All the Value is in the Middle

When it comes to activities, we tend to want to jump to the end.  I just opened to the first chapter of “Introduction to Algorithms,” and I want to immediately get to the end of the chapter.  I’m in lecture and I’m thinking to myself “damn...how much longer is he going to go for?”  The clear problem with wanting to be done immediately with a task we initiated is that all the value in the task occurs between the beginning and the end.  

In other words, all the value in the activity occurs between the beginning and the end--the middle.

All the value in a relationship happens in the middle.  All the value in your college education occurred between the beginning and end of your college experience.  When you go to the gym, all the value you receive comes from all the stuff you do between the beginning and ending of your time at the gym.  This observation points to the importance of how you spend the time during the activity.  If you flip through a dense textbook on biomedical engineering, not even skimming the pages, the value of that process would be unsurprisingly zero.  The same would be true if you jumped directly to the end of a relationship, if you jumped directly to the end of your college education, or if you jumped directly to the end of your workout in the gym.  It’s clear in these examples that you’d be getting nothing out of these experiences if the time between the beginning and the end didn’t exist or wasn’t well spent.   

Whenever you feel the urge to jump to end of something, know that all the value of whatever you’re doing is in all the “middle stuff.”  If you don’t give the middle stuff its appropriate attention, you won’t be extracting as much value out of the experience as you can.  Thus, the next time you find yourself wanting to jump to end of something, remember: all the value is in the *middle.*

Photo credit: Ramzi Hashisho

Beating the 3rd Year Curse

There comes a point in every doctoral student's career when enough is enough and all desires of completing any project, dissertation, paper, etc. goes out the window. You have this overwhelming feeling, a strong desire, to just take your master's and quit. Don't worry you are not alone, over 30% of doctoral students drop out or are dismissed in their 3rd year. While for some the desire to quit is fleeting, for others it is constantly on your mind but you can beat the feeling.

1. Join a graduate student group at your university, like the Math Graduate Student Association, Black Graduate Student Association, etc. Organizations like these offer support, networking, and social activities three things that always benefit a graduate student. In a graduate student organization you are guaranteed to find at least one person that you can relate to.

2. Get a hobby (i.e. working out, volunteering, hiking, etc.), I am not encouraging you to go and get overly involved with some cause or to start working out 3 hours a day. However a healthy diversion from studying and research is needed from time to time. Remember it is physically impossible to work 24/7 because your body requires food and rest, but a having a hobby can give you the time to clear your mind thus resulting in more efficient studying and research.

3. Relax and tap into your faith. No matter what you believe in Christianity, Islam, Buddism, a higher power, or karma, some things are out of your control. You have to keep realistic goals for the completion of your program. I know it's cliche but Rome wasn't built in a day, so you cannot earn a doctorate in a year, but maybe in 4 to 5!

Thanksgiving Break Isn't a Break for You!

Thanksgiving signals a number of different events and emotions. Thoughts of gratefulness, food, and family come to mind. With the last Thursday and Friday of November being holidays for most Universities, the inclination of many inexperienced graduate students is to take a relaxing trip home (queue the Kenny G!). To this, I have but one thing to say:

Don’t do it!

Thanksgiving is absolutely NOT the time to be taking it easy. You see, one of the other things that Thanksgiving signals is the end of the semester (or quarter, if you’re on the quarter system). All the time you’ve been spending grinding away on coursework all semester will culminate with some final major project, paper, and/or exam. Thanksgiving is the time you get caught up in any course you’re behind in. Thanksgiving is the time you review the semester worth of material you’ve encountered thus far. Thanksgiving is the time you dump out all your ideas about the research you want to pursue. Thanksgiving is the time you grind away on the implementation of some experiments you need to run.

Too many graduate students don’t realize they are no longer in college. This habit of treating holidays like....well holidays, is graduate student taboo. If you don’t buy any of this, completely ignore the above advice. Take a long relaxing break over Thanksgiving. When you come back to campus, take note of how behind you feel and are. Then if possible, find someone who couldn’t go home for the holiday--like say an international student. Take note of how he fairs in this last bit of the semester...

