense!
|
| That is probably the better example of a perfectly good
| sentence fragment. There are many others in spoken English.
| zogrodea wrote:
| I'm inclined to agree with your sentiment, but the
| example given doesn't quite sit right with me.
|
| "Often a sentence fragment missing a verb (like this)."
|
| vs
|
| "Often a sentence fragment _is_ missing a verb (like
| this). "
|
| We still have short sentences which seem to make sense
| without a verb. Is the following grammatically incorrect?
| "Hello there!"
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| "Spoken English" being the key phrase there; if you use
| spoken English in a formal document or letter, it may
| reflect poorly on you.
|
| Comment sections on the internets - and acknowledgements
| - are a bit milder on those grammar rules I'm sure.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| That's only intellible if I think you're a native speaker
| of a pro-drop language where the copulative is dropped.
| Because of the structure of the English, it is ambiguous
| what "missing" here is appositional to, since participial
| forms in pro-drop languages are usually conjugated
| according to their case, number, and gender (at least among
| the Indo-European languages), so I can't tell if the
| fragment is missing a sentence or if the verb is missing a
| fragment (or other, numerous possible interpretations).
|
| Its not a bad thing to be wrong, since, when it comes to
| expression, one can never be right. But it is still better
| to know the best way to _be_ wrong, a wrong way that
| _cannot be made right_. And then you yourself will have
| created something entirely new.
| cratermoon wrote:
| This sentence no verb.
| NeoTar wrote:
| Possibly you may have come across it under the term an
| 'incomplete sentence' - as others have stated, it's a set of
| words which don't form a complete thought.
|
| I'm also a en_gb speaker, and I'd never heard of the term
| until my teen years using the Microsoft Word grammar checker.
| mturk wrote:
| Sure -- the other comments have done a good job of explaining
| my usage of "sentence fragment" (which was what we referred
| to it as in my composition classes in high school, although I
| now see this may have been more colloquial than I realized)
| but the fragment in question was of the form:
|
| "A special thanks to [name] for [carefully proofreading]."
|
| What really got me is that I probably even thought I had
| written "goes to" or something, since that (with the verb) is
| the type of construction I often use!
| 2143 wrote:
| As a non-native speaker, I have no idea what's wrong with
| the sentence (fragment?) you wrote.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| When removing extraneous modifiers, it takes the form of
| "[article] [subject]" -- "A thanks."
|
| Similar constructions would be "A cucumber." "The house."
|
| It's a fragment, not a complete sentence, because it
| lacks a predicate. Had GP included the word "goes" as
| discussed, it would've created a predicate.
|
| > predicates are a necessary part of English sentence
| structure [0]
|
| [0] https://www.grammarly.com/blog/predicate/
| Loughla wrote:
| That is delicious.
|
| I'm absolutely certain that she loved it. I would've. That's
| too funny not to.
| klooney wrote:
| The scheme shell acknowledgements really break up the monotony
|
| https://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html
| thefaux wrote:
| Even if meant as satire, I find these disturbing.
| a_e_k wrote:
| There's also the funding acknowledgement in the YOLO v3 tech
| report (https://pjreddie.com/media/files/papers/YOLOv3.pdf):
|
| > But maybe a better question is: "What are we going to do with
| these detectors now that we have them?" A lot of the people
| doing this research are at Google and Facebook. I guess at
| least we know the technology is in good hands and definitely
| won't be used to harvest your personal information and sell it
| to.... wait, you're saying that's exactly what it will be used
| for?? Oh.
|
| > Well the other people heavily funding vision research are the
| military and they've never done anything horrible like killing
| lots of people with new technology oh wait....[1]
|
| > [1] The author is funded by the Office of Naval Research and
| Google.
| markus92 wrote:
| At my faculty, we always "joked" that the acknowledgements were
| the most read section of any thesis. First thing everyone did
| when they got handed a new thesis was looking to see who was
| mentioned in the acknowledgements.
