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I am a bit confused about the problem. Most of the comments are about getting past a writing block, but my (possibly incorrect) interpretation was that the sti

I am a bit confused about the problem. Most of the comments are about getting past a writing block, but my (possibly incorrect) interpretation was that the sticking point is in doing the research work that would be reported on in the thesis. I infer this partly because of the discussion of bringing undergraduate students and other graduate students into the research team. Obviously, such a team has nothing to do with writing. And, at one point, the author talks of dismissing the others, with an intention of carrying on, alone. These things gave me the idea that the block is not in writing, but rather in completing the pre-writing work. So, the wonderful writing advice -- and I mean that, what I see here is well-informed and heartfelt -- might not be the main thing the author needs. The thesis advisor seems like a very good person, being patient, encouraging, and supportive. I don't think too many advisors would go out of their way to employ others to help in a thesis project. A more common approach is to simply cut off funding for the postgraduate student after a certain time, or if insufficient progress were being made. Given these things, it seems to me that the advisor has been a good help to the author. So, what to do? At the most basic, the choices are (a) to carry on or (b) to leave the program. Both choices can be good ones. And making a choice can be the sort of self-empowering step that leads to very good things in life. So, my advice is to make a choice. It can be time-limited, if that helps, e.g. "I'll give this another month, and if I'm not happy, I'll leave." Please note the word happy here. That is very important. Life is short. Life also proceeds in a directed fashion -- you can't go back and change something that happened years ago. Make your future be good for you. Hope for -- no, expect -- that you will be happy, and productive, and that you will use all the experiences of your life to find ways to make others happy, and productive. This is all very vague, I admit. But I've seen many students get into a rut that is really quite corrosive to the soul. Making a choice, knowing that it's your choice, can be quite freeing. There are many paths in life, many ways to contribute to this world. Don't underestimate your ability to find the path that's right for you.

whatyesaid 4y ago
Agreed that it sounds like a research block than a writer's block. I would also infer if students were struggling at some point but were doing fine before, they all reached the same set of blockades.
jll29 4y ago
I agree with the parent. When I read the original poster's story, I felt this smells of poor supervision. A sympathetic supervisor might be a compassionate/"nice" person, but still a poor manager: he should have immediately objected to set up a monster team of students; it's hard to succeed in teams of professionals, but students' goals are not aligned with your own, so they bound to walk away eventually. Nobody can blame them for prioritizing their exams. That's why there are Research Programmers. What I conjecture might have gone wrong is nobody helped the OP to divide the original project idea into manageable chunks of work that lead to sub-results that lead to smallest publishable units. A Ph.D. thesis is a marathon, not a sprint, and you need to plan accordingly, with milestones every now and then so that the supervisor (and his funders!) can be fed interim results in the form of publications. These milestones also motivate yourself, and they de-risk your project, so that at the end, your thesis can be produced by (slightly simplifying here but only slightly): cat paper1.tex paper2.tex ... paper3.tex | pdflatex > phd-thesis.pdf Think about what sub-questions your overall research question can be split into? What code do you need to write and what experiments do you need to run to support your "central thesis" (which one poster in the above writing advice rightly recommended should be formulated as a question with sub-questions)? In the papers I read about procastrination, the reason commonly given is being overwhelmed by a huge monolithic problem. The good news, then, is: you as a computer science know "divide and conquer" the technique that is the cure for monolithic disease - create little chunks that you can solve, publish, and use as building blocks. Each of them won't be scary. It follows that a finite sequence of non-scary steps won't be scary. Ask experienced researchers around you for help in dividing up your research into manageable, implementable, publishable chunks. Remember: A Ph.D. thesis is an argument that your "central thesis" holds, so think hard what you need to show and how you can decompose bigger items into sub-questions. I wish you success, and most of all, stay sane! I know you can do it, because I read your very well articulated post, and problem analysis is 90% of the solution, you also seem to know how to ask for help when you get stuck.

whatyesaid 4y ago

Agreed that it sounds like a research block than a writer's block. I would also infer if students were struggling at some point but were doing fine before, they all reached the same set of blockades.

jll29 4y ago

I agree with the parent. When I read the original poster's story, I felt this smells of poor supervision. A sympathetic supervisor might be a compassionate/"nice" person, but still a poor manager: he should have immediately objected to set up a monster team of students; it's hard to succeed in teams of professionals, but students' goals are not aligned with your own, so they bound to walk away eventually. Nobody can blame them for prioritizing their exams. That's why there are Research Programmers. What I conjecture might have gone wrong is nobody helped the OP to divide the original project idea into manageable chunks of work that lead to sub-results that lead to smallest publishable units. A Ph.D. thesis is a marathon, not a sprint, and you need to plan accordingly, with milestones every now and then so that the supervisor (and his funders!) can be fed interim results in the form of publications. These milestones also motivate yourself, and they de-risk your project, so that at the end, your thesis can be produced by (slightly simplifying here but only slightly): cat paper1.tex paper2.tex ... paper3.tex | pdflatex > phd-thesis.pdf Think about what sub-questions your overall research question can be split into? What code do you need to write and what experiments do you need to run to support your "central thesis" (which one poster in the above writing advice rightly recommended should be formulated as a question with sub-questions)? In the papers I read about procastrination, the reason commonly given is being overwhelmed by a huge monolithic problem. The good news, then, is: you as a computer science know "divide and conquer" the technique that is the cure for monolithic disease - create little chunks that you can solve, publish, and use as building blocks. Each of them won't be scary. It follows that a finite sequence of non-scary steps won't be scary. Ask experienced researchers around you for help in dividing up your research into manageable, implementable, publishable chunks. Remember: A Ph.D. thesis is an argument that your "central thesis" holds, so think hard what you need to show and how you can decompose bigger items into sub-questions. I wish you success, and most of all, stay sane! I know you can do it, because I read your very well articulated post, and problem analysis is 90% of the solution, you also seem to know how to ask for help when you get stuck.