9 ms·

This reminds me of my Ph.D. crisis. (which I'm sure many former grad students can relate to) I was in my 6th year. All my friends had graduated, and my stipend

by wenc 6y ago

This reminds me of my Ph.D. crisis. (which I'm sure many former grad students can relate to) I was in my 6th year. All my friends had graduated, and my stipend had run out. I was 2 weeks away from submission and discovered that one of my assumptions was wrong, which potentially distorted/invalidated all my studies -- to fix these studies would have potentially delayed submission for months. It was a very subtle assumption violation (and it wasn't even that wrong) and my committee probably wouldn't even have noticed. I was tempted to sweep it under the carpet and not let it keep me from graduating. But I knew it was wrong. I felt that if I sacrificed my integrity then, the moral failure would mark me for life. No one would know -- but I would know. So I decided to fix the issue, re-do the studies and live with the reality that I would have to delay my defense. Turns out when you're desperate -- and many grad students can attest to this -- a resourcefulness that you never thought you had kicks in ("where were you during all my years of grad school?"). I don't remember how, but I somehow managed to wrangle new studies out in 3 days (which would have previously taken me months). I made the deadline in the end. The lesson I learned was that committing to doing the right thing has its costs, but in some cases it also forces one to explore attacks never previously considered. Asking on MathOverflow is one such attack.

