obtaining that elusive phd
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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
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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
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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 ([email protected]) 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.
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