The Myth of Grad Schooling In A Small Town

If you’re going to graduate school in some small town, you’ll hear people discuss the virtues of studying in a small town. People will tell you that if you go to a small town for school, you’ll have no distractions, and consequently be able to focus much better than you would be able to in a big city.  While this suggestion attempts to identify the silver lining of going to a small town for graduate school, it’s certainly the comment of someone who’s never done graduate school in a small town.  

You see, when in an environment where there are no pre-made distractions, you begin to fabricate your own distractions.  This can be much worse than going to a lively city for graduate school.  Why?  I’ll explain through an example.

Let’s say that you enjoy going to nightclubs like many early twenty-somethings. However, the small town you’re in has one club, and, by golly, it’s not to your liking.  Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose” followed by the Baha Men’s “Who let the dogs out?” isn’t your idea of an ideal night out at the club.  So what do you do?  You think, “I can create my own party!”  But in order to do that, you have to know a lot of people to make it successful.  You have to have the space to have it, the money to provide refreshments, the sound system for the music, and the cleaning crew to clean the place up after the party animals tear your place down.  And who’s going to do this on a weekly or even bi-weekly basis if even once?!?!  So you rule this option out.  The next thing you begin to do is look for the closest city.  Oh that’s at least a solid 1.5 hour drive.  Ouch!  3 hours of driving in one night just isn’t happening on a regular basis.  Then you start looking for local organizations you can join, so that leads to a series of Google searches among other things.  

Can you see how much energy has already been expended in just trying to find something to do??  

Had you been living in a city, such thinking would never arise.  You’d simply go to the happening spot when you want to go out and that would be the end of it!  Friends and random fliers that catch your attention during your daily routine will alert you to other happening things going on in your city.   

Trust me, you’ll want to do something if you’re in small town.  Few people can be studious 24/7.  And quite frankly, such person would probably be a bore to talk to!  So the moral of this story straight forward.  No matter where you go for graduate school, you’ll need distractions.  In a larger city, the distractions are there for you, so you need less of an imagination.  If you end up in a small town, however, you may find that you have to manufacture your distractions. Full stop.    

photo credit: Mike Swope

Shattered Assumptions

Before becoming a graduate student, I used to hold lots of really bad assumptions about graduate school.  Some of those bad assumptions included things like “once I get my Master’s degree, I’ll have mastered the subjects I’ve studied,” or “when I'm in graduate school, I’ll be able to research whatever I want!”  However, the most damning belief I held was the following: good ideas take a long time to get.  

This couldn’t be more wrong.  

The reality is that good ideas can come fast and easy.  What’s hard and time-consuming is fleshing out the details of a good idea.  At MIT, I see people come up with tons of great ideas within minutes (even seconds!) of looking at a problem.  Don’t spend gobs of time waiting for some good idea to hit you.  It probably already did.  Now, it’s time for you to get to work on the details!

The Worst Thing to Focus On When Starting Your Ph.D. Program

...is on how quickly you want to be done!  

This line of thinking will do nothing good for you.  It will only pain you because the separation is so real and the future is so distant.  Graduate school, will be at least year of your life (assuming you don't drop out earlier of course).  This time will be time you can never get back.  So it is best to make the most of that time!  Okay, okay, for many students, that just isn't practical. 

So...How Can You Make The Time Go By Faster? 

Find ways to divert your attention from that far off end goal--graduation.  The most straightforward way to do that is focus on all the work you're SUPPOSED to be doing.  Know that what is required of you from your institution (or often times your advisor) is the minimum. You must seek to go beyond that.   And in order to do that, you must allow yourself to be consumed by it. 

If you're able to do this, you'll find that your time in graduate school will blow by.  And if it doesn't blow by, you'll at least get more out of it than you would have!        

A Sign of Intelligence

A key sign of intelligence is knowing when you don't really understand something.  We live in a world where people often "fake it 'til they make it."  This act may get one mileage until he or she runs into a person who really knows her stuff.  Failure to know your knowledge boundaries will make you look all the more foolish. 

Moral: know your knowledge boundaries!       

