Guidelines for a PhD

Hello all,

An off-beat query, as I assume there are many Dr.s in this newsgroup.

I almost finished first year of my PhD on Equalisers and I have two
more years (officially) to go.

I was woundering if people can share some valuable tips/suggestions
which they learn't, found effective during their research experience.

My school have time-bound deliverables but I guess one should have a
more stringent/regular self-monitoring criterion.

Thanks

Cheers,
Vimal

>Subject: Guidelines for a PhD
>From: vimal_bhatia2@yahoo.com  (Vimal)
>Date: 8/23/2003 12:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time
>Message-id: <b6fc6dda.0308230852.7e541e79@posting.google.com>
>
>Hello all,
>
>An off-beat query, as I assume there are many Dr.s in this newsgroup.
>
>I almost finished first year of my PhD on Equalisers and I have two
>more years (officially) to go.
>
>I was woundering if people can share some valuable tips/suggestions
>which they learn't, found effective during their research experience.
>
>My school have time-bound deliverables but I guess one should have a
>more stringent/regular self-monitoring criterion.
>
>Thanks
>
>Cheers,
>Vimal
>
>
>
>
>

First, I would suggest that you pick a dissertation topic that truly interest
you - helps keep you motivated. Second, pick an advisor that you respect and
has a history of having student completing on time. Third, you should limit the
scope of your research - you don't have to change the world with you
disseration to graduate. Fourth, earlier in your research, try to identify
parts that might lead to publishable results.

Good Luck,
Scott

vimal_bhatia2@yahoo.com (Vimal) wrote in message news:<b6fc6dda.0308230852.7e541e79@posting.google.com>...
> Hello all,
> 
> An off-beat query, as I assume there are many Dr.s in this newsgroup.
> 
> I almost finished first year of my PhD on Equalisers and I have two
> more years (officially) to go.
> 
> I was woundering if people can share some valuable tips/suggestions
> which they learn't, found effective during their research experience.
> 
> My school have time-bound deliverables but I guess one should have a
> more stringent/regular self-monitoring criterion.

Depending on where you take the degree, there may be formal requirements 
to courses and teaching responsibilities. You obviously want to meet those 
equirements. 

However, the important question is what you find interesting, i.e. why you 
are in the program in the first place. Some people need the PhD diploma to 
get the job of their dreams. Others want to pursue some idea or topic of 
research to the bitter end, yet others like the idea of teaching. Depending 
on their interests, different people may find different aspects important.

So make up your own mind. You are in an ideal position to build a network 
of contacts you may find useful later in your carreer. You may have one of 
your last chances to get paid to pursue your own ideas in your own way and 
in your own tempo. And you have a chance to test and extend your knowledge 
and skills, by teaching younger students. 

As for the thesis, my opinion is that the subject should be sufficiently 
limited that you can to do a decent job, but broad enough that at least 
two other people in the world have a chance of understanding what you're 
doing. Yes, I'm serious. That's way easier said than done.

Rune

allnor@tele.ntnu.no (Rune Allnor) wrote in message news:<f56893ae.0308231307.5a81afcc@posting.google.com>...
> vimal_bhatia2@yahoo.com (Vimal) wrote in message 
> Some people need the PhD diploma to 
> get the job of their dreams. Others want to pursue some idea or topic of 
> research to the bitter end, yet others like the idea of teaching. 

You forget the main reason for people doing PhDs - they can't get a
job or can't face getting one!
 
> So make up your own mind. You are in an ideal position to build a network 
> of contacts you may find useful later in your carreer. You may have one of 
> your last chances to get paid to pursue your own ideas in your own way and 
> in your own tempo. And you have a chance to test and extend your knowledge 
> and skills, by teaching younger students. 
> 
> As for the thesis, my opinion is that the subject should be sufficiently 
> limited that you can to do a decent job, but broad enough that at least 
> two other people in the world have a chance of understanding what you're 
> doing. Yes, I'm serious. That's way easier said than done.

I think that rarely happens. I've done things I thought were pretty
neat. Then I've seen someone present a paper describing an almost
identical solution to the same or perhaps even totally different
problem. There are two issues here. We tend to get very narrowly
focussed, and think we are doing something unique. Usually we are not,
and a number of people are working on the same thing. Second,
communication is tough. It is really hard to find the other people
working on the same things as you, so you tend to think they don't
exist. Despite all the journals, conferences, etc., linking up with
people is never easy. Engineers like to mock marketing departments,
but linking buyers and sellers is generally a tough thing to do.
Academic knowledge and industrial products are no different in this
regard. (I didn't suggest most marketing departments do not deserve
mocking - they do!).

