obtaining that elusive phd

8/6/2019 Obtaining That Elusive Phd

1/3

0278-6648/06/$20.00 2006 IEEEJULY/AUGUST 2006 11

He re i s a li tt lehumor and someperspective for you

hard-working Ph.D.

students who cant

seem to find any

humor in your monotonous daily stride

towards obtaining that seemingly elusive

three-letter suffix to be added to your

name. Currently a Ph.D. candidate

myself, what I have to offer is based on

my own experiences and the keenobservations of other Ph.D. students

both from my school and other institu-

tions of higher learning. You should use

this analogy and insight during those

tough times when everything that should

be going north seems to be heading

south. This information should also

serve as a guide to help you see the visi-

ble radiation (light) at the other end of

the tunnel (remember, this is what it

seems like sometimes). If you are a mar-

ried Ph.D. student, you are unique

because this is the only time in your life

when you will be married to more than

one spouse, which makes you a legal

polygamist. Remember, polygamy is not

legal in the United States of America.

The Ph.D.a romance

The pursuit of your Ph.D. degree is

a marriage between you and your topic

and has to be treated just like a mar-

riage between a man and woman. Your

adviser has to be considered as both

your attorney and local law enforce-

ment body. Now, let us look at just

how obtaining a Ph.D. is like a mar-

riage. Lets call your carefully chosen

topic your spouse.

First of all, the quest for a Ph.D.

should be thought of as a commit-

ment because you will be devoting an

average of five years of your life to it.Having said that, you can see why it

is so important to choose a topic that

is , without a doubt, interest ing.

Secondly, you often find yourself tak-

ing your new spouse with you every

place you goto the movies, to din-

ner, shopping, to visit relatives, to

church, and to seminars, just to name

a few places. If you are already mar-

ried, you will spend much more time

with your new spouse than with your

first spouse. For example, you will

find yourself waking up in the morn-

ing with your new spouse because you need to plan your day around

what experiments need to be run,

what data needs to be plotted and

analyzed, what theory needs to be

understood, what journal papers need

to be written, and what presentations

need to be prepared. Breakfast will

also become a time to spend with

your new spouse. With the exception

of Sundays, my morning meal time is

currently spent reading journal papers

and pertinent topics in textbooks that

directly and indirectly relate to my

topic. By now, you Ph.D. studentsshould be getting the picture of how

you and your topic are for all practi-

cal purposes a married couple.

Wait! The situation gets much

more interesting, if not downright

romantic, because you also get a

chance to sleep with your new

spouse at night. At various times

you will find yourself having

dreams about your new spouse,

which are more than likely very

similar to one of the following:

a) I am at a conference on

designing nanorobots and pre-

senting my researchthat is, Im

describing how beautiful and

important my spouse is.

b) I have just discovered

that the exponent in the rate

equation should be 1.3 versus

1.37 and now my theory fits

my results.

c) I am having a once in a

lifetime interview with IBM

Obtaining that elusivePh.D.in every sense

a marriageL.L. FIELDS

IMAGECLUB

8/6/2019 Obtaining That Elusive Phd

2/3

12 IEEE POTENTIALS

and the hiring manager wants to knowwhy I chose my topic and what contri-butions I expect to make in my fieldthat is, when did we get married andhow many children do we plan tohave.

Also, your new spouse can be verytemperamental at times. Often you willfind that no matter how hard you try tojoin those two atoms, chemistry just

wont let it happen the way you want itto, or no matter how hard you try toexplain your reasoning to your adviser,

you just cant present yourself in aclear and concise way. It should bemuch more apparent to you now justhow much you and your topic are likea woman and her husband. Actually,the relationship can be quite loving.But here comes the part thatmany of you will inevitably face.Divorce from your new spousethat, for the past five years, hasbeen with you through thick and

thin is foreordained. Yes, eventu-ally you will have to graduateand find a job, whether it is inindustry or academia. Most Ph.D.graduates in the technical fieldsdont find positions doing theexact same kind of work as wasdone for their Ph.D. dissertation.But, there are a lucky few whomanage to continue their Ph.D.

work. So, as in the United States,the divorce rate is high, and theonly time you dont get adivorce is when you are lucky

enough to continue your work. Thistype of divorce, however, is not thatbad because you finally get a chance tomake the big bucks and become richer,not poorer as the case in mostdivorces. You have that three-letter suf-fix at the end of your name with amore normal husband or life (I meant

wife). The worst case occurs when youhave to get a divorce, and you dontget your legal divorce documentthatis, you dont get your degree.

