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.      

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.

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...

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. 

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.