The Ph.D. Grind

http://book.douban.com/subject/11505704/

http://pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm

http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/154473-the-phd-grind-main-grinds-and-side-grinds/fulltext

http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/155690-the-phd-grind-lead-from-below/fulltext

http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/157012-phds-from-the-facultys-perspective/fulltext

However, the problem with dreaming up ideas in a vacuum back then was that I lacked the experience necessary to turn those ideas into real research projects.Having full intellectual freedom was actually a curse,since I was not yet prepared to handle it.

Be proactive in talking with professors to find research topics that are mutually interesting, and no matter what, don’t just hole up in isolation.

thinking in terms of experiments—when proposing research project ideas. Professors are motivated by having their names appear on published papers, and computer science conference papers usually need strong experiments to get accepted for publication. Thus, it's crucial to think about experiment design at project inception time.

To fend off procrastination, I worked tirelessly to impose self-discipline and structure on my workdays. I tried to“micromanage” myself by setting small, bite-sized goals and attacking them every day, hoping that positive results would eventually come.

the importance of being endorsed by an influential person; simply doing good work isn’t enough to get noticed in a hyper-competitive field.

Getting immediate daily feedback made it easy for me to stay focused and motivated. The combination of a well-defined, short-term goal and continual helpful feedback made my internship workdays much more productive than those during my previous three years of grad school.

I discovered that this strategy of finding and setting short-term deadlines for myself would work wonders in keeping me focused throughout the rest of my Ph.D. years. Without self-imposed deadlines, it becomes easy to fall into a rut and succumb to chronic procrastination.

Out of the five projects that comprised my dissertation, CDE was my favorite since it was a simple, elegant idea that turned into a practical tool with over 10,000 users. It was by far the least sophisticated from a research standpoint, but it was the most satisfying to work on due to its real-world relevance.

I understood the importance of aligning with the subjective preferences of senior collaborators (and paper reviewers), even when doing research in supposedly objective technical fields.

In the end, like most Ph.D. dissertations, mine expanded the boundaries of human knowledge by a teeny microscopic amount.

This accomplishment wouldn’t have been possible without a rare combination of great luck, personal initiative, insightful nudges from generous people, and nearly ten thousand hours of grinding.

Epilogue:

 a Ph.D. program provides a safe environment for certain types of people to push themselves far beyond their mental limits and then emerge stronger as a result.

1. Results trump intentions

2. Outputs trump inputs

3. Find relevant information

4. Create lucky opportunities

5. Play the game

6. Lead from below

7. Professors are human

8. Be well-liked

9. Pay some dues

10. Reject bad defaults

11. Know when to quit

12. Recover from failures

13. Ally with insiders

14. Give many talks

15. Sell, sell, sell

16. Generously provide help

17. Ask for help

18. Express true gratitude

19. Ideas beget ideas

20. Grind hard and smart

Due to the ultra-competitive nature of the paper publication game, what often makes the difference between an accept and a reject decision is how well a paper’s “marketing pitch” appeals to reviewers’ tastes.

Afterword:

And a junior professor wrote, “At the end, it was a rewarding journey for me, as it helped me emerge a lot more hard working, persistent, stronger and confident. This transformation is the real output of [a] PhD program and not the publications.”