17 ms·

The unexpected poetry of PhD acknowledgements

360 points by zsrobinson 2y ago

txstrt 2y ago
[flagged]
cratermoon 2y ago
The design is nicely done, too. I expected something very academic, this was interactive.
- pc86 2y ago
  I'd imagine there was a way to do this without completely hijacking scrolling between cards, though. Perhaps it was just loading additional content slowly due to HN traffic, but with the majority being text it should probably all be loaded up front anyway.
  - navane 2y ago
    I think it broke on my phone, perhaps as it lost interest, but that made the site a nice 1.0 experience.
- deleted 2y ago
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ethan801 2y ago
I also often find myself reading the acknowledgments whenever I read a thesis (though I try to save it for the end as a reward for myself). If anyone is interested. At Harvard, most Ph.D programs submit to DASH, meaning that you should be able to read any non-embargoed thesis from the past 10 or so years at https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/4927603/browse?type=dateissued https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/4927603/browse?type=dateis...
bzhang255 2y ago
Acknowledgements have a quality which is hard to describe. They feel like they’ve been drafted a hundred times in the head of the author, but then put down on the page in a hurry, the clock ticking on their deadline. Like, they’re trying to tell you the most important thing they’ve ever said - at the very moment the ship is pulling away from the dock. A lovely read. I also have an affinity for dissertation acknowledgements and I think this entire piece really captures why they feel so special :)
mturk 2y ago
My now-spouse, then-new-SO, proofread my thesis for grammar, clarity, etc. At the time, I had written my acknowledgments, but after the proofreading, I added a thanks to her to it at the end just before submitting it and finalizing it. But, I was a bit careless, and my post-proofreading addition, designed to thank her for improving and checking my grammar, ... was a sentence fragment.
- euroderf 2y ago
  Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ?
- mauvehaus 2y ago
  It's always the late additions that get you. Our wedding favor to our guests was a cookbook of recipes we collected with the RSVPs[0]. About the last thing I added was an About the Recipes page which included the following paragraph: We have edited recipes for length and for typographic consistency, but we've done a bad job of it. This is in part because we did much of the editing with a drink in one hand; if we hadn't it never would have gotten done. We hope that we've successfully retained the color and character you put into the recipe while making the finished cookbook look at least somewhat consistent rhoughout. [0] I cannot begin to describe how much work this was. If you're reading this and thinking "how lovely", you've been warned.
- gerdesj 2y ago
  Would you mind sharing that fragment? I'm a 53 year old en_GB speaker and writer and long term owner of a copy of "Usage and abusage: A Guide to Good English" and long ago decided to boot the bloody thing into the long grass. You and I (and every other interaction involving English) decide how English is spoken or written. At least Partridge uses the term "guide" for his treatise. There is no such thing as a pure English, finely polished and honed to a razor edge and delivered with equanimity. I think the best we can all hope for is to be mutually understood. Given all that, I don't think I've ever heard of a "sentence fragment". It sounds like a grammar sin, probably funded by the lower circles of hell. I attended several very posh schools in the UK as well as the standard education system hereabouts and I don't recall that term being used. Perhaps I was asleep at the time. I've done a quick search and this is dreadfully fluffy: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/mistake-of-the-month-sentence-fragments/ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/mistake-of-the-month-sentence... I'd love to hear what "sentence fragment" really means: to whom and why.
klooney 2y ago
The scheme shell acknowledgements really break up the monotony https://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html https://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html
- deleted 2y ago
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- thefaux 2y ago
  Even if meant as satire, I find these disturbing.
- a_e_k 2y ago
  There's also the funding acknowledgement in the YOLO v3 tech report (https://pjreddie.com/media/files/papers/YOLOv3.pdf https://pjreddie.com/media/files/papers/YOLOv3.pdf): > But maybe a better question is: “What are we going to do with these detectors now that we have them?” A lot of the people doing this research are at Google and Facebook. I guess at least we know the technology is in good hands and definitely won’t be used to harvest your personal information and sell it to.... wait, you’re saying that’s exactly what it will be used for?? Oh. > Well the other people heavily funding vision research are the military and they’ve never done anything horrible like killing lots of people with new technology oh wait....[1] > [1] The author is funded by the Office of Naval Research and Google.
  - _hi_dang_ 2y ago
    [flagged]
markus92 2y ago
At my faculty, we always "joked" that the acknowledgements were the most read section of any thesis. First thing everyone did when they got handed a new thesis was looking to see who was mentioned in the acknowledgements. (we joked about it, but there's a grain of truth to it. the chapters themselves were usually published long ago already and only people in your specific field would care about them anyways).