More critical than potentially embarrassing yourself, knowing what you don't understand helps guide the learning process. When you know exactly what you don't understand, you can focus all your energy on the thing you don't understand in an efficient manner.  If you can't articulate what you don't understand, the job of figuring out what you don't know becomes harder and may not converge in a timely fashion.  Saying you don't understand the "E" in "E = MC^2" is dramatically different from saying you don't understand physics.  You'd end up doing very different actions in these two scenarios. 

And believe it or not, when you are able to articulate what you don't understand (or what you think you don't understand), you'll find that the articulation will actually help you figure out the problem!  Articulating something you don't understand forces your brain to make sense out of things that "don't make sense."  In doing so, your brain may detect a latent pattern.  If you've ever programmed you know what I mean.  Have you ever asked someone about some bug you were having, and as you were explaining, you figured out the bug?  I sure have.  

So, from here on out, do yourself a favor: know what you don't understand.      

Want to Learn Something? Go to the Library!

Books are a great resource despite the proliferation of free information the Internet. Books have generally been done more carefully than the things you find online. I think some people appreciate books but every so often they have a bad experience.

You know the kind. The kind where the author’s treatment of a topic sucks. Unfortunately, what most people believe after that type of experience is that something must be wrong with them. That if they couldn’t understand the material from one author, they must be incapable of understanding the material. That the author’s presentation of the material is somehow the only way to present the material. I’m happy to say that this line of thinking is unproductive and misleading.

There’s usually more than one way to present the same material. And at least one of those presentations will more than likely make sense to you. Instead of thinking you can’t get the concept, think the author hasn’t communicated to you effectively.

Your best defense in this case is to find other authors and see how they present the subject. Search the Web and see what presentations/lectures pop up on the material of interest. If you search long and hard enough, you’ll find something. It may seem like it’s a lot of work, but in the end, it’s actually less work. It’s far better to understand material before an exam than after the exam. It’s far better to understand material before you have to use it in the real-world than after you have to use it in the real-world.

So the next time you find yourself wanting to learn something. 

1. Go to the library. 
2. Get a number of different books that cover the same topic. 
3. Skim through all the books you get. 

 You’ll know very quickly which author expresses things in way that really works for you.

Don't Be Fooled

I’ve been in the Cambridge area for a little while now.  I’ve come across a handful of MIT students, and I’ve noticed a pattern.  

They work hard as hell.    

There might be some that don’t really study for anything and still do well--but I haven’t met them.  I’d consider such people the exception and not the rule.  The typical MIT student has raw intelligence that is coupled with really, really hard work.  

The media rarely advertises how hard they work, but don’t let that fool you.  They’re putting in massive amounts of hours and leveraging multiple resources (e.g., other students, library, online resources).  MIT has a reputation and the students understand there’s a reputation to uphold. And unfortunately, in trying to keep up, some students burn out, but we rarely hear about those cases.  Again, thank the media for this.  So don’t be fooled!  Burning out and consequently dropping out totally happens.  

If you’d like to mimic the typical to excellent MIT grad: 

Work.  Hard.  As.  Hell. 

You’ll be damn good.  

Understanding Things On The Fly

How do you know when you know something?  Well, a person generally feels confident about his ability to do something if he has been tested and has shown his mastery of the thing in the test-like situation.  However, when you're reading material (whether for research or for a course), there’s not always a test for you to take to check your understanding of the material.  So what can you do?  

The answer: Be able to go from abstract to concrete, and from concrete to abstract.  

For example, if you claim to understand a loop construct in the C programming language, an abstract way of demonstrating your knowledge of this construct would be to say that  “it’s a programming control statement that allows for the same statements to be repeated.”  A concrete way of demonstrating your understanding of a loop programming construct in C would be to write a loop in the C language. 

Often, authors will talk at a high-level, so you will need to be able to drill down and be able to generate your own example based on what you’ve heard, read, or seen. As another example, if you come across a sentence that mentions an enterprise network, and you can't come up with a clear picture in your mind of what constitutes an enterprise network, it would be safe to assume that you do not understand the term "enterprise network."  If you can’t come up with concrete examples, or find it difficult to do so, you may assume that you probably don’t have a complete and solid grasp of the material.  So when you come across material that makes you uncomfortable, see if you can come up with a concrete example of what you’re talking about easily.  If you can, you should feel your level of comfort increase and anxiety decrease.

