Grad student advice: Picking a topic April 17, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, grad school, physics, research.Tags: advice, advising, advisor, dissertation, grad school, research
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It happened again yesterday: one of the email updates I received had a post from someone asking someone to give him a good topic for a dissertation.
It’s not an absurd question: some of us don’t have much if any guidance from advisors, though I get worried that this is indicative of a problematic advising relationship. I’m also not saying an advisor should give a student a topic (at least not for a PhD), but they apparently aren’t even addressing the topic with the student. However, I figured it’s a question worth addressing on the blog. If nothing else, I can post a link whenever I see the question pop up, which it seems to do with regularity.
The real simple answer, in my experience, is to start reading. Read journals in your field. Look at what interests you. Try to think of gaps or problems that aren’t addressed in the research you’re reading. And don’t forget to go back and read the references for the most interesting articles. Other ideas are to get involved in projects or try to choose something from a class project (I discuss this here). Generally, you’re going to be spending several years on something, so let your curiosity guide you. If it’s not interesting now, it certainly won’t be in four years. (In fact, even if it is interesting now, you might be sick of it in four years, but it’s best to make that four years as tolerable as physically possible.)
The question in my mind is whether you should talk to your advisor before or after you start doing this. Some advisors do give their students projects, but my experience in physics and electrical engineering is that most don’t. (My friends in the biological sciences, particularly medicine, have indicated that, in their fields, getting a topic handed to you is the norm.) However, even if your advisor doesn’t give you a project, s/he is likely to have an area of interest where they’d prefer you work. My MS advisor was very much the exception in that he expected his students to pick topics outside of his primary research area as a way for him to learn more about other areas. I think his rule of thumb was that it had to require electromagnetics…beyond that, you were pretty much on your own. On the other hand, if you had no particular interest, he did have suggestions, so he didn’t leave you hanging, either.
Therefore, as you’re looking at topics, be sure to check in with your advisor on a fairly regular basis to make sure that you’re not going too far astray (been there, done that) as well as making sure they still ‘buy in’ to your project (done that, and it’s not fun when they aren’t terribly interested). You also need to take into consideration whether or not you have the facilities and equipment and, probably, funding for your project. If you want to go into a certain area and need funding, you’ll likely need help from your advisor. It’s also a good idea to do this early because it gives you an idea of how invested your advisor is in your project and how well you communicate. Figure it out early before you get four years into a thesis project only to have your advisor tell you you’re an idiot and won’t be graduating. (Yes, it does happen.)
The take away message should be that you should try to use your curiosity and creativity to find a project, and that you need to make sure your advisor buys into it. Don’t ask total strangers as they’re so far removed from the situation, you’ll never get anything useful.
Some of my readers are wise in the way of advising, so I’m curious what they have to add.
Linkety Link January 9, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in links.Tags: advice, AP exams, civil war, extinction, icicles, moonquakes, spicules, torture, Yosemite
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My friend (who is an NPS Park Ranger at the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site) shared a story explaining five myths about why the South seceded.
The College Board is rethinking the AP.
Hopefully the US government has rethought its stance on ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ after it misused science to justify it’s stance.
Equally depressing is the addition of six birds to the extinct list in Australia. Some of the birds could have been saved.
Researchers have been studying moonquakes to determine the interior structure of the moon. (Also included is a discussion of solar spicules, but for more information, you can check here.)
Back on Earth, you may want to check out some awesome pictures of Yosemite Valley.
You could also learn about the physics of icicle formation.
And finally, Dave from the EEVblog has some great advice to newly graduated engineers. On the other hand, I think there’s a certain amount of advice that is applicable no matter where you work:
Advice to grad students September 14, 2010
Posted by mareserinitatis in grad school.Tags: advice, grad school, Murphy's law
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Before I started my PhD program, I found a reference somewhere to the book, “Getting What you Came For.” I read it cover to cover. It’s great advice.
On the other hand, it’s the same advice you can read everywhere else, just well synthesized. A couple days ago, I came across this advice. It started out with probably the best advice you can get:
Always prepare for the worst.
This was the one piece of advice I don’t remember reading before, and yet it’s really the only one that has been universally true. The thing with most advice on grad school is that they deal with common problems that the person who really doesn’t know about grad school may encounter. They seldom talk about the really odd or horrible things that can and do happen in grad school.
It’s bad enough if your advisor leaves to go someplace else. I’ve seen people finish their degrees despite this and others who did not. I have chalked that sort of thing up to personality and drive, as well as how far along they are in their research. In all situations, it wasn’t an easy thing to deal with for the student, whether or not they managed to finish.
But what about the friend who’s MS advisor died before he was finished? In this case, it turned out that someone else was actually supervising most of his research, so he was able to finish. But I can imagine that, for a lot of people, it would mean catastrophic upheaval beyond that of an advisor leaving.
My experience is simply that Murphy’s law is bound to strike any time. Read all the advice you want. It does help. But there are times when things will happen that you don’t expect and didn’t prepare for. Sometimes you simply can’t prepare for them.
When those things happen, all you can do is decide how badly you want to keep moving. If you really want that degree, you keep moving. If not, if the stress becomes too much or something catastrophic happens, you change gears. Sometimes it’s permanent, but I’ve also seen people recover. There are those who quit, those who quit and come back, and those you just keep plugging as best they can.
There are circumstances for which there really is no ‘good’ advice because it’s very personal. One person can deal with a situation and another cannot, and the only person who can really judge what the best decision is will be the one making the decision, despite all the advice out there.
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
Advice for life July 2, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in family, personal, societal commentary.Tags: advice, relationships
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I found this while scrounging around my old blog for something. I never found it because I got distracted when I found this. It’s a compilation of my life experience distilled into a bulleted list of advice. It was a nice refresher, so I thought I’d share it here. If you have anything you’d like to add, feel free in the comments.
Be independent. Don’t depend on other people. Accept help when others offer it with good intentions but not if they give with strings attached. Be a person others can depend on, even if they don’t want to.
Never take your friends and loved ones for granted. Never hold back your feelings for them. Take every opportunity to let them know you care about them and appreciate their place in your life. Spend as much time with them as you can. You will regret missed opportunities later on.
Don’t wait around for other people to do things. You miss out on a lot of wonderful experiences, and our fears about doing things and being alone are often unfounded.
Don’t expect loved ones to easily let you know their feelings because a lot of people aren’t very good at expressing them. Just know that caring for a person never goes unappreciated and take their words at face value.
There is an unlimited supply of love in the universe, and you’re free to give out as much as you can. And you should!
Don’t be too hard on yourself and don’t hang around others who are negative about you or anyone else. It will take a long time to recover from the damage this causes you. You can’t make everyone happy, but you should be honest with yourself and be the best person you know how to be. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement, though.
Never react to someone in anger. If you’re angry, take some time to go away and think about it before you say something stupid.
A person will remember the way you treated them and talked to them for the rest of their life. Think about that every time you interact with them. This is especially important when this is your family and you’ll be around them for many years.
Have goals in life, but be flexible. Having goals doesn’t always mean reaching them, and failing to reach them doesn’t reflect badly on you. The path toward the goal is a means to growing as a person, and that is more important than reaching the goal. Sometimes, often times, those diversions away from the goal will make you a better person.