|
| (we joked about it, but there's a grain of truth to it. the
| chapters themselves were usually published long ago already and
| only people in your specific field would care about them
| anyways).
| jimbokun wrote:
| "And thank you for picking up the slack with house chores
| whenever I was bogged down with lab work - I know I was the
| reason you bought that Roomba. Lauren Harrison
|
| Sex and conflict: How competition shapes reproduction, behaviour
| and life-histories in various animals (2022)"
|
| Pretty funny juxtaposition of thesis title and acknowledgment.
| dunham wrote:
| It's not a thesis, but one of my favorite acknowledgements is
| from Bob Atkey's paper on quantitative type theory (which assigns
| quantities of 0, 1, or o to types):
|
| > This work is dedicated to Orwell the dog. Orwell was a good dog
| and knew well the difference between zero, one, and many.
|
| https://bentnib.org/quantitative-type-theory.pdf
| mncharity wrote:
| I always looked forward to the acknowledgements at the end of
| thesis defenses, in biology at MIT and Harvard. Different fields
| have _very_ different defense cultures. Most have brief
| acknowledgements. Biology... had an art form. The audience is
| friends and family. Associated labs turn out in support. The
| format is tiled photo slides. I 've seen thanks to inspiring
| teachers, by name, from kindergarten to graduate. Pets, childhood
| and current. A stuffed animal. SO's and spouses. Children
| existing and pending. Family immediate and extended, alive and
| missed. Lab mates, friends, colleagues. And their assorted group
| adventures, road trips, and hijinks. Hobbies and communities.
| Staff, collaborators, advisors, committee. Brief tales of trials
| and tribulations, in research and in life.
|
| The stories of group fun strike me as the biggest delta vis TFA.
| And stories in general. Plus the tears. And the interesting slips
| - "... to thank my husband, <name of professor not husband,
| oops>".
|
| The defenses were recorded, but distribution was usually limited.
| I've thought they might be great things to somehow share with
| younger students, contemplating college or graduate school. Being
| able to see people like themselves, coming out the other end.
| Having had a blast with friends along the way. There's a tension
| between intimacy and broadcast. Perhaps someday we can start
| scavenging older ones?
|
| I so miss surfing defences and research talks. :/
| jvanderbot wrote:
| My favorite paragraph I ever wrote was my acknowledgement
| intro: I thought when I finished this
| dissertation I would feel great. As in large or
| capable significantly above the average amount. Completing a
| project like this over five years is not something I
| can attribute to my own abilities. Any milestone is
| the sum of the individual decisions that led to it and when I
| look at the amount of guidance, encouragement, patience, and
| downright goading that it took to make the decisions
| that led to this point, I feel only gratitude.
|
| I was definitely the black sheep in grad school though.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| Greatness is measured in qaulity, not qauntity
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Luckily I had neither - so I had humility by force.
| mncharity wrote:
| The "Scientists react to their PhD acknowledgements" video[1] at
| the bottom is brief (6 m) and sweet.
|
| [1] https://science.anu.edu.au/news-events/videos/scientists-
| rea...
| LolWolf wrote:
| This is very cute :)
|
| Definitely one of my favorite parts to read of any thesis are the
| acknowledgements. It's often a time to lower the "fancy academic"
| mask and really see the human behind the writing; something
| essentially impossible with the dressed-up writing of many
| disciplines!
|
| I believe the first part of my own acknowledgements began with:
| "There are only a few interesting things in this thesis. Out of
| all of them, this section might be the most important."
|
| To this day, this is still true!