jimbokun 2y ago
“And thank you for picking up the slack with house chores whenever I was bogged down with lab work – I know I was the reason you bought that Roomba. Lauren Harrison Sex and conflict: How competition shapes reproduction, behaviour and life-histories in various animals (2022)” Pretty funny juxtaposition of thesis title and acknowledgment.
dunham 2y ago
It's not a thesis, but one of my favorite acknowledgements is from Bob Atkey's paper on quantitative type theory (which assigns quantities of 0, 1, or ω to types): > This work is dedicated to Orwell the dog. Orwell was a good dog and knew well the difference between zero, one, and many. https://bentnib.org/quantitative-type-theory.pdf https://bentnib.org/quantitative-type-theory.pdf
mncharity 2y ago
I always looked forward to the acknowledgements at the end of thesis defenses, in biology at MIT and Harvard. Different fields have very different defense cultures. Most have brief acknowledgements. Biology... had an art form. The audience is friends and family. Associated labs turn out in support. The format is tiled photo slides. I've seen thanks to inspiring teachers, by name, from kindergarten to graduate. Pets, childhood and current. A stuffed animal. SO's and spouses. Children existing and pending. Family immediate and extended, alive and missed. Lab mates, friends, colleagues. And their assorted group adventures, road trips, and hijinks. Hobbies and communities. Staff, collaborators, advisors, committee. Brief tales of trials and tribulations, in research and in life. The stories of group fun strike me as the biggest delta vis TFA. And stories in general. Plus the tears. And the interesting slips - "... to thank my husband, <name of professor not husband, oops>". The defenses were recorded, but distribution was usually limited. I've thought they might be great things to somehow share with younger students, contemplating college or graduate school. Being able to see people like themselves, coming out the other end. Having had a blast with friends along the way. There's a tension between intimacy and broadcast. Perhaps someday we can start scavenging older ones? I so miss surfing defences and research talks. :/
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  My favorite paragraph I ever wrote was my acknowledgement intro: I thought when I finished this dissertation I would feel great. As in large or capable significantly above the average amount. Completing a project like this over five years is not something I can attribute to my own abilities. Any milestone is the sum of the individual decisions that led to it and when I look at the amount of guidance, encouragement, patience, and downright goading that it took to make the decisions that led to this point, I feel only gratitude. I was definitely the black sheep in grad school though.
  - DiscourseFan 2y ago
    Greatness is measured in qaulity, not qauntity
mncharity 2y ago
The "Scientists react to their PhD acknowledgements" video[1] at the bottom is brief (6 m) and sweet. [1] https://science.anu.edu.au/news-events/videos/scientists-react-their-phd-acknowledgements https://science.anu.edu.au/news-events/videos/scientists-rea...
LolWolf 2y ago
This is very cute :) Definitely one of my favorite parts to read of any thesis are the acknowledgements. It’s often a time to lower the “fancy academic” mask and really see the human behind the writing; something essentially impossible with the dressed-up writing of many disciplines! I believe the first part of my own acknowledgements began with: “There are only a few interesting things in this thesis. Out of all of them, this section might be the most important.” To this day, this is still true!
- DiscourseFan 2y ago
  But there wouldn’t be the “human” without the mask…perhaps even humanity is a mask
  - LolWolf 2y ago
    Sure, it’s all a mask, but there’s something more “real” behind the acknowledgements in a very distinct way than the editorialized writing of an scientific article. (Using quotes here as these things are deliberately fuzzy!)
epaulson 2y ago
About two weeks I came across this tweet, from a PhD candidate just finishing up: https://x.com/CharityWoodrum/status/1808313627864440930 https://x.com/CharityWoodrum/status/1808313627864440930 "For Woody and Jayson Thomas. From the local universe to the first galaxies, the brightest moments in space and time occurred during our brief epoch together. That light is unquenchable." She had gone back to school as an adult to study physics, she was just finishing up her undergrad when her husband and child were swept away by a wave while walking on the beach. She kept on with school and is about to finish her Ph.D. I just can't comprehend how. https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/ua-doctoral-candidate-inspires-documentary/Content?oid=33841771 https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/ua-doctoral-candidate-in...
- deleted 2y ago
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- cratermoon 2y ago
  Someone is cutting onions
  - ramenbytes 2y ago
    It's a terrible day for rain.
- ramenbytes 2y ago
  For those like myself wondering how a regular wave could do this, the article says it was something colloquially termed a "sneaker wave." Like a rogue wave, but on the shoreline. It also sounds like they all got hit by the wave, and only Charity survived. Edit: National Weather article on Sneaker Waves: https://www.weather.gov/safety/sneaker-waves https://www.weather.gov/safety/sneaker-waves Apparently the cold water and other complications make things worse.
