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Ask YC: How to survive grad school?

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Re: Ask YC: How to survive grad school?

#31

Post by mechanical_fish »

lallysingh wrote: post #24
davi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice gem from the 'Yegge-esque'ness: "Consider the delightful personal pleasures that crackpottery has to offer."

How many of us haven't considered a small lair, a few minions, and a doomsday device before?

You know, I've worked in labs which employed actual minions and actual doomsday devices (well, maybe not, but they were more than deadly enough to destroy all of us minions if something went wrong) ... and the excitement wears off. Eventually you stop being awed by the doomsday device and start being annoyed that its repair bills are so high and that you have to keep filling it with liquid nitrogen in the middle of the night.

Whereas putting something together in your garage from flea-market parts has a certain pleasure all its own.

Re: Ask YC: How to survive grad school?

#32

Post by keefe »

I hope I'm not repeating something others have said, but I am at work and unable to read all the detailed replies (: I was in a PhD program and decided to leave after finishing my MSc, a decision I now somewhat regret. My advice to you is that if you are to finish a PhD, you must own your own research and be very passionate about it. If you are not happy with your advisor and still early into the process, by all means switch - there is no shame in that. Ideally, you should love your research topic but many people don't. If you are further along and could finish your degree soon? Just do what is required of you and get it! The point of the PhD is to show how you can do independent, significant research and if you can get funding and publications out of this just take the shot and do it. You should absolutely have your own research agenda. That may require working 60-70 hours a week, but so what? That is often what it takes to get ahead in life. Find a contribution that you can make and find a professor interested in that topic and try to get a paper published on it. Once you have finished your degree, you will be certified as an independent worker and you can then pursue your own research. All that being said, if you are a first year change advisors now! If you are a second year, maybe you can get an MSc out of this and move on to a new advisor. If you are past that why not just get the PhD and publish more work? (repetitive...)

Re: Ask YC: How to survive grad school?

#33

Post by spinonethird »

Fro what it is worth, from my experience doing research it is very important for your sanity to work with other people that are about the same level of competence as you. That means other grad students or young post docs. Working with professors that "have achieved ground-breaking theoretical results" is very frustrating. The difference in knowledge between you and them is enormous; what is hard for you is trivial an uninteresting for them. So they are not very interested in working with you for the same reason you are not very interested in doing research with a first year student.

With somebody that is about as advanced as you, you can bounce off ideas, have interesting discussions, and learn a lot. And then got discuss with the professor.

Another problem with working with world class researchers (as a grad student) is that you will not learn the most important part of research. The hardest part of research is finding questions, not answers. Good questions that is. Questions that are interesting and unsolved, but solvable. This is very hard. If you work with someone that is really very strong he will have more ideas than time to investigate them. So you will at best become good at solving problems, but you will not learn how to find problems. In mechanical_fish's comments, he says that most researchers "publishing over-complicated solutions to easy problems, or non-solutions to difficult problems, or incomprehensible solutions to niche problems". This not because they are dumb or lazy, it's because they can't do the hardest thing in research: find good questions.

Another thing (that others have already pointed out): expect failure. Good research is hard. In fact even bad research is hard. Doing new things is hard, doing interesting things is hard, and doing new interesting thing is incredibly hard. So most of what you try will end in failure. Get used to it or get out of academia as quickly as possible. Not many people have the right mental constitution to live a happy life while they continuously fail. Look around you; you will probably see many people that are not happy with life. I think this has something to do with it.

Re: Ask YC: How to survive grad school?

#34

Post by bd »

grad_student_ wrote: post #28
lazygradstudent wrote: post #19

Where are you in grad school that pays 60-70% of industry? I'm at a top 4 prog (one of Stanford / MIT / Berkeley / CMU), and it doesn't pay nearly as well (unless you have a very different meaning of industry).

Europe, not-so-high salaries, high taxes, social equality, long payed holidays, etc. etc.

Ah, EU projects I guess. Been there. Actually, your situation is quite common. I have yet to see something really useful coming from EU project.

Try to find something at least marginally related to the project that really interests you, get together with smart people in the lab and have fun. If you can put it in the reports, it counts.

Re: Ask YC: How to survive grad school?

#35

Post by anaphoric »

Yes... I have seen this type of situation before. Is this a semantic web project?

Look I will be direct. Do you have an advisor yet? Is there anyone who you want to work with at the institution? Is it politically possible for you to switch to work under that person. If you can't name anyone at your institution, then is there anyone anywhere? If so, then you need to get there.

Getting a Ph.D. is a mentoring process. And you need to find someone who is the right fit. And then you need to become a world expert in a very specific area. That is how it goes...

Re: Ask YC: How to survive grad school?

#36

Post by maximilian »

timr wrote: post #15
dhbradshaw wrote: post #4

This post is important and I think that your feelings echo those of many thousands of graduate students. Let me talk a little bit as a rare case: I've worked now under 7 advisors on 7 different projects and now I'm finally almost done. Most of the projects have been as you describe: "after almost a year, it is fair to say that I have good view of the project and it is almost surely a giant failure." That's how most p…

"To some extent, though, the system works. It does so for the same reason that some startups work: because as you look at the details you find new things that you couldn't have predicted. Those new things are your research." I think this used to be true when grants were small, and groups were scrappy and independent. However, today the funding agencies are pushing mega-projects; gigantic labs and "collaborative" rese…

Find a good advisor. I've known many people who hated grad school but when they switched an advisor they liked, their world went from hell to a great graduate experience. Its all about your advisor.

Re: Ask YC: How to survive grad school?

#38

Post by davi »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #31
lallysingh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of us haven't considered a small lair, a few minions, and a doomsday device before?

You know, I've worked in labs which employed actual minions and actual doomsday devices (well, maybe not, but they were more than deadly enough to destroy all of us minions if something went wrong) ... and the excitement wears off. Eventually you stop being awed by the doomsday device and start being annoyed that its repair bills are so high and that you have to keep filling it with liquid nitrogen in the middle of t…

Yep, the small scale, low budget, homebrew work is more aligned with what I thought you meant by 'personal crackpottery'.

Re: Ask YC: How to survive grad school?

#39

Post by nihilocrat »

maximilian wrote: post #36
timr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To some extent, though, the system works. It does so for the same reason that some startups work: because as you look at the details you find new things that you couldn't have predicted. Those new things are your research." I think this used to be true when grants were small, and groups were scrappy and independent. However, today the funding agencies are pushing mega-projects; gigantic labs and "collaborative" rese…

Find a good advisor. I've known many people who hated grad school but when they switched an advisor they liked, their world went from hell to a great graduate experience. Its all about your advisor.

People who were paying attention during undergrad should know this; I realized early on that a lot of your experience had to do more with the people involved than the material. A good advisor is no exception, and from what I hear, is even more important in grad school.

It's also pretty true outside the ivory tower. Surrounding yourself eight hours a day with people who amaze you with their skills and/or having a de-facto mentor can do wonders. A lack thereof can leave you feeling demotivated, like you are just treading water and not really advancing yourself.

Re: Ask YC: How to survive grad school?

#40

Post by miloshh »

I think the way you idealize research is not naive by any means, and you should stick to your view.

By all means, one year is not too late - you should change your research project to something that's your very own. If your advisor doesn't let you, change your advisor too.

I think you're exactly the type that needs to lead a project, and be the first author, instead of contributing bits here and there, implementing somebody else's "vision". Leave that for those that think academic success is putting their names on the maximum number of papers.

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