
Advice for new Ph.D. students (2013) - shagunsodhani
http://www.pgbovine.net/early-stage-PhD-advice.htm
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flor1s
Coming from a final year PhD student (already passed "pre-defence") doing a
three year PhD in Japan:

Advice I would have liked: Don't do a PhD if you like taking classes and just
want to extent that experience, as doing a PhD is very different from taking
classes. Also, the classes you are forced to take probably suck.

Advice I received but ignored but is probably true: Doing a PhD actually
decreases your chance of getting a job (especially in Computer Science)

Advice that I would have liked to receive, know now but still ignore: If you
are in a foreign country and you don't know the language but you want to stay
in the country after you graduate, learn the language! Don't spend all your
time doing research thinking that you will somehow compensate for not fluently
speaking the language just because you have more research achievements.
(Disclaimer: I live in Japan, and most jobs, even academic jobs, require a
sufficient level of Japanese language abilities)

~~~
luckyt
Is it actually feasible to learn Japanese to a professional proficiency level
as a foreigner? I've studied Japanese for several years, and can speak
Japanese at an intermediate conversational level, but I'm still a long way off
from communicating at a native level. So it seems like a tall order,
especially given that you're busy with research and can't dedicate time to
learning the language.

~~~
flor1s
Starting from scratch is indeed a tall order, and probably not possible if you
didn't study it before coming here. Many students spend some time as a
"research student" before starting with the PhD, so that would be the best
time to get a head start.

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s0rce
Advice I would have liked: no matter how successful you are in grad school,
its still going to be extremely difficult/maybe not worth it to get a tenure-
track faculty position and there is a large opportunity cost for the 6-10
years spent in grad school + postdocs.

~~~
starchild_3001
Re: Opportunity cost & try to look ahead. Great advice!

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ImaCake
I would add that you should choose a lab with lots of funding.

Big labs might mean you don't spend much time with your on-paper supervisors,
but you will get access to post-docs who can mentor you better than any
professor who doesn't step into a lab. Big labs with funding also have lots of
machines which can help you churn out data. Churning out data is very very
important!

Source: I failed my PhD partly because there was no one to mentor me, and no
resources to produce results. As a PhD student, you don't know what you are
doing and you need those resources so you don't waste your time.

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pgbovine
oh noes, not that guy again! this was written over 4 years ago before i became
a professor, so YMMV :) i haven't looked at this for years; this is a more
updated (and complementary) take on some of these issues, how that I've
advised ~25 research students so far: [http://www.pgbovine.net/managing-me-as-
your-advisor.htm](http://www.pgbovine.net/managing-me-as-your-advisor.htm)

~~~
frozenport
Wow. He must be a cool guy to work for because the guide doesnt cover the real
issues students in applied sciences struggle with:

1) conflict of interest

2) your PI not killing a project

3) your PI making you do everything but graduate

4) visiting scholar becomes the first author on your paper (happens a lot)

5) we can't do the right thing because we dony have any money

6) I validated my hypothesis, god forbid we run a replicate. Or I have all the
data I'm a going to get, how do I publish a paper with it?

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analog31
Some things I learned the hard way:

1\. Keeping a good notebook means not having to repeat work because you can't
remember what you did. Being unable to reproduce my own work was a massive
handicap.