  - lqet 2y ago
    Thank you, never heard of this. It sounds terrifying. > Sneaker waves appear suddenly on a coastline and without warning; generally, it is not obvious that they are larger than other waves until they break and suddenly surge up a beach. A sneaker wave can occur following a period of 10 to 20 minutes of gentle, lapping waves. Upon arriving, a sneaker wave can surge more than 150 feet (50 m) beyond the foam line, rushing up a beach with great force. > The force of a sneaker wave's surge and the large volume of water rushing far up a beach is enough to suddenly submerge people thigh- or waist-deep, knock them off their feet, and drag them into the ocean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneaker_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneaker_wave
agubelu 2y ago
> They feel like they’ve been drafted a hundred times in the head of the author, but then put down on the page in a hurry, the clock ticking on their deadline. This is so spot on it hurts. The acknowledgements in my own thesis were drafted and re-drafted over and over in my head for months, and then written down the day before submission.
xhkkffbf 2y ago
Not to take away from these legit ones, but it surprises me that some of the recent plagiarism cases included people who plagiarized their acknowledgements. Like really?
- kirrent 2y ago
  My housemate during our honours year had large portions of his thesis plagarised by the student who took over his work afterwards. We were surprised to discover that of all the lifted sections it was the acknowledgements that had the highest proportion of copying! I found this doubly funny because, compared to the adroit technical writing in the rest of the thesis, my friend's acknowledgement seemed florid and overwritten to me. It's a truly fascinating phenomenon.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  I mean, if they plagiarized the paper it's only right to thank the people who helped the original version, no?
  - xhkkffbf 2y ago
    You are correct.
onli 2y ago
My PhD acknowledgements I found to be stressful. So much expectations for a few words, so many different ways of writing these. And how to know what tone was the right one for this occasion, in a university of a country still not my own, with a field not directly defined and thus not a clear influence even from there? Worse, the flowery style common in many of the thesis I saw just did not feel right, I wouldn't write like that ever. I was very happy when I found a PhD thesis which made it different. It wrote, in french: Acknowledgements [the list of people] find here my most severe gratitude. That felt clear, honest and fitting. I copied that one. Maybe that was one of the older styles mentioned in the articles.
TRiG_Ireland 2y ago
For some reason, that made me weepy.
aardvarks 2y ago
When I was trying to choose a PhD supervisor one of the things I did was read through recent grads' acknowledgments. While no one ever mentioned their advisor with anything but gracious words, you could get a pretty good idea of what working with that faculty member was like.
- nickm12 2y ago
  Brilliant. Wish I had gotten that advice before selecting my first advisor.
palad1n 2y ago
These are surprisingly beautiful, poetic. They reflect what I think would be the best of the humanity that we have, anywhere and everywhere. I thank the collector of these for some brief moments in the music of others' lives.
alekseiprokopev 2y ago
I was at first surprised that people thank God in the acknowledgements. Then remembered what PhD students go through.
jszymborski 2y ago
It might be a bit tasteless to be quoting ones own master's thesis, but I've always been a bit proud of my (embarrassingly long-winded and self-indulgent) acknowledgements. It begins with > "First and foremost, I’d like to thank the nameless stranger that is responsible for enforcing the deadline for the submission of this thesis; but for their unwavering absolutism this thesis would exist in a perpetual state of being nearly done. The rest follows in no particular order" And ends with > "Finally, this thesis is dedicated to the memory of the two laptops that gave up their magic smoke in the name of science and this thesis. To my Dell Studio 1555 and Asus Zenbook UXA1: > Do not go gentle into that goodnight > Rage, rage against the dying of the backlight" https://jszym.com/attachments/about/thesis.pdf https://jszym.com/attachments/about/thesis.pdf
- yu3zhou4 2y ago
  sorry for out of topic: your surname reminded me of the great Polish poet, a Nobel laureate - Wisława Szymborska (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wis%C5%82awa_Szymborska https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wis%C5%82awa_Szymborska)
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    ...and I want to add a great video involving her: https://www.ted.com/talks/rives_the_museum_of_four_in_the_morning?subtitle=en https://www.ted.com/talks/rives_the_museum_of_four_in_the_mo...
  - jszymborski 2y ago
    I've been told we're related, but I don't know my polish family well so it might be apocrypha.
- taneq 2y ago
  > "First and foremost, I’d like to thank the nameless stranger that is responsible for enforcing the deadline… “I work best under pressure. In fact, I work only under pressure…”
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dri_ft 2y ago
