Collection of some resources related to the PhD journey.
Collection of some resources related to the PhD journey.
Introduction
Last quarter, I took the Tao of the Ph.D. seminar at the University of Washington. I was in California and couldn’t get involved as much but I still learned a lot from the recommended resources covering many important topics for Ph.D. students. In addition, I also learned a lot from the internet(Video, Blog, Article, Podcast), so I want to make a collection of them. Some of them are written in Chinese, which means the original posts are in Chinese
Reading stories of people who have gone through the same journey is a virtual way to gain experience - It’s like reading a cheat sheet while playing games!
Before applying for the Ph.D., I recommend some articles to read! PhD is not necessary for all people.
Research is one of the most important things in the life of a PhD student.
You and your research by Richard Hamming. It’s a little bit hard for early career researchers to follow all instructions but we should always remind ourselves of these points.
“Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you can. “
“If you do not work on an important problem, it’s unlikely you’ll do important work. It’s perfectly obvious.”
“If you really want to be a first-class scientist you need to know yourself, your weaknesses, your strengths, and your bad faults”
Research patterns by Nick Feamster. He provided some patterns for finding a problem and solving it. Check more detail in the post!
“Revisit old problems where assumptions may have changed.”
“Hop on a trend; look “upstream” for the trends.”
“Specialize the general. Generalize the specific “
“Science involves confronting our ‘absolute stupidity. That kind of stupidity is an existential fact, inherent in our efforts to push our way into the unknown.”
“The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.”
Writing papers is a primary mechanism for doing research (not just for reporting it) I am so surprised that I didn’t know this before. So let’s try to write while doing research!!