Regards,
Steve

steveu@coppice.org (Steve Underwood) wrote in message news:<80bddbd7.0308241535.237da341@posting.google.com>...
> allnor@tele.ntnu.no (Rune Allnor) wrote in message news:<f56893ae.0308231307.5a81afcc@posting.google.com>...
> > vimal_bhatia2@yahoo.com (Vimal) wrote in message 
> > Some people need the PhD diploma to 
> > get the job of their dreams. Others want to pursue some idea or topic of 
> > research to the bitter end, yet others like the idea of teaching. 
> 
> You forget the main reason for people doing PhDs - they can't get a
> job or can't face getting one!

That's a *very* important point. The job marked was indeed the main reason 
I entered the PhD path myself. During the five or so years I worked on my 
thesis, the marked turned good again, and just five monts before my funding
ran out, the marked turned once pmore, an the various companies did various 
things to encourage people to leave, short of actually firing them. Not a 
good time to get out there and apply for work. "Eh... we encouraged 400 
people to leave last week... we can hardly hire a freshman now, can we..."

> > So make up your own mind. You are in an ideal position to build a network 
> > of contacts you may find useful later in your carreer. You may have one of 
> > your last chances to get paid to pursue your own ideas in your own way and 
> > in your own tempo. And you have a chance to test and extend your knowledge 
> > and skills, by teaching younger students. 
> > 
> > As for the thesis, my opinion is that the subject should be sufficiently 
> > limited that you can to do a decent job, but broad enough that at least 
> > two other people in the world have a chance of understanding what you're 
> > doing. Yes, I'm serious. That's way easier said than done.
> 
> I think that rarely happens. I've done things I thought were pretty
> neat. Then I've seen someone present a paper describing an almost
> identical solution to the same or perhaps even totally different
> problem. There are two issues here. We tend to get very narrowly
> focussed, and think we are doing something unique. Usually we are not,
> and a number of people are working on the same thing. 

Agreed. I expressed some opinions about that in the thread "Why is PhD 
important?" some time ago. 

> Second,
> communication is tough. It is really hard to find the other people
> working on the same things as you, so you tend to think they don't
> exist. Despite all the journals, conferences, etc., linking up with
> people is never easy. 

Sure. Now, communication works on several levels. The need for the academic 
version that includes conferences, journals, reports etc, is quite obvious 
when you do the PhD thing. If you do something that is truly first in the 
world, that no one else are doing, then you are likely to face a 
communication problem. Taken to an extreme, one could say that the PhD 
diploma ought to be a way of saying "This person has done something that is 
new and not easily understood, but the members of the awarding committee 
vouch for the contents of the work". Such a standpoint could be interpreted, 
rightly or wrongly, as to releave the PhD for the responsibility of 
communicating his work, leaving it for the academic community to read his 
thesis and other publications on their own terms. All of that changes once 
an academic field is "broken in" and conventions in terminology and 
perhaps notation has been established. On a more applied level, it may 
be more convenient to express the contents of the work in terms of an 
accepted framework.

However, the other version of communication, that relates to laypeople 
and non-specialists, is just as important. I have always been a teacher, 
in the sense that my friends and classmates always came to me for help 
in and after class. I didn't really see the effect of this until very 
late in my PhD work, when I had to read up on many different fields fast 
in order to extract what I needed for my own ecclectic work. It turned out 
that all this teaching I have done, somehow had me think "How can I express 
the contents of this paper in a way that the kid next-door can understand 
it?". You can't really do that unless you understand what the paper is all 
about, so in a sense, this attitude has become very helpful in getting to 
learn new stuff. It's a real challenge: Both to grasp the contents of 
something new for your own use, so to speak, but also to express complex 
ideas in terms and phrasings that have a chance of getting across to people 
with different backgrounds and preparations. 

> Engineers like to mock marketing departments,
> but linking buyers and sellers is generally a tough thing to do.
> Academic knowledge and industrial products are no different in this
> regard. (I didn't suggest most marketing departments do not deserve
> mocking - they do!).

Marketing and presentation of one's work is necessary. My impression is 
that the link between the PR and the contents of the product isn't always 
obvious.  

Rune

Thanks a lot all for valuable discussion.

I should have explained a bit further, Okay presently I have already
defined my research scope/problem.

Now when I look/google search for Guidelines/Tips then they are
normally ******FORMAL****** requirements or procedures. I am looking
for people's experience and what do they consider are deliverables.

I totaly agree, that it is last chance to pursue research that you
want and you are paid for that :-)
However, what i percive now, that doing a PhD is like handling a
project, timely self-assessment, deliverables, maintaninace, document
control etc. all that goes on to make a successful product.