Figure 1 shows the mood versus timefor an average Ph.D. student for the typ-ical five-year duration. The units formood was arbitrarily named happiness.

A mood of 0 happiness means that youare stressed, depressed, unfocused, andconfused whereas a mood of 1 meansthat you have made some Nobel-Prizetype of discovery, and you and yourspouse are hitting it off rather nicely.Notice that the curve is a cosine func-tion (versus sine) because almost alwaysthe student is very excited to get accept-

ed into the Ph.D program and cannotwait to start the research process. Also,notice that once you get your divorce,

you are once again as happy as a bearin a bees honeycomb. You see, as stat-ed above, this type of divorce isnt allthat bad and it would be a shame, in asense, if you didnt get one.

Notice that the average mood is 0.6and that the peak-to-peak amplitude is

0.25. What does this tell us? Well, itmeans that most of the time you are alittle more happy and making progressthan sad and stuck on a problem. Whilethe exact numbers in this figure arearbitrary and the curve may actually bea triangle wave, versus a sine wave,one cant deny the overall truthfulnessconveyed by the curve. Almost all Ph.D.

students with whom I have spokenhave had issues and tough times. Onthe other hand, there have to be peri-ods of happiness, satisfaction, goodresults, and good times because if there

werent, you would never get a chanceto divorce your spouse. Ideally, you

want the average value to be 1 and theamplitude to be 0, but this could onlyhappen in an ideal world. If anyone hasexperienced this situation, please besure to send me your secret and wemay be able to make lots of money. Ona more serious note, it is extremelyimportant to find ways to perseverethough those valleys in the cosine

wave. Later, I will share with you a fewideas that usually work for me.

Personal advice

Here are my suggestions for anyone who is engaged or thinking aboutbecoming engaged. First of all, makesure that you find a law officer (remem-ber, your adviser) who you can work

with and who is human. It can proba-bly be assumed that the law officer willbe competent in his/her line of workand worthy enough to advise you. Iadmit that even though I get a littleimpatient with my adviser sometimes,he has always supported me. He allowsme to make mistakes, and then he dis-cusses with me the way I should havehandled the situation. Many of you

brides and bridegrooms will read thissuggestion, fail to take it seriously, and,sadly, will have to divorce your spouseprematurely. The next most importantsuggestion is to choose a spouse that

you can support and one that you lovedearly. What I mean by support is that

you should, to the best of your knowl-edge, assess whether or not your insti-

tution has the resources you needto pursue your Ph.D. If it doesnt,

will you have access to theresources to accomplish your task?For Ph.D. work, you will be

expected to accomplish your taskregardless of your ability to accessresources at your own institution.Based on the above information, itshould not be a great stretch of

your imagination to see why it isso important to choose a spouse

who you think you can love untildeath, or graduation, do you part.For the moment, forget about anyhumor you may have found in thisarticle and write down the nextstatement somewhere in your laband at your desk. Acquiring

effective and smooth communicationand presentation skills is essential andis the secret to doing well while youare getting your Ph.D. These skills areeven more critical when you transitionfrom school to your job becase we canformulate a relationship between yoursuccess, communication skills, presenta-tion skills, technical ability, motivation,persistence, and luck.

Success Probability=0.65* (communication skills+ presentation skills)+ 0.15*technical ability+ 0.15*(motivation+ persistence)+ 0.05*luck.