Grades Don't Matter for PhD Students: What a Terrible Lie

Here’s a typical scenario:

• A student laments about the rigor of her coursework to a professor (or at least in earshot of a professor).

• The professor assures the student that her grades don’t matter. She’s a PhD student, it’s all about research.

• The student feels a sense of relief, but isn’t completely convinced...

Intermission:

About half of the students who begin PhD programs believe they will go on to be professors doing research when they begin their PhD program. However, by the end of their PhD program this ambition is beaten out of them as many choose an alternative path.

Now back to the scenario...

• When the student applies for a non-academic position (like most of his peers--see the Intermission), the student is floored when the recruiter at the lab/company/government requests her graduate transcripts and GPAs for her Master’s and PhD degrees.

What Does this Scenario Tell us?

It tells us that many professors have a myopic view of career paths for PhD students even though the data suggests otherwise (see the Intermission). When a professor tells you “grades don’t matter,” what he is forgetting to append to that statement is “if you want to be a professor somewhere and do stellar research.” So this famous piece of advice is really the following: “Grades don’t matter...if you want to be a professor and do stellar research to offset subpar grades.”

So What's Better Advice?

Get the best grades you possibly can AND do good research. Saying you have to choose one or the other (grades or good research) is a false dichotomy. Juggling both gives you the most opportunity career-wise. And seeing that you will most likely not end up being a professor when you graduate, you’ll want to make sure that your grades are as good as they can be. You see, most people don’t understand what a PhD is all about. They think getting a PhD is like getting another undergrad degree. Thus, your GPA is critical in determining how good you are--at least in their eyes. There’s nothing you can do to change this perception since it’s widespread. The best you can do is play the game and ensure your grades are on point.

The next time a professor gives you the profoundly bad piece of advice of "grades don't matter!", smile and nod...then, dutifully ignore him.

6 Reasons Why You Fail to Understand Tech Talks

1. You don’t belong in the audience.  If you’re an anthropologist and go to a supercomputing conference and visit a workshop on cluster computing, and fail to understand anything, it’s because you don’t have the appropriate background.

2. The presenter doesn’t understand what he/she is doing.  Believe it or not, once you get deep into a subject, it’s actually far easier to stay in the jargon world then it is to come back down to the real world where earthlings reside and explain the concepts for people outside of your esoteric community. And if you can't explain what you're doing for people outside your community, then you don't really understand what you're doing.

3. The presenter sucks at presenting.  This is separate from the material being crap.  This point has to do with the presenter’s inability to present.  This may manifest as an inaudible voice.  Alternatively (or additionally) you may notice it in the terribly prepared slides with tons and tons of text.  Another red flag is when you see an overly complicated slide with too much information, or information that’s thrown at you all at once instead of piece by piece.

4. The presenter doesn’t have enough time to present the material the right way.  This is a pretty popular reason.  Think about this.  As a PhD student, you’ve spent 3+ years of your life on a research topic.  You are now trying to distill all of it (for job talks) or some of it (for conferences) to anywhere from 15 minutes to 30 minutes.  Not. Possible.  If an hour to 90 minutes is given, somehow magically, that seems to be enough time.    

5.  You haven’t eaten.  When you’re hella hungry, you can’t think straight.  No matter how elementary the material, if your stomach is screaming at you, you’ll probably fail to understand what’s being presented.   

6. You’ve just eaten.  And by eaten, I mean stuffed yourself.  Stuffing yourself full of yummy food is the best way to lull yourself to sleep at something that’s as typically dry as a tech talk.

When a PhD Student Has an Advisor Only On Paper

So you’ve checked out this faculty member’s research. The work seems really intriguing to you. Moreover, the faculty member likes you, so the agreement is made. You now officially have an advisor. As time marches on, however, you realize something fishy. You realize while this faculty member is *nominally* your advisor, the faculty member isn’t actually advising you!

So the question is, what do you do when you find out that you don’t actually have an advisor? This dilemma is one that too many PhD students find themselves in year after year, institution to institution. Ideally, your advisor is supposed to train you to become a scientist. All too frequently this isn’t the case. So what do you do?

There are a number of alternatives. And you may want to do one, some, or all of the following, but if you find yourself in this kind of dilemma make sure you’re doing at least ONE of these suggestions.