Can anyone suggest what else should one be aware of at the end of PhD.
Definitely one must know what is happening in his research area, but
apart from that how much other knowledge does the prospective
employers (industry) seek while hiring a PhD.

Cheers,
Vimal

allnor@tele.ntnu.no (Rune Allnor) wrote in message news:<f56893ae.0308242304.16fdca9@posting.google.com>...
> steveu@coppice.org (Steve Underwood) wrote in message news:<80bddbd7.0308241535.237da341@posting.google.com>...
> > allnor@tele.ntnu.no (Rune Allnor) wrote in message news:<f56893ae.0308231307.5a81afcc@posting.google.com>...
> > > vimal_bhatia2@yahoo.com (Vimal) wrote in message 
> > > Some people need the PhD diploma to 
> > > get the job of their dreams. Others want to pursue some idea or topic of 
> > > research to the bitter end, yet others like the idea of teaching. 
> > 
> > You forget the main reason for people doing PhDs - they can't get a
> > job or can't face getting one!
> 
> That's a *very* important point. The job marked was indeed the main reason 
> I entered the PhD path myself. During the five or so years I worked on my 
> thesis, the marked turned good again, and just five monts before my funding
> ran out, the marked turned once pmore, an the various companies did various 
> things to encourage people to leave, short of actually firing them. Not a 
> good time to get out there and apply for work. "Eh... we encouraged 400 
> people to leave last week... we can hardly hire a freshman now, can we..."
> 
> > > So make up your own mind. You are in an ideal position to build a network 
> > > of contacts you may find useful later in your carreer. You may have one of 
> > > your last chances to get paid to pursue your own ideas in your own way and 
> > > in your own tempo. And you have a chance to test and extend your knowledge 
> > > and skills, by teaching younger students. 
> > > 
> > > As for the thesis, my opinion is that the subject should be sufficiently 
> > > limited that you can to do a decent job, but broad enough that at least 
> > > two other people in the world have a chance of understanding what you're 
> > > doing. Yes, I'm serious. That's way easier said than done.
> > 
> > I think that rarely happens. I've done things I thought were pretty
> > neat. Then I've seen someone present a paper describing an almost
> > identical solution to the same or perhaps even totally different
> > problem. There are two issues here. We tend to get very narrowly
> > focussed, and think we are doing something unique. Usually we are not,
> > and a number of people are working on the same thing. 
> 
> Agreed. I expressed some opinions about that in the thread "Why is PhD 
> important?" some time ago. 
> 
> > Second,
> > communication is tough. It is really hard to find the other people
> > working on the same things as you, so you tend to think they don't
> > exist. Despite all the journals, conferences, etc., linking up with
> > people is never easy. 
> 
> Sure. Now, communication works on several levels. The need for the academic 
> version that includes conferences, journals, reports etc, is quite obvious 
> when you do the PhD thing. If you do something that is truly first in the 
> world, that no one else are doing, then you are likely to face a 
> communication problem. Taken to an extreme, one could say that the PhD 
> diploma ought to be a way of saying "This person has done something that is 
> new and not easily understood, but the members of the awarding committee 
> vouch for the contents of the work". Such a standpoint could be interpreted, 
> rightly or wrongly, as to releave the PhD for the responsibility of 
> communicating his work, leaving it for the academic community to read his 
> thesis and other publications on their own terms. All of that changes once 
> an academic field is "broken in" and conventions in terminology and 
> perhaps notation has been established. On a more applied level, it may 
> be more convenient to express the contents of the work in terms of an 
> accepted framework.
> 
> However, the other version of communication, that relates to laypeople 
> and non-specialists, is just as important. I have always been a teacher, 
> in the sense that my friends and classmates always came to me for help 
> in and after class. I didn't really see the effect of this until very 
> late in my PhD work, when I had to read up on many different fields fast 
> in order to extract what I needed for my own ecclectic work. It turned out 
> that all this teaching I have done, somehow had me think "How can I express 
> the contents of this paper in a way that the kid next-door can understand 
> it?". You can't really do that unless you understand what the paper is all 
> about, so in a sense, this attitude has become very helpful in getting to 
> learn new stuff. It's a real challenge: Both to grasp the contents of 
> something new for your own use, so to speak, but also to express complex 
> ideas in terms and phrasings that have a chance of getting across to people 
> with different backgrounds and preparations. 
> 
> > Engineers like to mock marketing departments,
> > but linking buyers and sellers is generally a tough thing to do.
> > Academic knowledge and industrial products are no different in this
> > regard. (I didn't suggest most marketing departments do not deserve
> > mocking - they do!).
> 
> Marketing and presentation of one's work is necessary. My impression is 
> that the link between the PR and the contents of the product isn't always 
> obvious.  
> 
> Rune