Communication and presentation skillsare summed and then weighted becauseits often extremely difficult to distinguishthe two. Likewise, persistence and motiva-tion are summed and weighted becausethey are closely coupled. Here, success is

0

0.5

1

0 1 2 3 4 5

Time (Years)

Mood(Happiness)

Fig. 1 Mood versus time for an average Ph.D. student

8/6/2019 Obtaining That Elusive Phd

3/3

a measure of a combination of things:

how much compensation you are earning,

satisfaction with your work or task, and

your contributions to your field. While the

weightings in the formula above have

been arbitrarily assigned, the point is that

your technical abilities will not influence

your success nearly as much as your com-

munication and presentation skills. I admit

that this hurts even me because I consider

myself a logical and technical person likeMr. Spock on Star Trek, but it is the truth.

This information is coming from the per-

spective of a Ph.D. candidate with over

ten years of industry experience and some

college teaching experience.

Blues management tipsFor anyone who doesnt know what

the blues are, it refers to the low times

in your life that are caused by an emo-

tional letdown that could be the result

of losing a friend, making a low test

score, being broke, etc. Here are some

ideas to help you get through thosedepressing troughs in the cosine wave

that are caused by your spouses tem-

peramental mood swings:

1) Exercise as often as your schedule

allows. For me, exercising is one of the

few ways to divert my attention away

from my spouse. Jogging, aerobics, bik-

ing, and weightlifting works for me. Its

extremely important to get your heart

rate up and sweat because this usually

leaves little room to think about your

spouse. You will have to experiment to

see what works best for you.

2) Eat a large, healthy breakfast,consume healthy foods in general, and

take a multivitamin. You will be sur-

prised at how well you will feel after

you change your eating habits. This is

important because food isnt the same

as it once was because of the way we

grow and process it. This has made a

difference for me and a couple friends

by allowing us to think more clearly

and focus better.

3) Talk to people. One of the worst

things you can do is to stay in the lab

and think that you are the worlds

brightest student. In case you havent

noticed, todays successful people are

well rounded. Of course, there are

those few people who can make it by

being almost totally independent, but

let me tell you those people are in the

minority. Talking to people can help

relieve frustrations and give you new

perspectives.

The list above isnt meant to be all

inclusive, but it has been the heart of

my stress management. The article by

Rob Candler and the one by Mirella

Moro et al. do an excellent job of cov-

ering many practical aspects that Ph.D.

students and students thinking about

getting a Ph.D. should consider.

SummaryOne should seriously consider the

quest for a Ph.D. as a marriage between

student and topic and treat the topicwith all the respect and passion that

one would treat his or her living

spouse. Three ways to get through

those tough times have been given. All

have been very effective for me and

some of my friends. A visual aid has

been presented that shows how a typi-

cal Ph.D. students happiness varies.

Communication and presentation skills

have been elevated above technical

ability in a formula that relates these

skills to the ability to succeed. The

Ph.D. is demanding and time consum-

ing. It requires independent thinkingskills and dedication, many sacrifices,

vision and trust, and of course, a little

luck. One should think of the Ph.D. as

an investment. Most important of all,

remember that almost all Ph.D. students

have low times, and you are not the

only one living with the blues!

Read more about it R. Candler, Stuff most students

never ask about grad school, IEEEPo tent ia l s , vo l . 45 , pp . 410 ,Aug./Sep. 2005.

M. Moro, V. Braganholo, A. Ncul,and M. Fornari, The successful gradstudent, IEEE Potentials, vol. 45, pp.1113, Aug./Sep. 2005.

About the authorL.L. Fields (fieldle@eng.fsu.edu) is a

fourth-year Ph.D. student in the

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Department at the Florida Agricultural

and Mechanical University/Florida State

University, Tallahassee. His research

interest is nanosensors and semicon-

ducting devices. He worked for the

U.S. Navy full time from 19892000

and part time from 20002002. Heattended the University of Florida in

Gainesvil le from 20002002 and

received an M.S. degree in electrical

and computer engineering.

JULY/AUGUST 2006 13