Still top of the list for me is Olin Shivers' 1994 acknowledgements to his scsh project: >Who should I thank? My so-called ``colleagues,'' who laugh at me behind my back, all the while becoming famous on my work? My worthless graduate students, whose computer skills appear to be limited to downloading bitmaps off of netnews? My parents, who are still waiting for me to quit ``fooling around with computers,'' go to med school, and become a radiologist? My department chairman, a manager who gives one new insight into and sympathy for disgruntled postal workers? >My God, no one could blame me -- no one! -- if I went off the edge and just lost it completely one day. I couldn't get through the day as it is without the Prozac and Jack Daniels I keep on the shelf, behind my Tops-20 JSYS manuals. I start getting the shakes real bad around 10am, right before my advisor meetings. A 10 oz. Jack 'n Zac helps me get through the meetings without one of my students winding up with his severed head in a bowling-ball bag. They look at me funny; they think I twitch a lot. I'm not twitching. I'm controlling my impulse to snag my 9mm Sig-Sauer out from my day-pack and make a few strong points about the quality of undergraduate education in Amerika. >If I thought anyone cared, if I thought anyone would even be reading this, I'd probably make an effort to keep up appearances until the last possible moment. But no one does, and no one will. So I can pretty much say exactly what I think. >Oh, yes, the acknowledgements. I think not. I did it. I did it all, by myself. https://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html https://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html
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gtpedrosa 2y ago
On my master's thesis, I ended up using a line that I wrote when preparing the template at the beginning of my 'journey': "I thank everyone who contributed to making this work possible." By the end of the master's program, I didn't feel the need to update it, as it remained true to me. I felt that if someone was going to read that section, they would immediately identify themselves there, and I didn't have to name them.
Sesse__ 2y ago
My favorite PhD dedication: ”To my surprise”
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kayo_20211030 2y ago
Strewth! This was brilliant. Thanks.
seanhunter 2y ago
One of my favourite acknowledgements in a book is from "Proofs: A long-form mathematics textbook" by Jay Cummings[1]. Which as it sounds like is a maths textbook. Anyhow the acknowledgement reads: "To my loving wife, who read this entire book, apart from the math parts." [1] Which in my opinion is an excellent book if you want to learn how to read and do maths proofs btw.
lukego 2y ago
Olin Shivers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2382531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2382531
brcmthrowaway 2y ago
What is the most famous PhD with a barebones acknowledgement? Thats a mic drop moment
w10-1 2y ago
Relatedly: I wish there was a practice of acknowledging when you give up. I've seen so many people just slink away from their PhD's, perhaps with a nominal masters, but always in some kind of defeat, without accepting or sorting out exactly why. That makes the experience dog them for a long time. People leaving should write an announcement. There should be a public acknowledgement, perhaps walking the gauntlet of those staying who nonetheless applaud your decision. We can't have venturing without a personally and socially positive way to manage venture failure and its aftermath.
- asah 2y ago
  Great idea, I'll start! I leave (of absence, technically) this program with a lightness of heart and exhilaration at the next adventure in joining the rabid commercial world of a tech startup. I would like to acknowledge a great debt to everyone who helped me grow in these 4 years. Know that I will be a faithful alum, of lesser degree.
- gtmitchell 2y ago
  I also wish there were ways to publicly acknowledge (and hopefully support) those who spend years of their lives working towards PhDs they never finish. For many it is a deeply private loss, with so few people knowing what happened and even fewer understanding the biting sense of personal failure you can feel. I never made any sort of announcement when I left, and so had very little closure. Graduate school just ended and just trying to survive demanded my full attention in other areas. All I have left now is my unfinished dissertation, complete with the acknowledgement section I wrote. It reads like a eulogy to a life I never had, to the shattered dreams I left behind, and to the naivete of my younger self. Perhaps there is some poetic value in there, but no one but myself will ever read it now. When it finally disappears it will, appropriately, be in a manner similar to how my failed PhD ended, with no one noticing and no one mourning its passing.
harleyk 2y ago
The best writing I have ever done was in the acknowledgements section of my dissertation. "...For all the experiments I’ve performed and the data I’ve collected, for none have I so unequivocally discovered truth as this: Love is eternal." https://drum.lib.umd.edu/items/a0d83e35-0382-48b7-9183-c5aeff484547 https://drum.lib.umd.edu/items/a0d83e35-0382-48b7-9183-c5aef...
q_revert 2y ago
I rushed mine, to the extent that my supervisor mentioned it to me a few years later... it was a reflection of my state of mind at the time, exhausted and overwhelmed.. if I ever get around to doing another one I'll give it the attention and love it deserves
LizbethColone 2y ago
[dead]

