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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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!