sadfev 6y ago
Your comment is a lifeline to me in this difficult time. Why are we not resourceful in normal time?
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
  Because in normal time we spend most of our time reading HN rather than working on our urgent stuff.
  - infogulch 6y ago
    Whelp that's my signal to get back to work.
- dleslie 6y ago
  It's not typically sustainable to operate at such high levels of stress, but the stress brings with it a myriad of hormones and behavioural adaptions that, for some people, aid in sustaining focus and effort.
- Enginerrrd 6y ago
  I wish I knew the answer to this. When everything is totally screwed up and on fire and I need to get something done by 5:00 today that would normally take a week and a half, by God, it becomes apparent every millimeter of fat that can be trimmed and I can usually scrape together what's needed by then. Then the deadline is over and I get a similar project the next day and it's back to taking 5 days to finish. There are real quality differences between the two scenarios, but they aren't nearly as bad as what you'd think they are. The reality is that I can just work a lot more efficiently when stressed. If I could do that all the time I'd be able to work 3 hours a day and remain as productive.
- gandalf013 6y ago
  Hobbes: Do you have an idea for your project yet? Calvin: No, I'm waiting for inspiration. You can't turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood. Hobbes: What mood is that? Calvin: Last-minute panic.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- mordymoop 6y ago
  The “point” of gradual school should be taking long walks with friends from completely different departments, talking about abstract ideas that aren’t related to your work at all. Maybe later in the shower you realize some subtle connection to your work that gives you an idea for an innovation, but maybe not. The point of graduate school is play. The switch from “play” to “product” is difficult but necessary. Both phases are important to the budding PhD. You need to demonstrate the ability to think creatively AND the ability to process that creativity into a deliverable. That’s the value of a PhD. If you’re interested in a focused grind to a specified finish line, skip graduate school.
  - DrAwdeOccarim 6y ago
    I agree with you and I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone else make this point. Graduate school, and to a lesser extent post doc, is when you're supposed to dilly dally. Of course at the time it doesn't quite feel like that, but you are paid a meagre wage for a reason--to survive, but to not be comfortable. No extra money to go party, travel, etc. The devotion to the craft is supposed to be an almost pious experience. Even though it's simple, it is an incredible luxury most have never and will never get to experience (only a small percentage of the world obtains or even attends grad school for a PhD). With an eye on "getting out", you miss out on part of the beauty. I had many contemporaries through my studies like that. They were always stressed out and pushing to get home at 5pm, unlike us slackers who hung around and discussed tangential things but always with an eye toward connecting the dots. The ones who really excelled post grad school were the ones with vision and drive, not just drive alone, and the former always hung around shooting the shit because they appreciated the value derived from informal, idle chat.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    One of my colleagues was in grind mode and switched to a 6 day life week by living 28 hour days so that he could be on certain machines all night when normal humans were sleeping. Yeah he burned out quickly and left with a masters.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  It’s selection bias. There are probably far more instances where rushing through causes problems than there are where rushing through doesn’t.
  - Blackadderz 6y ago
    My supervisor would often say: Don't rush, we don't have time. Funny because he was often the reason we had to do the last minute rush :)
foepys 6y ago
> Turns out when you're desperate -- and many grad students can attest to this -- a resourcefulness that you never thought you'd had kicks in This is getting millions of students through high school, college, and university every year. Everybody has at least one thing they pushed back for way too long and then developed almost super-human-like abilities to do it. Doesn't guarantee a good grade, though.
- pvarangot 6y ago
  In my humble experience this force of human will also gets early stage startups a second chance or saves them from sudden death regularly.
supernova87a 6y ago
There's another (slightly kinder) version of this: When people go to grad school, then during their studentship get married and have a kid -- suddenly their productivity goes up dramatically and output per time increases by many factors. What happened? It turns out when you have self-motivating reasons to get out (and a target on your head from your spouse to earn some money for godssake), you find ways to focus on what's important and drop the rest. No more idling away for hours on silly ideas that don't get you closer to handing in your thesis. No more trying random libraries that get your code to run 2% faster. No more goofing around after 6pm with other students just because you have the time -- you have to get home and be a breadwinner for your family. You have to get shit done. You start to ask, "even if I don't know exactly what the thesis will say, how should it be organized and what kinds of conclusions will make up the writing? And what experiments do I need to fill in those charts/paragraphs, and no more?" What's the minimum I need to do to get out of here? Not, "What amazing interesting thing could I explore?" Limits and constraints sometimes free the mind dramatically. The side effect is maybe you don't get to explore ideas that go nowhere, but that's a discussion about the purpose of the PhD and for another topic I guess. (And sometimes, if you think, well I don't have a kid, so what's the rush? Well, someday you might have a spouse, a kid, and every day of time you left in grad school is a day for your future self -- and family -- and $$ -- left behind in time. Work to free your future self... now, while you have the time.)
- supernova87a 6y ago
  I might offer a corollary as an practice to adopt (in the absence of the above possibility) -- learn to enable your research to have visible incremental gains on a known path every day, rather than hoping (hoping!) for some amazing breakthrough at the end. Amazing breakthroughs have high risk, and make it highly likely you'll have a crisis when it doesn't happen. And what I mean is that, even if you don't know what the answer is going to be at the end of your research, you must think about, or have an idea about, the format of what that amazing answer is going to be. Write the outline of your thesis and "ghost out" what the major charts will be. Write the intro sentences of each chapter -- what are they? (and I don't just mean the boring review of the field part, but your findings part) You should know what major finding, plot, or table your research is going to output. What are the columns and rows of that table, or axes of that plot? How many data points are required? How many of them can already be guessed? Where is the surprise going to be? What is the conclusion going to be? For most graduate research, the finding is not an amazing field-changing big bang. Few grad students are that fortunate. Or at least most of the bulk of the work will be of that sort. You should be able to predict what the answer is going to look like from past work, and the error bars. Draw out the answer you're aiming for, now. If you can't even articuate what the answer will look like, you may be in for a bad time, so work on fixing that. It will also push you and your advisor to be specific about what the output of your thesis will be. Your future self will thank you.
mjklin 6y ago
The book “Gödel, Escher, Bach” was printed with a special process only available at one printer far away from where Hofstadter was living, and was extremely time consuming. At the last minute the whole thing had to be redone, so he had to get on a plane, print a few pages, then fly back to his job. This took several months. (He talks about it in the 20th anniversary edition.)
dmch-1 6y ago
My laptop broke down just hours before I had to submit the thesis. It was the day of the deadline. I did have printed copies of the thesis (I had to submit printed copies), however I discovered bad typos on the front page. But, my laptop was down with the only digital version in it. In the end, I corrected the typos using a photocopier. I overlayed the typos with corrections on cut out pieces of paper, and photocopied. It was quite a struggle, but I made it!
jjeaff 6y ago
Good on you for doing the right thing. We have far too little thinking like this in the world. It reminds me of a story I heard from a businessman that was walking with an associate down the street. He stopped at one of those old metal newspaper dispenser machines to buy a paper. For those that don't know, the way they work is once you have put in your quarter the machine opens up and all the papers are just stacked in there. His associate asked him to grab a newspaper for him. So he pulled out one paper, closed the machine and put in another quarter and then pulled out another. The associate asked, "Why didn't you just grab a second paper for free? It's just a quarter." The businessman's response was, "If I'm willing to sacrifice my integrity for a quarter, how much easier will it be to sacrifice it when something serious is on the line?"
- philsnow 6y ago
  Luke 16:10-11 > 10 “He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. > 11 If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you the true riches? It's right there in the gospels, plain as day, and yet I agree with you that there's far too little thinking like this in the world, even among people who claim to be "Christians".
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jvvw 6y ago
I discovered that the proof of a fundamental proposition in my maths PhD thesis had a mistake in it two weeks before my viva, after I had submitted. Not sure if that was a better or worse time to discover it! After a rather stressful few days, I managed to reprove it and took the correct proof along to the viva. The examiners were 'well, the result was obviously correct so we weren't worried about it'!
BrandoElFollito 6y ago
I had a similar doubt in my thesis (physics). I wrote a special chapter where I discussed my results with myself and ended up suggesting someone takes a closer look if interested. The jury was initially 6 people, 1 refused to review a thesis where the candidate discusses with himself because it breaks tradition. The others were quite happy, with one of them referring to my discussion and thanking me for the time she gained with it and which allowed her to spend more time with friends. For some small issues it is sometimes better to tell it upfront and highlight hiw genius the rest of the thesis is.