360 points by zsrobinson 2y ago

txstrt 2y ago

[flagged]

cratermoon 2y ago

The design is nicely done, too. I expected something very academic, this was interactive.

pc86 2y ago
I'd imagine there was a way to do this without completely hijacking scrolling between cards, though. Perhaps it was just loading additional content slowly due to HN traffic, but with the majority being text it should probably all be loaded up front anyway.
- navane 2y ago
  I think it broke on my phone, perhaps as it lost interest, but that made the site a nice 1.0 experience.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

ethan801 2y ago

I also often find myself reading the acknowledgments whenever I read a thesis (though I try to save it for the end as a reward for myself). If anyone is interested. At Harvard, most Ph.D programs submit to DASH, meaning that you should be able to read any non-embargoed thesis from the past 10 or so years at https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/4927603/browse?type=dateissued https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/4927603/browse?type=dateis...

bzhang255 2y ago

Acknowledgements have a quality which is hard to describe. They feel like they’ve been drafted a hundred times in the head of the author, but then put down on the page in a hurry, the clock ticking on their deadline. Like, they’re trying to tell you the most important thing they’ve ever said - at the very moment the ship is pulling away from the dock. A lovely read. I also have an affinity for dissertation acknowledgements and I think this entire piece really captures why they feel so special :)

mturk 2y ago

My now-spouse, then-new-SO, proofread my thesis for grammar, clarity, etc. At the time, I had written my acknowledgments, but after the proofreading, I added a thanks to her to it at the end just before submitting it and finalizing it. But, I was a bit careless, and my post-proofreading addition, designed to thank her for improving and checking my grammar, ... was a sentence fragment.

euroderf 2y ago
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ?
mauvehaus 2y ago
It's always the late additions that get you. Our wedding favor to our guests was a cookbook of recipes we collected with the RSVPs[0]. About the last thing I added was an About the Recipes page which included the following paragraph: We have edited recipes for length and for typographic consistency, but we've done a bad job of it. This is in part because we did much of the editing with a drink in one hand; if we hadn't it never would have gotten done. We hope that we've successfully retained the color and character you put into the recipe while making the finished cookbook look at least somewhat consistent rhoughout. [0] I cannot begin to describe how much work this was. If you're reading this and thinking "how lovely", you've been warned.
gerdesj 2y ago
Would you mind sharing that fragment? I'm a 53 year old en_GB speaker and writer and long term owner of a copy of "Usage and abusage: A Guide to Good English" and long ago decided to boot the bloody thing into the long grass. You and I (and every other interaction involving English) decide how English is spoken or written. At least Partridge uses the term "guide" for his treatise. There is no such thing as a pure English, finely polished and honed to a razor edge and delivered with equanimity. I think the best we can all hope for is to be mutually understood. Given all that, I don't think I've ever heard of a "sentence fragment". It sounds like a grammar sin, probably funded by the lower circles of hell. I attended several very posh schools in the UK as well as the standard education system hereabouts and I don't recall that term being used. Perhaps I was asleep at the time. I've done a quick search and this is dreadfully fluffy: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/mistake-of-the-month-sentence-fragments/ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/mistake-of-the-month-sentence... I'd love to hear what "sentence fragment" really means: to whom and why.

klooney 2y ago

The scheme shell acknowledgements really break up the monotony https://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html https://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html

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thefaux 2y ago
Even if meant as satire, I find these disturbing.
a_e_k 2y ago
There's also the funding acknowledgement in the YOLO v3 tech report (https://pjreddie.com/media/files/papers/YOLOv3.pdf https://pjreddie.com/media/files/papers/YOLOv3.pdf): > But maybe a better question is: “What are we going to do with these detectors now that we have them?” A lot of the people doing this research are at Google and Facebook. I guess at least we know the technology is in good hands and definitely won’t be used to harvest your personal information and sell it to.... wait, you’re saying that’s exactly what it will be used for?? Oh. > Well the other people heavily funding vision research are the military and they’ve never done anything horrible like killing lots of people with new technology oh wait....[1] > [1] The author is funded by the Office of Naval Research and Google.
- _hi_dang_ 2y ago
  [flagged]

markus92 2y ago

At my faculty, we always "joked" that the acknowledgements were the most read section of any thesis. First thing everyone did when they got handed a new thesis was looking to see who was mentioned in the acknowledgements. (we joked about it, but there's a grain of truth to it. the chapters themselves were usually published long ago already and only people in your specific field would care about them anyways).