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| But there wouldn't be the "human" without the mask...perhaps
| even humanity is a mask
| LolWolf wrote:
| Sure, it's all a mask, but there's something more "real"
| behind the acknowledgements in a very distinct way than the
| editorialized writing of an scientific article. (Using quotes
| here as these things are deliberately fuzzy!)
| epaulson wrote:
| About two weeks I came across this tweet, from a PhD candidate
| just finishing up:
|
| https://x.com/CharityWoodrum/status/1808313627864440930
|
| "For Woody and Jayson Thomas. From the local universe to the
| first galaxies, the brightest moments in space and time occurred
| during our brief epoch together. That light is unquenchable."
|
| She had gone back to school as an adult to study physics, she was
| just finishing up her undergrad when her husband and child were
| swept away by a wave while walking on the beach.
|
| She kept on with school and is about to finish her Ph.D. I just
| can't comprehend how. https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/ua-
| doctoral-candidate-in...
| cratermoon wrote:
| Someone is cutting onions
| ramenbytes wrote:
| It's a terrible day for rain.
| ramenbytes wrote:
| For those like myself wondering how a regular wave could do
| this, the article says it was something colloquially termed a
| "sneaker wave." Like a rogue wave, but on the shoreline. It
| also sounds like they _all_ got hit by the wave, and only
| Charity survived.
|
| Edit: National Weather article on Sneaker Waves:
| https://www.weather.gov/safety/sneaker-waves
|
| Apparently the cold water and other complications make things
| worse.
| lqet wrote:
| Thank you, never heard of this. It sounds terrifying.
|
| > Sneaker waves appear suddenly on a coastline and without
| warning; generally, it is not obvious that they are larger
| than other waves until they break and suddenly surge up a
| beach. A sneaker wave can occur following a period of 10 to
| 20 minutes of gentle, lapping waves. Upon arriving, a sneaker
| wave can surge more than 150 feet (50 m) beyond the foam
| line, rushing up a beach with great force.
|
| > The force of a sneaker wave's surge and the large volume of
| water rushing far up a beach is enough to suddenly submerge
| people thigh- or waist-deep, knock them off their feet, and
| drag them into the ocean
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneaker_wave
| danbruc wrote:
| The second one in this video [1].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84EQv6_91dU
| lqet wrote:
| My god, just 2 or 3 seconds later and the person filming
| this would've been swept away for good.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Very common on the west coast... I recommend having any kids
| playing on an ocean beach to wear a life jacket, and adults
| too unless they are, say, very experienced reading waves and
| swimming long distances in the ocean.
| agubelu wrote:
| > They feel like they've been drafted a hundred times in the head
| of the author, but then put down on the page in a hurry, the
| clock ticking on their deadline.
|
| This is so spot on it hurts. The acknowledgements in my own
| thesis were drafted and re-drafted over and over in my head for
| months, and then written down the day before submission.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Not to take away from these legit ones, but it surprises me that
| some of the recent plagiarism cases included people who
| plagiarized their acknowledgements. Like really?
| kirrent wrote:
| My housemate during our honours year had large portions of his
| thesis plagarised by the student who took over his work
| afterwards. We were surprised to discover that of all the
| lifted sections it was the acknowledgements that had the
| highest proportion of copying! I found this doubly funny
| because, compared to the adroit technical writing in the rest
| of the thesis, my friend's acknowledgement seemed florid and
| overwritten to me. It's a truly fascinating phenomenon.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I mean, if they plagiarized the paper it's only right to thank
| the people who helped the original version, no?
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| You are correct.
| onli wrote:
| My PhD acknowledgements I found to be stressful. So much
| expectations for a few words, so many different ways of writing
| these. And how to know what tone was the right one for this
| occasion, in a university of a country still not my own, with a
| field not directly defined and thus not a clear influence even
| from there? Worse, the flowery style common in many of the thesis
| I saw just did not feel right, I wouldn't write like that ever.
|
| I was very happy when I found a PhD thesis which made it
| different. It wrote, in french:
|
| Acknowledgements
|
| [the list of people]
|
| find here my most severe gratitude.
|
| That felt clear, honest and fitting. I copied that one.
|
| Maybe that was one of the older styles mentioned in the articles.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| For some reason, that made me weepy.