2\. Your results "decay" over time. Even if nobody is counting your hours, the
level of intensity required to overcome that rate of decay is intrinsic to the
nature of the research itself.

~~~
maksimum
A potentially useful clarification on what good means: on the one hand it
should be easy for you to write to it, on the other hand it should be possible
for you to search through it. I find myself re-deriving the same gradient over
and over...

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ironjunkie
I think we are over hyping PhD progams. Especially in computer science.

From what I saw after graduation: The top 10% of the students got huge offers
to join big companies. The "Street smart" students are usually joining
startups.

The most interesting part is that students joining a PhD program were not the
best academically, but they were the ones that loved to brag about how
difficult their PhD were going to be.

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noprobalo
First line should say: It's never too late to quit

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a_bonobo
This is very US-centric, your mileage may vary in other countries. For
example:

>For instance, I started my first successful Ph.D. project at the beginning of
my fourth year and didn't get the paper published until the middle of my fifth
year.

If you're an international PhD student in Australia your student visa ends
after 3 1/2 years.

What I would add:

\- Randomness

You're new, so you have no idea whether your project will work out. Most
don't, that's just how research works. Some supervisors have a magic nose when
it comes to evaluating a project, but even they occasionally fail. One of the
best things you can learn in your PhD is when to pull the plug on a project
that's just not working out. For me it was very frustrating to see other PhD
students who 'stumbled' into having more papers than me, some projects
immediately throw up results once you go near them and you get heaps of
papers, some projects have to have their results pulled out of them by force.

\- be pro-active

Most supervisors don't regularly keep tabs on their students, they're busy
themselves. If something is unclear immediately find your supervisor and ask.
It's better to over-ask then to under-ask and do the wrong thing for a month.
I tried to talk to my supervisor at least 3-5 times per week (when he was in
his office).

\- write, write, write

In the current funding system the only thing that counts is publications.
Start writing as early as possible, ideally have an outline of the paper when
you're starting your project. Keep on writing in the paper even though you
don't have the results yet - you want to 'tell a story', writing the story
will tell you which experiments or analyses you have to run, and which graphs
and tables will support your story. If your story doesn't work out change the
story later. Writing the paper will also keep you from doing unnecessary work
that sounds interesting in itself but won't add to the story.

\- hard workers are more successful than geniuses

Guo touches on this a bit. Someone who works hard will have inevitably more
success than a lazy genius.

\- start communities if there are none

For software people, many unis have Hacky Hours now - often there's a local
Software Carpentry community or similar. Get involved with those people, at
the least just to get out of your office/lab once in a while.

\- Alternative careers are myriad

Chances are you won't become a Professor. Depending on your field there are
many, many hidden opportunities outside of academia, so look around!

~~~
a_bonobo
Addendum to 'be pro-active': You'll quickly realise that your supervisor
doesn't know what's going on in the entire field, nobody does. Be pro-active
in seeking out new developments and new papers that touch on your field. Set
up Google Scholar alerts, set up PubMed alerts, and send those papers to your
supervisor, they'll appreciate it, you'll know what's going on, and you'll
look good to your supervisor. But: be careful not to spend too much time on
this.

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redshirt
> you've likely had positive experiences with research as an undergraduate.

This guy is really really out of touch with reality. People that go get PhD’s
are driven. I know many that had entirely shit experiences with undergrad
research, horrible advisors, but new what they wanted and were darned
determined to get it.

>Also, you've been a good student in school, scoring at the top of your class
on exams and projects. And you've probably been praised throughout childhood
for being a smart kid.

Umm, hmm. This is actually a problem. He’s looking for less diverse, vanilla,
1% kids. Sure, the entrance criteria are smart kids with good grades. Likely
the best and most driven will be the scrappy ones from really odd backgrounds
with few “projects” of official nature and even fewer actual undergrad
research experiences. I hate people like this that walk the walk of
“diversity” but then they go off and try to find the exact same as themselves,
silver spoon kids of academics. If you look at the really successful people,
they have some really interesting and truly diverse backgrounds. Just my .02

If you want to get a PHD, do it because you love learning, teaching, are
extremely creative and have tremendous follow through. Are you a person that
constantly thinks, “why am I here?” The. Get out and find a job, it’s not
worth it.

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woodson
Another piece of advice: Only do a Ph.D. if you get paid to do it (in addition
to not having to pay tuition).

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starchild_3001
I think the first paragraph should've said everybody's experience is
different.

Doing a PhD is like joining a company. It's a job. Depending on the team,
manager, department, project, your personality etc. your experience will
wildly vary.

> UNDERGRAD VERSUS PH.D. RESEARCH (being very different)

Here's my counterexample: My undergrad research experience was much like my
MS/PhD research experience. It even led to a paper.

