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Lessons from my PhD

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Re: Lessons from my PhD

#71

Post by tasogare »

ModernMech wrote: post #34
schoolornot wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to remain excited when so many professors don't prepare for lectures, teach outdated material, rely on question banks for exams, and play the part of ball-breakers.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 chapt…

> 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 gran…

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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#72

Post by ModernMech »

euroderf wrote: post #56
ModernMech wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 achi…

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?

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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#73

Post by gww »

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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#74

Post by pmyteh »

selimthegrim wrote: post #69
pmyteh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (financia…

>In Russia the equivalent isn't even called a PhD. Are you thinking of Candidat Nauk or habilitation?

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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#75

Post by rabbits77 »

tasogare wrote: post #27
tchalla wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Th…

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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#76

Post by Ostrogodsky »

zebraflask wrote: post #41
xab31 wrote: post #38

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…

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.

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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#77

Post by Ostrogodsky »

ta988 wrote: post #50
xab31 wrote: post #38

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…

This reflects my experience as well.

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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#78

Post by vkk8 »

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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#79

Post by anonymousDan »

vkk8 wrote: post #78

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…

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.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#80

Post by selimthegrim »

zebraflask wrote: post #41
xab31 wrote: post #38

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…

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.

>"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.

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