博士之磨

郝鸿涛 / 2021-05-12

前几天用三个小时读完了 Phillp Guo 写的 The PhD Grind。我把它翻译为《博士之磨》。以下是我的一些体会。

  1. 不要闭门造车。要多和教授探讨，寻找研究方向。不要一个人独自在那里瞎想。

  2. 只有你熟悉一个领域，你才知道怎么包装你的论文。

  3. 在和一个人学术合作之前，想想这个人是不是有动力去完成这个项目。没评终身教职的助理教授动力比较强，有终身教职的副教授、正教授可能动力比较弱。

  4. 学术本来就很孤独，你对一个题目钻得很深，普通人根本不知道你在干什么。当你碰到困难的时候，连个说话的人都没有。当别人不理解你时，你很容易自我怀疑，觉得一切都没有意义，再加上发表的压力，实在是很痛苦。

  5. 一个教授有了想法，就去招学生去实现这些想法。但，必然有些想法是要失败的，把时间、精力投入在这些想法上的学生很可能一事无成。

    One of the purposes of tenure is to allow professors to take risks by attempting bolder project ideas. However, the dark side of this privilege is that professors will often assign students to grind on risky projects with low success rates. And students often can’t refuse, since they are funded by their advisors' grants.

    在这种情况下，一定要学得聪明点，觉得希望不大赶紧换方向、换老师。不要在一棵树上吊死。不要被 PUA （喻宇琳 这么告诫我）、不要被导师利用。碰到这样的老师、这样的项目，要勇敢退出（Phillp Guo 的原话是 “Students must judge for themselves whether their default projects are promising, and if not, figure out how to quit gracefully”）。要学会坚决维护自己的利益。遇到事不要怕，迎难而上。总会有解决的一天。

  6. 多发论文，光看别人的没用（说给我自己听，我老爱看别人的论文，自己写论文太难了）。

  7. 博士期间找到和自己志趣、性格相投的人，多花时间跟他们在一起。

  8. 多展示自己的科研，让更多的人知道你的成果。

读完《博士之磨》，我又看了 Kathryn R. Wedemeyer-Strombel 写的 Graduate Students: You Are More Than Your PhD。这篇文章是我在 NCA 的 Spectra 订阅杂志上看到的，你可以看该文的电子版 。 下面我把我感悟比较深的几句话摘抄下来：

In graduate school, it is so easy to lose ourselves to our programs, to lose our identity beyond “graduate student”, to fall into the trap of becoming research robots.

I am here to remind you that you are more than your research, you are more than your program, you are multidimensional, whole beings —— and your value, your worth, goes far beyond what you achieve in the ivory tower.

So, enjoy your life that is happening now, and give yourself permission to know yourself and others as whole beings. Framing our graduate education in this way, as a piece of who we are, but not all of who we are, is critical.

Take a moment right now and think of the last non-academic related activity you did just for you. If that didn’t happen in the last two weeks, schedule it now for next week.

As important as being proactive about your work-life balance is, it is equally important to surround yourself with people——peers and mentors——who honor your boundaries. As Rebecca Barner says, “Science is a team sport; choose your team wisely”. Once you find your team, honor it.

I challenge you to get to know your peers as more than just research associates, to realize that your friend is more than the “internal rhetoric of scientists and engineers” researcher.

Try to make these types of gatherings a weekly event, when you hang out together alcohol-free and you don’t talk about your research or school.

#读书

最后一次修改于 2022-06-18