by wenc 6y ago

sadfev 6y ago

Your comment is a lifeline to me in this difficult time. Why are we not resourceful in normal time?

YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
Because in normal time we spend most of our time reading HN rather than working on our urgent stuff.
- infogulch 6y ago
  Whelp that's my signal to get back to work.
dleslie 6y ago
It's not typically sustainable to operate at such high levels of stress, but the stress brings with it a myriad of hormones and behavioural adaptions that, for some people, aid in sustaining focus and effort.
Enginerrrd 6y ago
I wish I knew the answer to this. When everything is totally screwed up and on fire and I need to get something done by 5:00 today that would normally take a week and a half, by God, it becomes apparent every millimeter of fat that can be trimmed and I can usually scrape together what's needed by then. Then the deadline is over and I get a similar project the next day and it's back to taking 5 days to finish. There are real quality differences between the two scenarios, but they aren't nearly as bad as what you'd think they are. The reality is that I can just work a lot more efficiently when stressed. If I could do that all the time I'd be able to work 3 hours a day and remain as productive.
gandalf013 6y ago
Hobbes: Do you have an idea for your project yet? Calvin: No, I'm waiting for inspiration. You can't turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood. Hobbes: What mood is that? Calvin: Last-minute panic.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
mordymoop 6y ago
The “point” of gradual school should be taking long walks with friends from completely different departments, talking about abstract ideas that aren’t related to your work at all. Maybe later in the shower you realize some subtle connection to your work that gives you an idea for an innovation, but maybe not. The point of graduate school is play. The switch from “play” to “product” is difficult but necessary. Both phases are important to the budding PhD. You need to demonstrate the ability to think creatively AND the ability to process that creativity into a deliverable. That’s the value of a PhD. If you’re interested in a focused grind to a specified finish line, skip graduate school.
- DrAwdeOccarim 6y ago
  I agree with you and I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone else make this point. Graduate school, and to a lesser extent post doc, is when you're supposed to dilly dally. Of course at the time it doesn't quite feel like that, but you are paid a meagre wage for a reason--to survive, but to not be comfortable. No extra money to go party, travel, etc. The devotion to the craft is supposed to be an almost pious experience. Even though it's simple, it is an incredible luxury most have never and will never get to experience (only a small percentage of the world obtains or even attends grad school for a PhD). With an eye on "getting out", you miss out on part of the beauty. I had many contemporaries through my studies like that. They were always stressed out and pushing to get home at 5pm, unlike us slackers who hung around and discussed tangential things but always with an eye toward connecting the dots. The ones who really excelled post grad school were the ones with vision and drive, not just drive alone, and the former always hung around shooting the shit because they appreciated the value derived from informal, idle chat.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  One of my colleagues was in grind mode and switched to a 6 day life week by living 28 hour days so that he could be on certain machines all night when normal humans were sleeping. Yeah he burned out quickly and left with a masters.
lotsofpulp 6y ago
It’s selection bias. There are probably far more instances where rushing through causes problems than there are where rushing through doesn’t.
- Blackadderz 6y ago
  My supervisor would often say: Don't rush, we don't have time. Funny because he was often the reason we had to do the last minute rush :)

foepys 6y ago

> Turns out when you're desperate -- and many grad students can attest to this -- a resourcefulness that you never thought you'd had kicks in This is getting millions of students through high school, college, and university every year. Everybody has at least one thing they pushed back for way too long and then developed almost super-human-like abilities to do it. Doesn't guarantee a good grade, though.

pvarangot 6y ago
In my humble experience this force of human will also gets early stage startups a second chance or saves them from sudden death regularly.

