Earlier quoted context omitted.
wow, thanks for the compliments! i'm looking into rendering in a Kindle-friendly format soon.
Yes, +1 for the kindle/mobi version
done -- epub/mobi versions online at:
The Ph.D Grind: A Ph.D Student Memoir
61–70 of 85 posts
Re: The Ph.D Grind: A Ph.D Student Memoir
#62Pretty amazing memoir. Does a nice job of capturing the ups and downs of the grad student experience. Phil - consider distilling this down as a blog post or two - lots of good lessons here, but given the length they might be lost on most or your potential readers.
hi matt - wow, i was gonna email you tomorrow, but HN scooped me. re: distilling -- my main intention in writing this memoir wasn't to provide advice, since it's hard for me to determine how much facets of my experience generalize. i do have plans to convert the "lessons learned" section from the epilogue into a talk, though. i have this other article from the beginning of my third year that's more of the "advice" ty…
Oh, that was from you, too?
I just read this a few days ago (was actually recommended here on HN [1]) and thought it was terrific.
That might be one of my biggest problems in science - I have a hard time memorizing people's names.
Re: The Ph.D Grind: A Ph.D Student Memoir
#63Once I started reading the memoir I couldn't put it down. As an entrepreneur three points stood out for me:
i) Give and ask for help: Asking for help is crucial for the success of any venture. But providing help opens many unseens doors.
ii) Give and attend talks: By giving talks you expose your work to a wider audience, more importantly you will get real-time feedback and find a potential customer or two for your product.
iii) Network with amazingly talented people: Just a half hour or an hour meeting with smart, highly experienced people can light up possibilities that you may have never considered. Then there are chances that they will introduce you to the next investor or big customer.
Re: The Ph.D Grind: A Ph.D Student Memoir
#64"He was an ardent pragmatist who cared more about achieving compelling results than demonstrating theoretical 'interestingness'..." Are those people actually rare in academia?
In my experience, yes.
It's not that they don't look for things with practical results. It's just that there's no incentive to continue beyond the point where you demonstrate the contribution.
Re: The Ph.D Grind: A Ph.D Student Memoir
#65[ Short on sleep, so the post may sleep incoherent. Excusing myself from any egregious offenses against the English language ] I read this in its entirety, unable to go to bed before finishing. This is amazing. I'll admit that I started out with skepticism towards Philip's initial research goals. Instead what I found is an application of immense talent , culminating in software projects that are nothing short of amaz…
> it's quite obvious that the author is _nowhere_ close to average
Re: The Ph.D Grind: A Ph.D Student Memoir
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not at all, especially in systems.
But it helps to be pragmatic and interesting, even in systems. mobisys and mobicom is full of stuff that is more interesting than pragmatic.
I guess my reply might have been ambiguous. Systems professors are generally especially pragmatic, mainly because of the maturity of the field and their culture (reflected in the high standards for top tier OSDI/SOSP papers). Mobisys and Mobicom are becoming more of a venue for the sensing community, which is relatively new and still dealing with technology that is a few years from being ready, so it makes sense that they are more on the interesting side. For systems work to be interesting, they go off and show how it can pragmatically improve your life (e.g., by finding lots of bugs in Linux).
I'm not a systems researcher but I work in a systems research group (at MSRA) as a PL researcher, which is a very different community; we tend to be more designy.
Re: The Ph.D Grind: A Ph.D Student Memoir
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
i have a big fat disclaimer in the preface that this isn't meant to be anything other than me telling my own story; it's one data point, and there's a huge amount of variation in Ph.D. student experiences. maybe i didn't make the disclaimer big enough, though :)
I read the book with that disclaimer in mind. Please don't take my comment as "you ruined my motivation for further education"; it was meant as "you saved me the trouble of finding out the hard way that this really wasn't what I wanted". I have never been interested in being a professor, so I would be in it entirely to push my limits. But if I know I won't enjoy it (and as far as Ph.D. programs and publication go han…
You could always attend a more relaxed PhD program outside of the first tier schools. These are still great schools and won't exactly be easier, but the pressure dynamics are a bit different and you'll have more time to experiment.
I really enjoyed my PhD experience; I had time to explore who I was and was able to accomplish what I wanted to. It wasn't so much of as a useless grind as it was a journey to enlightment, but my experience is unique.
Re: The Ph.D Grind: A Ph.D Student Memoir
#68Philip, I first read your blog 2 years ago when I was starting to think about a PhD and I had a decent academic admit season in Fall 2011 when I finally applied (headed to CMU later this year). Recently, I was going through a slump since a paper out of my undergrad thesis I submitted to a conference was tossed out with very harsh reviews. This manuscript once again has come at a very opportune moment. You are an extremely gifted writer. Congratulations on finishing.
Re: The Ph.D Grind: A Ph.D Student Memoir
#69As a current graduate student skeptically considering working toward a Ph.D., this has helped me confirm my suspicion that it's not for me. I started doing research as an undergrad, so I have become somewhat familiar with academia's publication game... and I find it distasteful. Knowing what goes into a Ph.D. is invaluable in making such a decision, and this book was quite helpful in that regard. Thank you!
> academia's publication game... and I find it distasteful.
All trades have their harsh, distasteful parts. The rest of the world is mostly caught up in a rat race about money, artists struggle to get exhibited in galleries, etc. You shouldn't focus on the negative parts, the decision should depend on what your ambitions really are.
Re: The Ph.D Grind: A Ph.D Student Memoir
#70"One possible reason I dreaded was that nobody had
previously built something like CDE because it was impossible to get the details right to make it work e ffectively in practice. Maybe it was one of those ideas that looked good on paper but wasn't practically feasible"
No, there was autopackage, alien and any numerous other programs and battles/discussion long email threads that worked not just for python but for any language. Technically speaking as I see CDE, it is useful for python and standard installs in very select cases. For large research projects where the variables and runtimes will differ with no rhyme or reason other than "That's what we started with". It's probably a lot more of an issue to get running properly.
I'm sure there is no easy answer, it's really a human problem. What would really be highly useful is for standardization on a linux distro specifically for research but even then that would only be useful for at most an organization/institution/research lab. Getting researchers to stick to such a distro as a general rule is impossible without weapons.