Some tips for 1st year PhD Students
During the annual meeting of our research team, each PhD student presents the progress of his/her research.
I've added a "bonus" slide to my presentation so I could talk about what I've learned as a first year PhD Student.
I promised to share some of the Internet links that helped me, but I ended up writing this page with such links but also some tips from personal experience.
The torment of first year
My first PhD year was a torment inside my head. It was hard, it taught me a lot an that's why I would like to share the experience.
During the first year I've searched, read and saved a lot of useful material which I will provide the links here. But I have also accumulated some practical experience.
Your thesis advisor is not there to save you, but to help you finding your path. Do not wait for him to get you by the hand and take you to (or through) the path.
So, AUTONOMY is essential. The process may change from advisor to advisor, lab to lab, university to university, and so on. But, in general, I think you should try to advance by yourself and occasionnally have meetings with him to see if you are taking the right path.
Don't panic if some of this normal stuff happens to you during the first year:
- Not having a [definitive] subject for your thesis
- Not being sure about the subject of your thesis
- Not being sure about the originality of your subject
Feelings
We are human beings and we are governed by feelings.
In conferences I had the opportunity to talk with lots of PhD students, and most of them shared the same feelings I had during my first year:
- Demotivation
- Feeling like quiting
- Loneliness
- Despair
- Anguish
- The feeling of being lost
- The impression of not having progress
Tasks and Procrastination
I did not use my time well, procrastinating a lot. You can take advantage of procrastination (the "I'll do it tomorrow" syndrome) in a productive way.
You may have several parallel tasks during your PhD. For example, some students may do teaching assistancy (TA), which I do.
Others may work in research projects not completely related to their thesis, which I also do.
Your time is fragmented, now you have to "switchtask", which gives you a cost on switching from one task to the other. In order to get concentrated again, you need time.
If you have 3 obligations (thesis, TA and research project) and you can't be organized enough to work on all of your tasks you're going to have a hard time. I'm still working on that...
Links
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Procrastination
Wikipedia definition of procrastination
-
20 procrastination hacks
Tips for dealing with procrastination
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Essays about Procrastination
Cited on the previous link, these are essays written by a professor from the Stanford Department of Philosophy. They show that you can take advantage of procrastination
in a productive way. It works. I did nice experiments, wrote articles, and even won a prize by procrastinating productively.
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Time management
It gives nice tips like TO DO lists with different priorities on tasks
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The myth of multitasking
Book talking about how multitasking (in fact switchtasking) does not help us. Not an amazing book but has some nice tips on it.
Performing Experiments
After finding a thesis subject, some work must be done. In Software Engineering it is likely that you'll need to observe and test applications, methods, approaches, etc.
Performing experiments and presenting the interpreted results helps to support your hypotheses.
Taking a look at Empirical Research and Quantitative Research may help. Depending on what you want to present you may need some background (or remembering what you've learned as an undergraduate) in statistics.
Links
Scientific Reading
Read a lot. You need to know who is working in the same (or similar) issues of your theme, unless you have a really original problem (which is rare) that no one is working on.
Not mentioning at least the most important ones in your articles or in your thesis means the you are neglecting the state of the art of your theme.
When writing a paper, it will need to position your work to the existing one.
I believe the three main sources for computer science are the first links below. It requires paying access which you may already have through your university/research institution.
Links
Scientific Writing
One of the most important things for a PhD student is how to write down what he/she is doing, so other people could read and understand.
This is not easy, but it is the path to present a paper in a conference. Some reasons for submitting a paper to a conference:
- A start for practicing your writing (You'll need this practice for writing the thesis)
- The opportunity to expose your work to critics from other researchers on the same field.
Starting from the reviewers that reject or approve your paper, and months later the audience to whom you'll present your paper
- Interacting with people from different universities and cultures
-
Meeting other PhD students and researchers. Besides making new friends with whom you'll be drinking a beer after the conference, they may give you a hand in the future, or vice-versa:
- Sharing experiences
- Collaboration in the future
- Opportunities for after the thesis
- Member of the thesis committee/jury (the vice-versa does not apply here...)
- Knowing other places
But first, you need to find which conferences are interesting in your field. Your advisor may help you with this. Try the good ones. If your
paper is ever rejected, you'll have at least 2 experts explaining why it was not accepted. You can take the critics, improve your work and your
paper. It will increase the chances of having your paper accepted in the next submission, which can be a different conference if you don't want
to wait almost 12 months to resubmit where you have been rejected.
The traditional path is submitting to a Workshop -> Conference -> Journal, whith your work evolving between these steps. However you are not forced to follow this sequence.
Here are some nice links, which during your navigation you may find twice
Links
Discuss your theme
Discuss your theme with other people. In conferences, your friends, etc. This is something I've neglected.
I had inputs from other people in the different conferences where I went, but I never asked stuff to the people beside me at my lab (the people I work with).
I'll try to fix this in the years to come.
Conclusion
Doing a thesis is not easy, and doing a good one is even worse because you'll never be certain if you're doing good or not.
A PhD appears to normally be a long road with lots of obstacles.
Organization is essential, and persistence is a key factor for continuing.
The links made available here have been collected through my first PhD year, in the academic year of 2008-09.
The text available in this page is a result of my own experience, my reading of the above links and discussions with other PhD students as well as people that have already obtained their PhD.
I think you'll only know if it was good after your defence. Well, that's what I think. Still 2 years to go.
I sincerely hope that the information described herein can somehow help other PhD students in their path on research.
Thanks for the visit, and feel free to contact me in case of suggestions or anything.
Other useful links
How to be a good graduate student (try to read as much as possible of this one)
PhD comics make you feel like a normal PhD student
Google Do your own searches and don't be limited to the links or what is written in this page you're reading ;)
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