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.