• Find mentorship from more senior PhD students. Although this bunch can be surprisingly difficult to track down, when you do, they can be a tremendous resource.
  
• Find mentorship from a postdoc or another faculty member. If you have a relatively large department, this shouldn’t be too difficult. However, if there are few faculty and postdocs in your department, the next suggestion may be extremely helpful to you.
  
• Talk with students that actually have “real” advisors. By “real” advisor, I mean an advisor that actually trains their students (or at least has a reputation of doing so). In this way, you would learn what it is like (indirectly) to have an advisor that is actually training you.
• Check out the advice Web pages of faculty within your research area or field. You’d be surprised at the amount of useful advice is out there.

What are some ways you know of that people use to overcome not actually having an advisor?

Interrupting Your Interruptions

The following is an instance where research is actually useful.

In the pursuit of a PhD in this highly dynamic world, interruptions are ever-present. You are constantly bombarded by entities that demand your attention. Your email icon bounces around demanding to be read, text messages beep and demand to be answered, Google chat contacts demand to know how you are doing, office mates desire your attention to double check their work, all while Twitter keeps you up to date with the play by play of everything that is happening to everyone who knows you (relevant or otherwise) !

In Trafton's research on resuming interrupted tasks, he analyzes the responses of people who are interrupted while performing a task. Half of the subjects receive a warning preceding the interruption, while the other half of the subjects are immediately interrupted with no warning. The subjects who were warned of an impending interruption were able to prepare more for the divergence than participants in the immediate interruption condition, and resumed the interrupted task more quickly.

So what does this mean to you? When you are hard away at work on that important research paper, analysis, brainstorming session, and you are interrupted by a distraction, take that interruption signal as a warning. Give yourself some time to prepare to leave the task. Get yourself to a nice "stopping point" before you service the interruption. This will help you to return to your research much quickly, without getting distracted and wondering ".... now what was I doing ???" post-distraction. Interrupt the interruption by taking ownership of how and when you will choose to leave your task. This will help to ensure that you will be able to easily resume working.

J. Gregory Trafton, Erik M. Altmann, Derek P. Brock, Farilee E. Mintz, Preparing to resume an interrupted task: effects of prospective goal encoding and retrospective rehearsal, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Volume 58, Issue 5, Notification User Interfaces, May 2003, Pages 583-603, ISSN 1071-5819, DOI: 10.1016/S1071-5819(03)00023-5.

How to Edit Like You Have a Ph.D. in Computer Science

Our brains are fabulous pieces of work. The brain loves filling in gaps. This ability can be helpful when we’re trying to solve problems and what not. However, what can be considered a gift in one context, can be considered a curse in another. Case in point: writing. How many times have you, thoughtfully, put together a writing masterpiece only to find that you’ve left critical words out of some sentence?? “One way to (missing words) algorithm, is through memoization.” And not only do our brains love to fill in gaps, they also love to delete what’s there too! “What causes causes Quicksort’s worst runtime?

So, how do you fix these kinds of issues? Read what you’ve written OUT LOUD. This is fine advice, and some search engine results will espouse the same thing. However, the reality is that by page 2 (okay maybe 3, :o), you will be reading in your head again without even knowing it. Well, if somebody else were to read it to you, that would be awesome wouldn’t it? Huh? What was that? You don’t know some loser who is sitting around all day waiting for you to ask him to read your document out loud to you? Then what can you do?

Dun, Dun, Duuuuuun! Text-to-Speech (TTS) to the Rescue!

On a Mac, do the following:

1. System Preferences --> Speech
2. Choose the System Voice You Want (there are male and female voices)
3. Choose the Key Combination You Want to Activate TTS When You Highlight Text On Your Computer

Now your computer can be your flunkie! After you write a document and you want to proof it, try having your computer read it out loud to you. I guarantee you’ll save yourself all kinds of embarrassment.

FYI: I eradicated 3 different errors in this post alone using this strategy. The proof is in the pudding.

Windows Users: I don’t know if Windows has a similar TTS built into the OS (leave a comment indicating how for Windows if there is a way to activate TTS). If there’s no way for Windows to do it, then there’s plenty of vendors that make TTS software for Windows. Note that Web-based alternatives may be undesirable if the information to be proofed is sensitive.