| aardvarks wrote:
| When I was trying to choose a PhD supervisor one of the things I
| did was read through recent grads' acknowledgments. While no one
| ever mentioned their advisor with anything but gracious words,
| you could get a pretty good idea of what working with that
| faculty member was like.
| palad1n wrote:
| These are surprisingly beautiful, poetic. They reflect what I
| think would be the best of the humanity that we have, anywhere
| and everywhere. I thank the collector of these for some brief
| moments in the music of others' lives.
| alekseiprokopev wrote:
| I was at first surprised that people thank God in the
| acknowledgements. Then remembered what PhD students go through.
| jszymborski wrote:
| It might be a bit tasteless to be quoting ones own master's
| thesis, but I've always been a bit proud of my (embarrassingly
| long-winded and self-indulgent) acknowledgements.
|
| It begins with
|
| > "First and foremost, I'd like to thank the nameless stranger
| that is responsible for enforcing the deadline for the submission
| of this thesis; but for their unwavering absolutism this thesis
| would exist in a perpetual state of being nearly done. The rest
| follows in no particular order"
|
| And ends with
|
| > "Finally, this thesis is dedicated to the memory of the two
| laptops that gave up their magic smoke in the name of science and
| this thesis. To my Dell Studio 1555 and Asus Zenbook UXA1:
|
| > Do not go gentle into that goodnight
|
| > Rage, rage against the dying of the backlight"
|
| https://jszym.com/attachments/about/thesis.pdf
| yu3zhou4 wrote:
| sorry for out of topic: your surname reminded me of the great
| Polish poet, a Nobel laureate - Wislawa Szymborska
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wis%C5%82awa_Szymborska)
| bayindirh wrote:
| ...and I want to add a great video involving her: https://www
| .ted.com/talks/rives_the_museum_of_four_in_the_mo...
| jszymborski wrote:
| I've been told we're related, but I don't know my polish
| family well so it might be apocrypha.
| taneq wrote:
| > "First and foremost, I'd like to thank the nameless stranger
| that is responsible for enforcing the deadline...
|
| "I work best under pressure. In fact, I work only under
| pressure..."
| kgwgk wrote:
| Reminds me of what they say about composer Johann Sebastian
| Mastropiero:
|
| << Whenever -due to economic necessity- Mastropiero was
| forced to compose music by request or commission, produced
| mediocre and inexpressive works. On the contrary, when he
| only obeyed his inspiration, he never wrote a note. >>
| igleria wrote:
| wtf leslu on HN!
| zogrodea wrote:
| This made me think of part of RG Collingwood's Autobiography,
| when he spoke of growing up while many around him were
| artists of one kind or another.
|
| "During the same years I was constantly watching the work of
| my father and mother, and the other professional painters who
| frequented their house, and constantly trying to imitate them
| ; so that I learned to think of a picture not as a finished
| product exposed for the admiration of virtuosi, but as the
| visible record, lying about the house, of an attempt to solve
| a definite problem in painting, so far as the attempt has
| gone.
|
| I learned what some critics and aestheticians never know to
| the end of their lives, that no 'work of art' is ever
| finished, so that in that sense of the phrase there is no
| such thing as a 'work of art' at all. Work ceases upon the
| picture or manuscript, not because it is finished, but
| because sending-in day is at hand, or because the printer is
| clamorous for copy, or because 'I am sick of working at this
| thing' or 'I can't see what more I can do to it'."
| boarnoah wrote:
| > It might be a bit tasteless to be quoting ones own master's
| thesis
|
| Eh, its something you poured a fairly significant portion of
| your life into?
|
| You best brag about it whenever you get the chance :P
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Read it again in ten years and judge if you still find it
| witty. If you still do, I preemptively applaud your self
| confidence.
| jszymborski wrote:
| It's been 7 since I wrote it. I still appreciate it, if not
| on its own merits, for being an honest expression of who I
| was at the time and how its led to who I am now.