jimbokun 2y ago

“And thank you for picking up the slack with house chores whenever I was bogged down with lab work – I know I was the reason you bought that Roomba. Lauren Harrison Sex and conflict: How competition shapes reproduction, behaviour and life-histories in various animals (2022)” Pretty funny juxtaposition of thesis title and acknowledgment.

dunham 2y ago

It's not a thesis, but one of my favorite acknowledgements is from Bob Atkey's paper on quantitative type theory (which assigns quantities of 0, 1, or ω to types): > This work is dedicated to Orwell the dog. Orwell was a good dog and knew well the difference between zero, one, and many. https://bentnib.org/quantitative-type-theory.pdf https://bentnib.org/quantitative-type-theory.pdf

mncharity 2y ago

I always looked forward to the acknowledgements at the end of thesis defenses, in biology at MIT and Harvard. Different fields have very different defense cultures. Most have brief acknowledgements. Biology... had an art form. The audience is friends and family. Associated labs turn out in support. The format is tiled photo slides. I've seen thanks to inspiring teachers, by name, from kindergarten to graduate. Pets, childhood and current. A stuffed animal. SO's and spouses. Children existing and pending. Family immediate and extended, alive and missed. Lab mates, friends, colleagues. And their assorted group adventures, road trips, and hijinks. Hobbies and communities. Staff, collaborators, advisors, committee. Brief tales of trials and tribulations, in research and in life. The stories of group fun strike me as the biggest delta vis TFA. And stories in general. Plus the tears. And the interesting slips - "... to thank my husband, <name of professor not husband, oops>". The defenses were recorded, but distribution was usually limited. I've thought they might be great things to somehow share with younger students, contemplating college or graduate school. Being able to see people like themselves, coming out the other end. Having had a blast with friends along the way. There's a tension between intimacy and broadcast. Perhaps someday we can start scavenging older ones? I so miss surfing defences and research talks. :/

jvanderbot 2y ago
My favorite paragraph I ever wrote was my acknowledgement intro: I thought when I finished this dissertation I would feel great. As in large or capable significantly above the average amount. Completing a project like this over five years is not something I can attribute to my own abilities. Any milestone is the sum of the individual decisions that led to it and when I look at the amount of guidance, encouragement, patience, and downright goading that it took to make the decisions that led to this point, I feel only gratitude. I was definitely the black sheep in grad school though.
- DiscourseFan 2y ago
  Greatness is measured in qaulity, not qauntity

mncharity 2y ago

The "Scientists react to their PhD acknowledgements" video[1] at the bottom is brief (6 m) and sweet. [1] https://science.anu.edu.au/news-events/videos/scientists-react-their-phd-acknowledgements https://science.anu.edu.au/news-events/videos/scientists-rea...

LolWolf 2y ago

This is very cute :) Definitely one of my favorite parts to read of any thesis are the acknowledgements. It’s often a time to lower the “fancy academic” mask and really see the human behind the writing; something essentially impossible with the dressed-up writing of many disciplines! I believe the first part of my own acknowledgements began with: “There are only a few interesting things in this thesis. Out of all of them, this section might be the most important.” To this day, this is still true!

DiscourseFan 2y ago
But there wouldn’t be the “human” without the mask…perhaps even humanity is a mask
- LolWolf 2y ago
  Sure, it’s all a mask, but there’s something more “real” behind the acknowledgements in a very distinct way than the editorialized writing of an scientific article. (Using quotes here as these things are deliberately fuzzy!)

epaulson 2y ago

About two weeks I came across this tweet, from a PhD candidate just finishing up: https://x.com/CharityWoodrum/status/1808313627864440930 https://x.com/CharityWoodrum/status/1808313627864440930 "For Woody and Jayson Thomas. From the local universe to the first galaxies, the brightest moments in space and time occurred during our brief epoch together. That light is unquenchable." She had gone back to school as an adult to study physics, she was just finishing up her undergrad when her husband and child were swept away by a wave while walking on the beach. She kept on with school and is about to finish her Ph.D. I just can't comprehend how. https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/ua-doctoral-candidate-inspires-documentary/Content?oid=33841771 https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/ua-doctoral-candidate-in...