After doing this for a little while, you should be able to get the hang of it to the point that you can do this for many of the technical papers you read.  You'll find that your reading experiences will be more challenging yet rewarding and dare I say it--FUN.  

Cheers!   

“Read This Paper!”: What Does That Really Mean?

It’s not unusual for an advisor to occasionally tell you to read certain papers because she thinks the papers are relevant to your career or research. The suggestion (or commandment) to read the paper, if interpreted by most laypeople would probably translate to “read the words in this paper.” And this, unfortunately, is how many freshmen PhD students interpret the suggestion from their advisor. Poor souls...

When an advisor admonishes you to “read this paper,” she’s really saying “understand this paper and anything this paper relies on.” So what does that mean? That means you should also be reading any papers that the paper references. It means, if you don’t really get a concept, try to implement it in some small cheap way. Until you’ve become mature in your chosen field, you’ll rarely know and have understood all the references cited by the paper you’re reading and thus be able to avoid this “extra legwork.” And even when you have matured, you may come across a paper that uses linear algebra or statistical techniques you haven’t seen before. Can you guess what you’ll have to do? More legwork? Bingo!

You might be saying to yourself at this point: That sounds laborious. Newsflash: IT IS. Nobody promised you that your PhD program would be a walk in the park. And if someone did, shame on him for lying, and shame on you for believing him.

Trials and Tribulations: Keep Going

After spending whatever you consider to be "a lot of time" in a PhD program, it's easy to lose heart.  It's easy to doubt yourself and the path you're choosing. It's easy to take the attractive offer from Big Company X and to say "what the hell."  It's easy to conjure up all the obstacles you're facing and will have to face.  All of us that go through challenging PhD programs have those dark moments.  And to succeed, you must see yourself through those times.     

Let me share with you one of the MANY things that kept me going in those so called "dark moments."  One thing I used to say from time to time that helped put things into perspective was the following: 

The pain of the PhD program is temporary, but the pride (and everything else) that comes with having a PhD is forever. 

Get through a program that lasts 4 - 6+ years of your life, and get to be called "Dr." for the rest of your life.  Not too bad of a trade eh?   

Accept Criticism to Be a Better Scientist

Criticism is a part of the PhD process (read the fine print).

Should You Get a PhD?

More students than you think actually aren’t 100% certain that they want to get a PhD. There are some people that desire positions that have a PhD as a prerequisite (e.g., being a tenure-track professor). If what you want to be requires a PhD, then it’s probably in a student’s best interest to be certain she wants the PhD.

So for the rest of us out there who don’t need a PhD for some job we desire, the question is "should we get PhDs?”

I believe you should obtain a PhD if you believe its attainment will add substantial value to your life. 

When some people see the word value, they sometimes immediately think of money, but value is obviously more than that. Take me for example. The number one reason I decided to complete my PhD was that, because I knew I wouldn’t enter into academia, my life had a greater probability of being “interesting”--I couldn’t predict how my life would be altered--I just knew it would be altered, and it would be positive.  Now, I'm not going to lie, I also figured monetarily, if I played my cards I could come out on top financially as well--but this thought wasn't the primary motivation.  Quitting the PhD program after my Master’s to enter the workforce just seemed too boring and predictable a life.

The perceived greater potential of a “interesting life” was enough to drive me to finish my PhD. The trick is to find out if such a drive--that is, something valuable that’s derived from obtaining a PhD--exists for you in your life. Good luck!

Life Lessons Learned From Running

I can honestly assert that my most meaningful achievement has nothing to do with computers or computer science. Nevertheless, it has taught me many practical life lessons and analogies that I apply to my field of study and has shaped my goal achievement. Specifically, I trained for and completed a half marathon last year. Due to the fact that I was never an active runner, this entire experience was very new and difficult, however the process taught me many important principles. 

Firstly, I learned that comparing my performance to the performance of others was completely unnecessary. To explain, I am an extremely slow runner and was frequently discouraged when I encountered much older runners that ran much faster than me. I found that oftentimes, we are preoccupied by the achievements of others and tend to compare our own performance to the performance of others. In reality, my own performance has no bearing on anyone else’s performance and vice versa. Generally speaking, I learned that the achievement of others does not negate my hard work and progress.