How To Feel & Be Impressively Educated

The Problem
Ever forgot something that you knew really well? Like back in school when you were taking courses, you totally dominated the class, but if, right now, you were asked anything but the simplest questions on the subject you’d experience the “tip-of-the-tongue” phenomenon, or worse, the “WTF!” phenomenon. Ever been in a course where the professor assumed you remembered EVERYTHING from some previous course? Didn’t turn out well did it? I used to hate when professors did that. I’d think, “just do a little review, I’ll catch on...damn, now I gotta go brush up on this!” If this stuff is in my major, I shouldn’t have to go back and “brush up on this.” I should know it like I know 2 plus 2 is 4! So what’s the remedy?

The Solution

Review the subject material regularly. Review the subject material regularly. Review the subject material regularly. In case you missed it the first, second, or third time: Review the subject material regularly. Oh, I can already hear the whiners, “Oh, it’s going to take too much time to review a course’s material. We did learn it over an entire semester!” While it is true that you may have learned a course’s material over an entire semester, it’s untrue that your review of that material will take time commensurate with the time it took you to initially learn the material. When you’re really ready to rock a final exam, can’t you review an entire course worth of material in far less than a day? Why is this possible? Well a big part of the answer is that as the material becomes more and more ingrained in you, you get faster and faster at reviewing the material because your brain is able to chunk so much of the material. The material no longer resembles a vast palace, but a miniature castle that can fit in the palm of your hand. How long would it take you to review material from an Algebra course? Thought so.

The Mechanics of Reviewing

There’s no one right way to review. Do what works for you. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably thrown away many of the materials from your different relevant courses. No worry. Simply build up your knowledge base from scratch. But this time, make it question driven. Start with something that you sort of remember but should totally remember as a person with a degree (or will soon have a degree) in field X. As you find out the answer to this question, more questions will start to come to you. I’m a big fan of the questions driven model to reviewing. Why? Because via this method, you actually start to *really* feel educated. There’s something deeply satisfying about answering your OWN questions.

I like taking my notes in a modified Cornell Note-taking fashion. This way, I can cover up the answers that are on the right side of the page, and quiz myself with questions that are on the left side of the page. My version of the Cornell Note-taking system has no summary section at the bottom of each page.

In the Final Analysis

It only makes sense to put effort toward remembering material you so assiduously toiled to obtain. You paid the price to acquire the material through time, effort, frustration, and money. To forget the material is to flush it all down the toilet. And if you were just going to flush it all down the toilet, why’d the hell did you learn it in the first place?!? Yes, I’ll concede that at times you’re forced to learn things that have no applicability to you and your life (at least in your opinion). But what about that stuff that you “know” IS relevant to you and your life? Do you know that stuff cold? Then shoot, I say give yourself that gift.

How to Solve Really Hard Problems

Interested in the secret to solving really hard problems and understanding tough concepts?  It's really simple.  So simple, in fact, it can be summed up in a single word.   Instead of calling problems you encounter in papers, class, problem sets, exams, or research "hard," call them "INTERESTING." 

This single, seemingly insignificant, change in word choice is one commonality I notice in faculty and many sharp graduate students.  I can recall many times being in a graduate course, and a Professor would describe a hella tough concept as being really interesting.  In my head, I'd think "nooooo, that's really hard, what you mean is that it's really really hard--why do you insist on calling this interesting??"  However, the professors knew better than me.  They knew that if they described problems/concepts as "hard" it would shut down parts of their brain they needed to actually wrap their minds around the problem/concept.    

It really hit me, when I was going over an Algorithms problem set with an advanced graduate student that had been through the course a year or so prior.  He was extremely skilled at Algorithms even though that wasn't his area of focus.  There was a ridiculously contrived and difficult problem I was having issues with solving, and his off base approaches to solving the problem showed that we were in agreement in how ridiculously tough the problem was.  Neither one of us actually solved the problem.  However, he insisted the problem was interesting.  I looked at him as if he was crazy.  He seemed enamored by the problem.  I didn't get it then, and I'm not sure I fully get the whole being enamored part even now.  Nonetheless, running into this problem with him gave me the key insight: people who are really skilled at solving hard problems, describe them as interesting.  