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cratermoon 2y ago
Someone is cutting onions
- ramenbytes 2y ago
  It's a terrible day for rain.
ramenbytes 2y ago
For those like myself wondering how a regular wave could do this, the article says it was something colloquially termed a "sneaker wave." Like a rogue wave, but on the shoreline. It also sounds like they all got hit by the wave, and only Charity survived. Edit: National Weather article on Sneaker Waves: https://www.weather.gov/safety/sneaker-waves https://www.weather.gov/safety/sneaker-waves Apparently the cold water and other complications make things worse.
- lqet 2y ago
  Thank you, never heard of this. It sounds terrifying. > Sneaker waves appear suddenly on a coastline and without warning; generally, it is not obvious that they are larger than other waves until they break and suddenly surge up a beach. A sneaker wave can occur following a period of 10 to 20 minutes of gentle, lapping waves. Upon arriving, a sneaker wave can surge more than 150 feet (50 m) beyond the foam line, rushing up a beach with great force. > The force of a sneaker wave's surge and the large volume of water rushing far up a beach is enough to suddenly submerge people thigh- or waist-deep, knock them off their feet, and drag them into the ocean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneaker_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneaker_wave

agubelu 2y ago

> They feel like they’ve been drafted a hundred times in the head of the author, but then put down on the page in a hurry, the clock ticking on their deadline. This is so spot on it hurts. The acknowledgements in my own thesis were drafted and re-drafted over and over in my head for months, and then written down the day before submission.

xhkkffbf 2y ago

Not to take away from these legit ones, but it surprises me that some of the recent plagiarism cases included people who plagiarized their acknowledgements. Like really?

kirrent 2y ago
My housemate during our honours year had large portions of his thesis plagarised by the student who took over his work afterwards. We were surprised to discover that of all the lifted sections it was the acknowledgements that had the highest proportion of copying! I found this doubly funny because, compared to the adroit technical writing in the rest of the thesis, my friend's acknowledgement seemed florid and overwritten to me. It's a truly fascinating phenomenon.
saagarjha 2y ago
I mean, if they plagiarized the paper it's only right to thank the people who helped the original version, no?
- xhkkffbf 2y ago
  You are correct.

onli 2y ago

My PhD acknowledgements I found to be stressful. So much expectations for a few words, so many different ways of writing these. And how to know what tone was the right one for this occasion, in a university of a country still not my own, with a field not directly defined and thus not a clear influence even from there? Worse, the flowery style common in many of the thesis I saw just did not feel right, I wouldn't write like that ever. I was very happy when I found a PhD thesis which made it different. It wrote, in french: Acknowledgements [the list of people] find here my most severe gratitude. That felt clear, honest and fitting. I copied that one. Maybe that was one of the older styles mentioned in the articles.

TRiG_Ireland 2y ago

For some reason, that made me weepy.

aardvarks 2y ago

When I was trying to choose a PhD supervisor one of the things I did was read through recent grads' acknowledgments. While no one ever mentioned their advisor with anything but gracious words, you could get a pretty good idea of what working with that faculty member was like.

nickm12 2y ago
Brilliant. Wish I had gotten that advice before selecting my first advisor.

palad1n 2y ago

These are surprisingly beautiful, poetic. They reflect what I think would be the best of the humanity that we have, anywhere and everywhere. I thank the collector of these for some brief moments in the music of others' lives.

alekseiprokopev 2y ago

I was at first surprised that people thank God in the acknowledgements. Then remembered what PhD students go through.

jszymborski 2y ago

It might be a bit tasteless to be quoting ones own master's thesis, but I've always been a bit proud of my (embarrassingly long-winded and self-indulgent) acknowledgements. It begins with > "First and foremost, I’d like to thank the nameless stranger that is responsible for enforcing the deadline for the submission of this thesis; but for their unwavering absolutism this thesis would exist in a perpetual state of being nearly done. The rest follows in no particular order" And ends with > "Finally, this thesis is dedicated to the memory of the two laptops that gave up their magic smoke in the name of science and this thesis. To my Dell Studio 1555 and Asus Zenbook UXA1: > Do not go gentle into that goodnight > Rage, rage against the dying of the backlight" https://jszym.com/attachments/about/thesis.pdf https://jszym.com/attachments/about/thesis.pdf

yu3zhou4 2y ago
sorry for out of topic: your surname reminded me of the great Polish poet, a Nobel laureate - Wisława Szymborska (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wis%C5%82awa_Szymborska https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wis%C5%82awa_Szymborska)
- bayindirh 2y ago
  ...and I want to add a great video involving her: https://www.ted.com/talks/rives_the_museum_of_four_in_the_morning?subtitle=en https://www.ted.com/talks/rives_the_museum_of_four_in_the_mo...
- jszymborski 2y ago
  I've been told we're related, but I don't know my polish family well so it might be apocrypha.
taneq 2y ago
> "First and foremost, I’d like to thank the nameless stranger that is responsible for enforcing the deadline… “I work best under pressure. In fact, I work only under pressure…”
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dri_ft 2y ago