|
| I think concerning oneself too much about how things will be
| perceived in the future like that is a good way to kill off
| most honest self-expression.
| soVeryTired wrote:
| I finished my PhD thesis with a quote [0] from Hunter S.
| Thompson.
|
| [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/293779-take-it-from-me-
| ther...
| dri_ft wrote:
| Still top of the list for me is Olin Shivers' 1994
| acknowledgements to his scsh project:
|
| >Who should I thank? My so-called ``colleagues,'' who laugh at me
| behind my back, all the while becoming famous on my work? My
| worthless graduate students, whose computer skills appear to be
| limited to downloading bitmaps off of netnews? My parents, who
| are still waiting for me to quit ``fooling around with
| computers,'' go to med school, and become a radiologist? My
| department chairman, a manager who gives one new insight into and
| sympathy for disgruntled postal workers?
|
| >My God, no one could blame me -- no one! -- if I went off the
| edge and just lost it completely one day. I couldn't get through
| the day as it is without the Prozac and Jack Daniels I keep on
| the shelf, behind my Tops-20 JSYS manuals. I start getting the
| shakes real bad around 10am, right before my advisor meetings. A
| 10 oz. Jack 'n Zac helps me get through the meetings without one
| of my students winding up with his severed head in a bowling-ball
| bag. They look at me funny; they think I twitch a lot. I'm not
| twitching. I'm controlling my impulse to snag my 9mm Sig-Sauer
| out from my day-pack and make a few strong points about the
| quality of undergraduate education in Amerika.
|
| >If I thought anyone cared, if I thought anyone would even be
| reading this, I'd probably make an effort to keep up appearances
| until the last possible moment. But no one does, and no one will.
| So I can pretty much say exactly what I think.
|
| >Oh, yes, the _acknowledgements_. I think not. I did it. I did it
| all, by myself.
|
| https://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html
| gtpedrosa wrote:
| On my master's thesis, I ended up using a line that I wrote when
| preparing the template at the beginning of my 'journey': "I thank
| everyone who contributed to making this work possible." By the
| end of the master's program, I didn't feel the need to update it,
| as it remained true to me. I felt that if someone was going to
| read that section, they would immediately identify themselves
| there, and I didn't have to name them.
| Sesse__ wrote:
| My favorite PhD dedication:
|
| "To my surprise"
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| Strewth! This was brilliant. Thanks.
| seanhunter wrote:
| One of my favourite acknowledgements in a book is from "Proofs: A
| long-form mathematics textbook" by Jay Cummings[1]. Which as it
| sounds like is a maths textbook. Anyhow the acknowledgement
| reads: "To my loving wife, who read this
| entire book, apart from the math parts."
|
| [1] Which in my opinion is an excellent book if you want to learn
| how to read and do maths proofs btw.
| lukego wrote:
| Olin Shivers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2382531
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| What is the most famous PhD with a barebones acknowledgement?
| Thats a mic drop moment
| w10-1 wrote:
| Relatedly: I wish there was a practice of acknowledging when you
| give up.
|
| I've seen so many people just slink away from their PhD's,
| perhaps with a nominal masters, but always in some kind of
| defeat, without accepting or sorting out exactly why. That makes
| the experience dog them for a long time.
|
| People leaving should write an announcement. There should be a
| public acknowledgement, perhaps walking the gauntlet of those
| staying who nonetheless applaud your decision.
|
| We can't have venturing without a personally and socially
| positive way to manage venture failure and its aftermath.
| asah wrote:
| Great idea, I'll start!
|
| I leave (of absence, technically) this program with a lightness
| of heart and exhilaration at the next adventure in joining the
| rabid commercial world of a tech startup. I would like to
| acknowledge a great debt to everyone who helped me grow in
| these 4 years. Know that I will be a faithful alum, of lesser
| degree.
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