You now know the secret. 

The Invisible Grad

You have come into contact with this person ... you think. They are that one person in your department who you recall seeing once or twice, but you never saw them again. The next time you see this individual (maybe 6 months to a year later), they have good news to report of presentations, publications, and candidacy.You begin to ask yourself, "How are they able to have so many spectacular achievements, yet I never see them in the department?". The reason that they get so much work done is due to the fact that you never see them.

Introducing the Invisible Grad

Once a certain point has been reached within your research as a PhD student, one should become relatively autonomous and not need to come into the lab as much as your less experienced colleagues. Who would want to come into the lab anyway? It's counterproductive and full of distractions. In the office, my days would typically end up looking like this:

9:00 - start work

11:00 - fire drill

12:00 - get dragged out of your lab for lunch with other students

1:30 - return from lunch

3:00 - department seminar/lecture

5:00 - time to leave! (after all, you HAVE worked an 8 hour day)

* Note: i haven't even factored in teaching/office hours for those of us who have classes as well as other graduate student popping into the lab to "shoot the breeze".

Away from the lab (perhaps at home, a coffee shop, library) these distractions are virtually non existent allowing more time to concentrate on the real reason you are in grad school, to do research! Take some advice from the Invisible Grad, and disappear from the distractions and emerge with PROGRESS !!!

Getting Residual Value Out Of Reading Technical Papers

If you're getting a Ph.D., reading technical papers is a necessary part of the process.  And when you first dive into a research area, getting up to speed may seem like an insurmountable task. Take heart; it isn't :o). 

It just takes a hella long time.

Doesn't it suck when you've read a paper some time ago, but can't quite recall what it was about?  Me too.  So here's a nice time saver you can implement.  Consider it "The Reader's Digest Method" for your research area.

A typical bib entry might look something like this:

@Book{abramowitz+stegun-64,
author = "Milton {Abramowitz} and Irene A. {Stegun}",
title = "Handbook of Mathematical Functions with
Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables",
publisher = "Dover",
year = 1964,
address = "New York",
edition = "ninth Dover printing, tenth GPO printing"
}

Using The Reader's Digest Method, the above bib entry would look something like this:

@Book{abramowitz+stegun-64,
author = "Milton {Abramowitz} and Irene A. {Stegun}",
title = "Handbook of Mathematical Functions with
Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables",
publisher = "Dover",
year = 1964,
address = "New York",
edition = "ninth Dover printing, tenth GPO printing",
tags = "TERMS TO CLASSIFY THIS ENTRY",
summary = "PROBLEM ADDRESSED, APPROACH, WERE THEY SUCCESSFUL?",
analysis = "DRAWBACKS (IF ANY) OF THIS WORK"
}

I imagine it's immediately obvious why the additional three elements at the bottom of this bib entry are useful.  But something tells me that the tags entry *may* deserve some elaboration.  Remember that your .bib files can grow pretty large over the years you're doing your Ph.D.  And you'll want to be able to quickly search for papers that are classified differently in your research area (e.g., I need to find all "Intrusion Detection" papers I've read). Tagging helps you find these papers quickly. 

Imagine if your .bib file was full of these extra bib elements!  You'd rarely have to go back and reread an entire paper!  So give this method a spin.  Get some residual value out of all the hours you spend reading a paper for a change.

Visiting Graduate Programs

College seniors are now making their visits to institutions they've been admitted to for graduate school.  At a visit, invariably these students have meetings scheduled with an array of faculty members. And, invariably students rarely know what to ask these faculty members.  So graduating seniors, this post is for you.

Believe it or not, the first questions you pose are not to a faculty member, but to yourself.  The Ph.D. is something you pick up on your way to putting your full dent in the universe.  So the million dollar question you must ask yourself is: "What the hell do I want to do AFTER I get the Ph.D.?"  For some of you, I'm sure, this can be answered without thinking. However, I'm willing to bet that for most of you, asking this question will produce no meaningful answer.  Hence, for the rest of you, the hundred thousand dollar question you must ask yourself is: "What the hell do I NOT want to do AFTER I get the Ph.D.?"  Although it's possible that you may not arrive at a definitive answer, this 2nd question at least narrows the answer space to viable alternatives for the 1st question.

