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Lessons from my PhD

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Re: Lessons from my PhD

#21

Post by OccamsRazr »

pezzana wrote: post #16

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 con…

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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#22

Post by simonbarker87 »

DrBazza wrote: post #19
simonbarker87 wrote: post #6

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 thes…

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.

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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#23

Post by tchalla »

pezzana wrote: post #16

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 con…

> 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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#24

Post by tchalla »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #6

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 thes…

> 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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#25

Post by bluenose69 »

ivansavz wrote: post #11
bluenose69 wrote: post #8

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.)

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.

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}

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#26

Post by evancoop »

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).

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#27

Post by tasogare »

tchalla wrote: post #23
pezzana wrote: post #16

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 con…

> 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 l…

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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#28

Post by schoolornot »

cyberlurker wrote: post #14

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 an…

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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#29

Post by rgrmrts »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #22
DrBazza wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 i…

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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#30

Post by andreyk »

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.

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