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I'm quitting my PhD

blog.derhagen.eu

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Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#31

Post by chrisseaton »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #16

I would love PhDs to be thought of as something you dive into when you have something to pursue, perhaps many years later in life rather than a follow on immediately after study. As a comparison imagine if VC funding only went to the highest scoring new grads and the business proposal was asked for after the invitation to take on VC funding. That's pretty much what's been happening with PhDs. You get the marks, you g…

PhD is an apprenticeship to do research. If we left it until later in life, we wouldn't have anyone trained to do research.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#32

Post by koksik202 »

The opening line about not having prior exposure before PhD is something that makes me wonder if author did have industry experience prior to this undertaking, there are application and network security hands-on problems that can be solved with quantum computing. I have zero practical experience with quantum computing myself but I can count at least 2-3 practical projects I could work on before starting PhD in that field. I wonder if the problem here is author going after PhD in the field without having an idea of what problem author can solve by using quantum computing experiments/projects. (instead of finding solution to problem, looking for problems and having time to experiment/research solutions.)

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#33

Post by soheil »

> studying the underlying Quantum Mechanics and understanding this new concept of how physical reality might look like under the hood (there are actually multiple interpretations of that, from Probabilism to the popular Many-World-Theory) has been eye-opening.

> I was asked to find something that does not require so much understanding of Quantum Computing

Sounds like QM was a new subject to you and you didn't know/understand QM enough to do research in an adjacent field. Not sure why you'd pick a field that you don't have much background in to do a PhD in. I'm not sure what advice you expected your supervisors to give.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#34

Post by selimthegrim »

sdfhdhjdw3 wrote: post #20

I'm someone who finished a PhD, here's my perspective. You don't believe your supervisor or your research group and so you quit, great. It's great that you have the critical thinking abilities and confidence in yourself to make such a decision. However, I think it's extremely unprofessional to write a blog post saying that your supervisor is superficial or your research group is performative art. I don't say this bec…

You finished a PhD, you should know how much weight his accusations would be given seeing as he isn’t a professor. I kept my mouth shut when I heard my co-advisor was badmouthing my other co-advisor’s research and the result was the committee blowing up at the prospectus. Sometimes it pays to be proactive.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#35

Post by joshvm »

chrisseaton wrote: post #4

> I started my PhD in Quantum Computing. Even though I basically didn’t have any previous knowledge about it How does this happen?

It can happen both ways. My PhD ended up being a computer vision project and while I could program better than most new grad students I didn't have any significant experience with image processing, visual geometry or CV (or ML for that matter). I did know that going in, but at the time I was more interested in working on instrumentation (which I got to do as well). As a PostDoc I flipped the other way, after a couple of years in industry I joined a group where I brought some specific expertise to the group that they didn't have. Good strategy for getting work in my experience.

This is fairly normal: you get some funding to do a project and you have to hire someone with experience, though in this case the PIs were experts in the domain of application. That's reasonably common for cross-discipline projects, but in this case you really have to trust that your hires know what they're doing and you need to be able to assess their work without deep knowledge of the techniques used.

PhDs can be absurdly specific and many are complex enough that you can't really study them until grad school. Many universities don't teach quantum computing, but as a physicist it's probably assumed you have enough of a background to understand the material.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#37

Post by pvaldes »

What I see here is mostly fear to failure. Fear about "not keeping the high standard level that should define myself". Fear about being perceived as a mediocre scientist saying incorrect things.

This is wrong. Let me tell you a thing. Nobody will cares. Not-one-single people will care about your mind image.

1-Feeling depressed or having doubts in some point of the process of writing your thesis is more common than you think

2-Run, reset and try in a different field will not be easier, it will be more difficult. It always is.

3-Closures provide a lot of peace of mind. Finish your thesis and then move your mind to greener pastures. A not perfect thesis about a poor known theme, is better than none.

So, just keep working and do your best effort. Most people never receive a Nobel in any case and what people could think about you, is not so relevant as you think. In the end, you will be the expert in quantum computing, not them.

Remember also that any error slipped in your these can be fixed later. Science is not written in stone. We fall and we learn. Scientists are expected to commit honest mistakes.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#38

Post by Emma_Goldman »

> "Aiming to produce PDF files that would be accepted at conferences (which seems to be easy-going if you sprinkle some fancy quantum vocabulary over something and hand it in to a non-quantum conference). I felt less and less comfortable in a setting that apparently expected me to pick some low-hanging – let’s call it fruits – and call it a day. After all, science is all about the pursuit of knowledge, even though the incentives of research funding might not be entirely aligned with that"

This is broadly similar to my experience. The priority of most academics is not to produce deep, novel, and creative work. It is to churn out sausages in the shapes favoured by journals, at a factory production rate. That's what they have to do for their career. After a while, though, they start to be unable to tell the difference between the two.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#39

Post by selimthegrim »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #16

I would love PhDs to be thought of as something you dive into when you have something to pursue, perhaps many years later in life rather than a follow on immediately after study. As a comparison imagine if VC funding only went to the highest scoring new grads and the business proposal was asked for after the invitation to take on VC funding. That's pretty much what's been happening with PhDs. You get the marks, you g…

If you or your PI have a grant the proposal and the VC funding should be taken care of and linked

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#40

Post by dahart »

hardware2win wrote: post #6

Why higher edu institutions are so disappointing and mediocre? I dont think ive ever heard good things about phd except the chance to work in cool places like e.g microsoft research

FWIW, I’m surrounded by PhDs who love research, loved their time doing PhDs, and some of whom loved working at Microsoft Research. I work in computer graphics.

One good thing about a PhD is you get several years to explore a topic of interest to you in great depth. (As long has you have a decently good advisor.) Another good thing about a research PhD is that in addition to getting experience publishing papers, you go through the process of writing a book sized thesis, which is valuable experience in a lot of ways - skills transfer to publishing and reporting in any field.

On an intellectually superficial but economically important level, another good thing about a PhD is that people who have advanced degrees earn on average 50% more than (1.5x) people without advanced degrees. This is in the US at least, according to data published by the US Fed.

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