vimal_bhatia2@yahoo.com (Vimal) wrote in message news:<b6fc6dda.0308251446.530b1491@posting.google.com>...
> Thanks a lot all for valuable discussion.
> 
> I should have explained a bit further, Okay presently I have already
> defined my research scope/problem.
> 
> Now when I look/google search for Guidelines/Tips then they are
> normally ******FORMAL****** requirements or procedures. I am looking
> for people's experience and what do they consider are deliverables.
> 
> I totaly agree, that it is last chance to pursue research that you
> want and you are paid for that :-)
> However, what i percive now, that doing a PhD is like handling a
> project, timely self-assessment, deliverables, maintaninace, document
> control etc. all that goes on to make a successful product.



> Can anyone suggest what else should one be aware of at the end of PhD.
> Definitely one must know what is happening in his research area, but
> apart from that how much other knowledge does the prospective
> employers (industry) seek while hiring a PhD.
> 
> Cheers,
> Vimal
>

vimal_bhatia2@yahoo.com (Vimal) wrote in message news:<b6fc6dda.0308251446.530b1491@posting.google.com>...

> However, what i percive now, that doing a PhD is like handling a
> project, timely self-assessment, deliverables, maintaninace, document
> control etc. all that goes on to make a successful product.
> 
> Can anyone suggest what else should one be aware of at the end of PhD.
> Definitely one must know what is happening in his research area, but
> apart from that how much other knowledge does the prospective
> employers (industry) seek while hiring a PhD.

I totally agree with you in what you say here. That's what my impression 
was during my PhD years. Now, that is not necessarily how that PhD is 
percieved in the corporate world. My experience was that I, whit my PhD 
diploma, was compared with that English guy who one day went to his 
attic and came down seven years later with the solution to Fermat's 2nd
theorem. 

What I suggest you do, if you can in any possible way find time for it, 
is to take some sort of management class and/or economy class. Most of 
what's said there would probably be almost trivial, and you have probably 
learned a lot more during your management of your own work, so at first 
glance spending time on such classes seems ridiculous. However, the 
important part is that you get a paper that states that you have been 
through such issues in class, and that may make all the difference in how 
you are percieved by a prospective employer, and what oportunities will 
be open to you when you enter your first jobs. 

Rune

Hi Vimal,

vimal_bhatia2@yahoo.com (Vimal) wrote in message news:<b6fc6dda.0308251446.530b1491@posting.google.com>...
> Can anyone suggest what else should one be aware of at the end of PhD.
> Definitely one must know what is happening in his research area, but
> apart from that how much other knowledge does the prospective
> employers (industry) seek while hiring a PhD.

At the end of a PhD you will be hired by an employer as a fresh
graduate. You might just strike lucky and find an employer that
desparately needs the thing you have been studying for the last X
years, but don't bet on it. Most PhDs get hired to the same positions
and at the same salaries as a fresh BSc or MSc. Once they get over the
demoralising effect of that, they tend to rise faster through the
organisation. However, on day one they are on the first rung with a
bunch of guys several years younger.

Regards,
Steve

steveu@coppice.org (Steve Underwood) wrote in message news:<80bddbd7.0308260515.2855aff3@posting.google.com>...
> Hi Vimal,
> 
> vimal_bhatia2@yahoo.com (Vimal) wrote in message news:<b6fc6dda.0308251446.530b1491@posting.google.com>...
> > Can anyone suggest what else should one be aware of at the end of PhD.
> > Definitely one must know what is happening in his research area, but
> > apart from that how much other knowledge does the prospective
> > employers (industry) seek while hiring a PhD.
> 
> At the end of a PhD you will be hired by an employer as a fresh
> graduate. You might just strike lucky and find an employer that
> desparately needs the thing you have been studying for the last X
> years, but don't bet on it. Most PhDs get hired to the same positions
> and at the same salaries as a fresh BSc or MSc. Once they get over the
> demoralising effect of that, they tend to rise faster through the
> organisation. However, on day one they are on the first rung with a
> bunch of guys several years younger.
> 
> Regards,
> Steve

This is statistically true. You hammered on the right ego. But not
always true.
I know many fresh P.hd to get immediate recognition within very short
time. Big guys like Viterbi/cioffi are successful in their own founded
company.

It is probably not a good idea to compare B.Sc/MSc or P.hd. A good
company looks for the potentiality of a person. It can come from any
of the above degrees.

santosh