Secondly, I learned that preparation is the most important component of the journey. In other words, preparation is what equips an individual to win the race. In terms of training, proper preparation ensures that a runner will successfully cross the finish line on the day of the race. In pursuing a PhD, adequate preparation ensures that when your knowledge is challenged, and you must defend your ideas, there is a firm background on which to base your knowledge.

Finally, I learned the importance of discipline. To be successful, hard work must become a habit, regardless of your individual preferences. For example, during training, I ran at 6am on most mornings. Initially, I experienced extreme difficulty waking up at such an early hour. As I continued running, waking up early became a habit and as a result, easier. The same principle applies for achieving my goal of a PhD. Originally, when I began research, working long hours consistently was extremely difficult. Once, I put aside my own preferences and made this schedule a habit, it became a norm in my life.

The Value of Research Reading Groups

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, doing a Ph.D. by yourself sucks. As a PhD student, much is demanded from you: coursework, teaching, research, publications, and becoming expert at something being among the things demanded from you. There’s so much going on in your field. How could you really read all of it in a reasonable amount of time?

News flash: You can’t.

So what is a Ph.D. student to do? Join a reading group related to your research area. In a reading group, at each meeting of the group, a different member takes the responsibility of reading a “important” paper in the area, and presents it to the rest of the group. This strategy spreads out the work required to stay on top of your field.

But what if there are no groups in your research area? Start one. Are you the only student in your department interested in your field? If so, that isn’t very healthy. In this case, you’ll want to at least occasionally attend another research group’s meetings. A great many ideas have been had by taking ideas from one area, and applying to another area.

Stand Up For Yourself

This sounds really cliché, but I think too few students stand up for themselves.  Students almost believe that they have to take nonsense from an advisor, because the advisor is paying her or controls when she graduates. If you’ve been disrespected by a professor, then you need to make it clear that you don’t take that kind of crap.  

You’re BOTH ADULTS.  

Your advisor shouldn’t treat you like his child. If your advisor can’t stand someone standing up for herself, then you might have the wrong advisor. If your advisor is looking for a child, then tell him to find a spouse and go create or adopt one.  It’s true that PhD students are often low on the totem pole, but it doesn’t make you a child either. I know for some, this advice may be hard to swallow, and I understand. 

I have two responses depending on circumstances.  Perspective one says that you’re afraid of future interactions being awkward with your advisor or you don’t know how he will react.  Look. There’s never a reason for your advisor to disrespect you when you’ve obeyed the Golden Rule and never disrespected him.  You have a right to correct your advisor in such a situation.  You have nothing to feel awkward about, because YOU were in the RIGHT.  You can be tactful in how you correct your advisor, but correct him you must, or be prepared to experience more disrespect throughout your PhD career.  And if you really had to choose, would rather you feel terrible the next X years, or potentially have to your advisor feel awkward for the next X years.  On the upside, he may want to graduate you faster!  Perspective two, you have a plan for redemption in the future.  If you’re being strategic about when you decide to stand up to your advisor, or in how you will stand up to him, know your strategy and implement it unfailingly.  Godspeed.     

Don't Sleep B/c The Semester's Light (Thus Far)

We’re about two-thirds into January and that means for a number of graduate students, they’ve been back in the classroom for the past couple of weeks going over the introductory material needed for topics that come later in the semester.  Academically, everything probably seems fairly under control at this point.  Compared to the final weeks of last semester, you’re probably finding yourself taking more “chill pill sessions.”  

While I’m not against taking “chill pill sessions,” I am an advocate of trading in some of those chill pill sessions for grind sessions.  Now, what’s meant by “grind sessions?”  Do you recall how you behaved at the end of last semester?  That’s one manifestation of a grind session.  You were in the throes of preparing for final exams. This form of grinding is especially relevant for any course where you’re not 100% confident you understand everything presented thus far.

Now, if you’ve got your courses under control, there’s still something you could be doing: 

PILING UP THE RESEARCH HOURS.  

If you’re taking challenging courses and doing research, you’ll probably find that research eventually takes a backseat to coursework diminishing research productivity.  Allow me to let you in on a little secret you already know: your coursework WILL pick up and subsequently your research productivity WILL go down.  Given this clairvoyance, you can take some offsetting actions: namely, cranking up your research effort.  In any scenario, make good use of this time in the semester--it won’t always be here.  

photo credit: Peter Szustka

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.