supernova87a 6y ago

There's another (slightly kinder) version of this: When people go to grad school, then during their studentship get married and have a kid -- suddenly their productivity goes up dramatically and output per time increases by many factors. What happened? It turns out when you have self-motivating reasons to get out (and a target on your head from your spouse to earn some money for godssake), you find ways to focus on what's important and drop the rest. No more idling away for hours on silly ideas that don't get you closer to handing in your thesis. No more trying random libraries that get your code to run 2% faster. No more goofing around after 6pm with other students just because you have the time -- you have to get home and be a breadwinner for your family. You have to get shit done. You start to ask, "even if I don't know exactly what the thesis will say, how should it be organized and what kinds of conclusions will make up the writing? And what experiments do I need to fill in those charts/paragraphs, and no more?" What's the minimum I need to do to get out of here? Not, "What amazing interesting thing could I explore?" Limits and constraints sometimes free the mind dramatically. The side effect is maybe you don't get to explore ideas that go nowhere, but that's a discussion about the purpose of the PhD and for another topic I guess. (And sometimes, if you think, well I don't have a kid, so what's the rush? Well, someday you might have a spouse, a kid, and every day of time you left in grad school is a day for your future self -- and family -- and $$ -- left behind in time. Work to free your future self... now, while you have the time.)

supernova87a 6y ago
I might offer a corollary as an practice to adopt (in the absence of the above possibility) -- learn to enable your research to have visible incremental gains on a known path every day, rather than hoping (hoping!) for some amazing breakthrough at the end. Amazing breakthroughs have high risk, and make it highly likely you'll have a crisis when it doesn't happen. And what I mean is that, even if you don't know what the answer is going to be at the end of your research, you must think about, or have an idea about, the format of what that amazing answer is going to be. Write the outline of your thesis and "ghost out" what the major charts will be. Write the intro sentences of each chapter -- what are they? (and I don't just mean the boring review of the field part, but your findings part) You should know what major finding, plot, or table your research is going to output. What are the columns and rows of that table, or axes of that plot? How many data points are required? How many of them can already be guessed? Where is the surprise going to be? What is the conclusion going to be? For most graduate research, the finding is not an amazing field-changing big bang. Few grad students are that fortunate. Or at least most of the bulk of the work will be of that sort. You should be able to predict what the answer is going to look like from past work, and the error bars. Draw out the answer you're aiming for, now. If you can't even articuate what the answer will look like, you may be in for a bad time, so work on fixing that. It will also push you and your advisor to be specific about what the output of your thesis will be. Your future self will thank you.

mjklin 6y ago

The book “Gödel, Escher, Bach” was printed with a special process only available at one printer far away from where Hofstadter was living, and was extremely time consuming. At the last minute the whole thing had to be redone, so he had to get on a plane, print a few pages, then fly back to his job. This took several months. (He talks about it in the 20th anniversary edition.)

dmch-1 6y ago

My laptop broke down just hours before I had to submit the thesis. It was the day of the deadline. I did have printed copies of the thesis (I had to submit printed copies), however I discovered bad typos on the front page. But, my laptop was down with the only digital version in it. In the end, I corrected the typos using a photocopier. I overlayed the typos with corrections on cut out pieces of paper, and photocopied. It was quite a struggle, but I made it!

jjeaff 6y ago

Good on you for doing the right thing. We have far too little thinking like this in the world. It reminds me of a story I heard from a businessman that was walking with an associate down the street. He stopped at one of those old metal newspaper dispenser machines to buy a paper. For those that don't know, the way they work is once you have put in your quarter the machine opens up and all the papers are just stacked in there. His associate asked him to grab a newspaper for him. So he pulled out one paper, closed the machine and put in another quarter and then pulled out another. The associate asked, "Why didn't you just grab a second paper for free? It's just a quarter." The businessman's response was, "If I'm willing to sacrifice my integrity for a quarter, how much easier will it be to sacrifice it when something serious is on the line?"

philsnow 6y ago
Luke 16:10-11 > 10 “He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. > 11 If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you the true riches? It's right there in the gospels, plain as day, and yet I agree with you that there's far too little thinking like this in the world, even among people who claim to be "Christians".

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jvvw 6y ago

I discovered that the proof of a fundamental proposition in my maths PhD thesis had a mistake in it two weeks before my viva, after I had submitted. Not sure if that was a better or worse time to discover it! After a rather stressful few days, I managed to reprove it and took the correct proof along to the viva. The examiners were 'well, the result was obviously correct so we weren't worried about it'!

BrandoElFollito 6y ago

I had a similar doubt in my thesis (physics). I wrote a special chapter where I discussed my results with myself and ended up suggesting someone takes a closer look if interested. The jury was initially 6 people, 1 refused to review a thesis where the candidate discusses with himself because it breaks tradition. The others were quite happy, with one of them referring to my discussion and thanking me for the time she gained with it and which allowed her to spend more time with friends. For some small issues it is sometimes better to tell it upfront and highlight hiw genius the rest of the thesis is.