Still top of the list for me is Olin Shivers' 1994 acknowledgements to his scsh project: >Who should I thank? My so-called ``colleagues,'' who laugh at me behind my back, all the while becoming famous on my work? My worthless graduate students, whose computer skills appear to be limited to downloading bitmaps off of netnews? My parents, who are still waiting for me to quit ``fooling around with computers,'' go to med school, and become a radiologist? My department chairman, a manager who gives one new insight into and sympathy for disgruntled postal workers? >My God, no one could blame me -- no one! -- if I went off the edge and just lost it completely one day. I couldn't get through the day as it is without the Prozac and Jack Daniels I keep on the shelf, behind my Tops-20 JSYS manuals. I start getting the shakes real bad around 10am, right before my advisor meetings. A 10 oz. Jack 'n Zac helps me get through the meetings without one of my students winding up with his severed head in a bowling-ball bag. They look at me funny; they think I twitch a lot. I'm not twitching. I'm controlling my impulse to snag my 9mm Sig-Sauer out from my day-pack and make a few strong points about the quality of undergraduate education in Amerika. >If I thought anyone cared, if I thought anyone would even be reading this, I'd probably make an effort to keep up appearances until the last possible moment. But no one does, and no one will. So I can pretty much say exactly what I think. >Oh, yes, the acknowledgements. I think not. I did it. I did it all, by myself. https://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html https://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html

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gtpedrosa 2y ago

On my master's thesis, I ended up using a line that I wrote when preparing the template at the beginning of my 'journey': "I thank everyone who contributed to making this work possible." By the end of the master's program, I didn't feel the need to update it, as it remained true to me. I felt that if someone was going to read that section, they would immediately identify themselves there, and I didn't have to name them.

Sesse__ 2y ago

My favorite PhD dedication: ”To my surprise”

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kayo_20211030 2y ago

Strewth! This was brilliant. Thanks.

seanhunter 2y ago

One of my favourite acknowledgements in a book is from "Proofs: A long-form mathematics textbook" by Jay Cummings[1]. Which as it sounds like is a maths textbook. Anyhow the acknowledgement reads: "To my loving wife, who read this entire book, apart from the math parts." [1] Which in my opinion is an excellent book if you want to learn how to read and do maths proofs btw.

lukego 2y ago

Olin Shivers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2382531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2382531

brcmthrowaway 2y ago

What is the most famous PhD with a barebones acknowledgement? Thats a mic drop moment

w10-1 2y ago

Relatedly: I wish there was a practice of acknowledging when you give up. I've seen so many people just slink away from their PhD's, perhaps with a nominal masters, but always in some kind of defeat, without accepting or sorting out exactly why. That makes the experience dog them for a long time. People leaving should write an announcement. There should be a public acknowledgement, perhaps walking the gauntlet of those staying who nonetheless applaud your decision. We can't have venturing without a personally and socially positive way to manage venture failure and its aftermath.

asah 2y ago
Great idea, I'll start! I leave (of absence, technically) this program with a lightness of heart and exhilaration at the next adventure in joining the rabid commercial world of a tech startup. I would like to acknowledge a great debt to everyone who helped me grow in these 4 years. Know that I will be a faithful alum, of lesser degree.
gtmitchell 2y ago
I also wish there were ways to publicly acknowledge (and hopefully support) those who spend years of their lives working towards PhDs they never finish. For many it is a deeply private loss, with so few people knowing what happened and even fewer understanding the biting sense of personal failure you can feel. I never made any sort of announcement when I left, and so had very little closure. Graduate school just ended and just trying to survive demanded my full attention in other areas. All I have left now is my unfinished dissertation, complete with the acknowledgement section I wrote. It reads like a eulogy to a life I never had, to the shattered dreams I left behind, and to the naivete of my younger self. Perhaps there is some poetic value in there, but no one but myself will ever read it now. When it finally disappears it will, appropriately, be in a manner similar to how my failed PhD ended, with no one noticing and no one mourning its passing.

harleyk 2y ago

The best writing I have ever done was in the acknowledgements section of my dissertation. "...For all the experiments I’ve performed and the data I’ve collected, for none have I so unequivocally discovered truth as this: Love is eternal." https://drum.lib.umd.edu/items/a0d83e35-0382-48b7-9183-c5aeff484547 https://drum.lib.umd.edu/items/a0d83e35-0382-48b7-9183-c5aef...

q_revert 2y ago

I rushed mine, to the extent that my supervisor mentioned it to me a few years later... it was a reflection of my state of mind at the time, exhausted and overwhelmed.. if I ever get around to doing another one I'll give it the attention and love it deserves

LizbethColone 2y ago

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