Once you've answered one of the above questions, read the faculty members' websites.  You'll often find that faculty members actually have advice for students looking to work with them on their Websites.  So please, please, take notes on all faculty members you'll meet based on their Websites. Review your notes before the meeting.  Your preparation should show in your meeting.  Beyond earning you brownie points, it may earn you a Research Assistantship (among other things).                

Ask if there are any current students you can speak with.  Notice that I say "students" and "speak." Not "student" and "email."  Talking to students is critical because one student's opinion can vary dramatically from another student's.  You never know what underlying drama may be present. So by talking to as many students of a faculty member as possible you increase your chances of discovering the truth.  Speaking to these students is critical because graduate students are busy (or at least think they are) and can very well ignore your emails.  It's far more difficult to ignore a living, breathing human being standing in front you.  Lastly, when speaking with someone, you can detect physical ques that may clue you in to things that "just don't smell right." 

Do NOT forget to ask if there is anyone they've graduated that you can talk to. It may not be possible to speak with these folks, but if you can, absolutely talk to them!  Why?  THEY HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO LIE TO YOU.  They already have their Ph.D.s.   You see, professors usually have contracts that require they produce some artifact.  And this artifact tends to the be the result of their students' effort.  If the faculty member has no students coming in to work with him/her, the member may "HOLD ON" to their current students (i.e., postpone current students' graduation timeline).  This creates an incentive structure where students may be less than forthright with you if it might mean you not working with their advisor. 

Although these are not all the things you should do and ask, they should give you a hell of head start!  Good luck!

The Definitive Guide to Spending Less Time on Facebook

The first thing you must cultivate is a strong disdain for lots of information.  Let's face it, Facebook (FB) has gobs and gobs of information.  Just silently tell yourself that all the information that FB bombards you with is highly undesirable.  Got it?  Now we can move on with the guide.

• Ignore the "Live Feed" option.  Pretend that it's not even there.  If you want a live feed, go to Twitter, the originator of live feeds of people in your network.  The Live Feed will only steer you into trouble so treat it like a bastard stepchild...because it is.

• Look at only your "Home Feed."  FB has an algorithm to try to bring certain things to your attention.  Let FB's algorithm do its thing.  Yes, it kind of sucks at finding interesting things in your network, but so what?  What's the most you'll miss?  A new hiking trip photo album from your roommate in college?

• "Hide" ruthlessly.  If you find there are certain line items that cause you to engage FB more than you want, "Hide it" from your FB feed.  If there's an item on your Home feed that generates even a hint of disgust, you must hide it.  You don't want that negativity clouding your thinking for real work.    

• Reply from your email when you can. FB has integrated the ability for you to reply to comments from your email account.  USE IT!  If you respond from your email, you'll be less tempted by all the other candy dancing around FB.

• Get off other people's schedules.  People tend not to be on FB Friday afternoon through the evening.  The same can be said for Saturday afternoon through the evening.  If you want to get on FB and stalk people, these are the times to do that.  There won't be much ongoing activity to keep you on there very long.  I know what you're thinking though.  "If everybody does this, then won't people be active on FB and make this an ineffective strategy."  Theoretically, yes everybody could read this article and start putting this strategy into practice.  However, the chances of this happening is about the same as getting struck with lightning 10 times...under water.

• Batch process the "FB pulls."  The folks at FB are pretty smart.  They send you numerous emails to engage you in FB (e.g., messages, comments on your wall, comments on your posts), and I refer to them as "FB pulls" because they try to pull you back into FB.  Good thing FB isn't your boss--whew!  You can respond to those FB pulls whenever you damn well please.  Exercise that power!  A corollary of this point, is that if you have no FB pulls, you have no business on FB.     

Hopefully, with the above points as guides, your time can be a little less FB-filled.  Cheers!

