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Lessons from my PhD

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Re: Lessons from my PhD

#101

Post by [deleted] »

jpeloquin wrote: post #92
zebraflask wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#102

Post by graycat »

ModernMech wrote: post #67
graycat wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, ne…

I’m curious, who paid your tuition? Were you a TA for those two years?

I'm not sure just where the tuition came from. I was a TA for some of the time, but the duties were trivial. At one point a department prof confessed that the department had a lot more tuition scholarships than qualified grad student applications. Net, the university didn't much want to charge grad students for tuition.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#103

Post by lambdatronics »

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…

Spot on! I had the same misconception, but it worked out OK b/c I was motivated at least in part by curiosity. When you're curious, you ask enough questions to get to the edge of knowledge and then pose a novel question. If you enjoy the coursework purely b/c you like having nice tidy answers to everything, being at the edge is uncomfortable & research isn't for you. OTOH, in my PhD coursework, the HW questions were almost always solved ones where we just had to reproduce the steps to get the answer that was included in the question formulation; this burned much of my curiosity out by the time I was done.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#104

Post by xyzzyz »

skj wrote: post #96
mcguire wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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.

Yeah but it's a lot easier to not care.

Yeah, in corporate world, at least you're paid to not care, and can change jobs easily. In academia, you're paid shit, and changing labs is not nearly as easy.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#105

Post by lambdatronics »

jiggunjer wrote: post #62
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…

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.

> need to sex up the language to convince some editor.

I hated this pressure. I wrote up the core of my thesis as a manuscript for a second-tier journal, but my advisor though I had a shot at a first-tier publication. I disagreed, but I rewrote the paper anyway, and had to significantly rework/descope it. It ultimately wasn't accepted for the first-tier journal, so I rewrote it a second time for the original journal. The whole process was immensely frustrating (cat-herding coauthors, playing volleyball with editors/referees, trying to discern whether my concerns about overselling my results were legitimate issues of integrity vs. instances of imposter syndrome, ...).

I fell in love with the hard sciences because "reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." [Richard Feynman] Finding out how much PR is actually involved was hugely disillusioning.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#106

Post by lambdatronics »

teekert wrote: post #5

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 oppos…

>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.

Amen to that! It's better to have the discussion than to silently disagree (well, assuming your thesis advisor isn't a raging narcissist, and assuming you are sufficiently tactful about speaking up) because there's a chance you are mistaken & the feedback would be helpful.

>You may feel very bad after a year of messing around while the prof thinks you're doing well. Talk about these feelings.

Another one that I wish I had known (again, needs caveats about unhealthy advisors, though). It's easy to underestimate the scale of a task as a grad student (the devil is in the details), and to therefore bite off more than you can chew & feel guilty for choking.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#107

Post by lambdatronics »

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…

In my field (experimental plasma physics) the general convention is that the PI's name goes last on the paper, while the first author is the one who did the bulk of the work and wrote the manuscript, with the other coauthors usually playing small supporting roles.

This field also tends to have very large grants (~$10-100mn/yr) that support dozens of researchers, because of the large centralized facilities, so it's easier for students to have some self-direction.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#108

Post by lambdatronics »

th9283749238 wrote: post #43

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 e…

Yeah, this is great advice for undergraduates considering graduate applications. I lucked out with my supervisor in terms of his advising style (rather hands-off, which suited me), but I could have easily gotten stuck with a bad match. I picked the school, rather than the advisor, which I now realize wasn't the best way to go. [Edit: I will say that picking a school where there were multiple faculty to choose from in the topical area was a good decision, because that provides options.]

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#109

Post by lambdatronics »

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…

>People do research and write papers because they have to produce something measurable, not because the research they do is actually interesting or important.

Yes, so much of this. I think it's a direct consequence of your next point:

>I wanted to stay in academia so I couldn't take any risks.

That's how boring research gets prioritized.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#110

Post by lambdatronics »

gww wrote: post #73

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 ma…

Yeah, I have seen instances where it's the student's lack of drive/progress, the PI being unreasonable, the student's project was too ambitious, plain bad luck (lab equipment caught fire & destroyed), or time taken off for family considerations (child-birth, caring for ailing parents).

I graduated in 6 years (including 2 years of coursework), which was the mode (not the median, though) for my department. The distribution skewed to the long side, and 5 years was the shortest I can recall.

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