How to Ensure Graduation: Only the "Smartest" Survive

When obtaining your PhD we all know classes must be taken, exams must be passed, etc. But the key to graduating is your advisor, so choose wisely. Yes the Professor who has innovative research is cool, but ask yourself how long does it take his/her students to graduate?, does he/she travel a lot?(if they do they can't be doing all of their research, so their postdocs and students must do a lot of it, and they aren't readily available for research help), oh and most importantly do they have funding? (while I encourage getting your own funding, this is a great back up plan). These questions should be asked upon initial decision of your advisor because you don't want to wake up as a 4th year graduate student with the realization that your advisor is not well vested in your graduation (ie Holy Crap, I'm 30 and still in grad school) or even worst your advisor is trying to keep you in school for his/her own benefits.

Here are some warning signs:

1. Your advisor will only meet with you to discuss new ideas, and not your dissertation research.

2. Your elder graduate students with the same advisor are in year 7.

3. You don't have contact with your advisor for a month and it is normal.

If you are experiencing any of these warnings don't fret, you can still graduate in 2 years at maximum by doing the following:

1. When your advisor asks you to work on new problems do it, but for every hour you spend on the new problem spend 2 on your dissertation research. Then when they meet with you to discuss the new work you have something to show but then you have more to show with your dissertation work.

2. Start Job searching, if you get a job that requires you to be done by a certain time usually your advisor will get on board, especially if it's with a good company or school because your success= your advisor's success especially if they aren't tenured.

3. Bother them by scheduling bi-monthly meetings, stalk them if you have to because graduating is of the utmost importance.

Remember graduate school is nothing but a academic hazing game so if you take everything and don't push back you will be in school forever so be "smart."

Why Senior Ph.D. Students Are Ghost: McMullen's Theorem

"The rate at which one is ghost from the department is proportional to the rate at which one finishes." --K. McMullen

Have you ever wondered as a new graduate student why you never see the more senior Ph.D. students around the department?  The quote above, that I've dubbed "McMullen's Theorem," gives you a clue as to why, but this article will end your wondering.

• They're chronologically old.  As you become chronologically old, moving around becomes more and more of a hassle.  Don't believe me?  Go to a party where the minimum age to enter is 18 years old.  Spend an hour there.  Then immediately go to another party where the average age range is 25 and up.  You will see a stark contrast in activity level.   

• Most of the friends they came in with are gone.  Many students enter graduate programs with some idea of potentially pursuing a Ph.D.  The fact is that by the end of year 2, most take their Master degrees, big paychecks, fringe benefits, and run away from academia never looking back.  If you are in the minority that decided to stay for a Ph.D., year 3 for you will test your social skills.  Most of us who stay behind, however, don't even try.  Consequently, you end up with 3rd years that are vaguely familiar with 1st years.  And that's not it.  This "vagueness" increases with each new incoming class.        

• Time savings.  Have you ever calculated the amount of time you spend commuting and getting ready to commute to and from campus?  That's time you could be working.  That's time you could be taking a chill pill.  That's time you could be eating.  Why forfeit those things for going to a campus you've been going to for years? 

• No "good" reason to.  Some time in year 4, you sort of learn the "game."  By game, I mean the Ph.D. game at your university in your department with your advisor.  And it is also around this time, that you begin to decide that you will no longer play this game (e.g., showing face at meetings, volunteering for things). 

• Less random distractions.  When you're secluded in your home working, nobody can bother you.  Yes, maybe your neighbor can bother you, but there are only so many neighbors.  And besides, they're probably responsible and have day jobs or classes they have to attend.  This makes home a viable option for many senior Ph.D. students.  For some people,  alternative places like coffee shops work best.  However, regardless of the alternative location, where ever it is, it tends to have the attribute of "being left the hell alone."  

• Resents "still being a Ph.D. student" at some level.  When you look around and see your friends living "life" some part of you envies them.  You see them as not having a care in the world after they get off work, knowing that they don't have to think about work again until they're physically there the next day or week, you envy them. You envy the grown up money they're making.  When you've been in a Ph.D. program for some years, you tend to grow a strong feeling that says that you need to move on with your life.  But you can't move on until your dissertation's written.  So for the time being, you're "stuck." Resentment increases.

Hopefully this explains why you tend to not see your more senior Ph.D. students.  It's not because they're uber anti-social (okay, yeah, well sometimes that is it), it's because of all these reasons I've outlined above.