The illustrated guide to a Ph.D. Imagine a circle that contains all of human knowledge: By the time you finish elementary school, you know a little: By the time you finish high school, you know a bit more: With a bachelor's degree, you gain a specialty: A master's degree deepens that specialty: Reading research papers takes you to the edge of human knowledge: Once you're at the boundary, you focus: You push at the boundary for a few years: Until one day, the boundary gives way: And, that dent you've made is called a Ph.D Of course, the world looks different to you now: So, don't forget the bigger picture: Keep pushing. There's a bit more below, but I also wrote a follow-up 5 years after the illustrated guide which may be of interest -- HOWTO: Get tenure. Related posts If you like these posts, then I recommend the book A PhD Is Not Enough Get it in print; fund students; save lives By request, a print version of The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D. is on sale. Click here to preview or buy it. Why biology? License: Creative Commons Resources
Body Language Basics - Syncrat Publishing Throughout history it has been an advantage if an individual can read body language. Body language helps in everyday life from closing a business deal or trusting someone with your life, to recognising when someone is upset. Body language is the art of making an educated guess at a person’s feelings or intentions based on their posture, movement and positioning. To understand a person’s body language you need to take into account more than one aspect of their body language. Take tears for example. Just seeing tears on a person’s face does not tell you much as they could mean a person is happy, sad or just they might just have watery eyes. Each action or stance in the following list means very little, unless there is more than one indicating the same thing. Arms Feet Head Chest Other
10 reasons Ph.D. students fail Focus on grades or coursework No one cares about grades in grad school. There's a simple formula for the optimal GPA in grad school: Optimal GPA = Minimum Required GPA + ε Anything higher implies time that could have been spent on research was wasted on classes. During the first two years, students need to find an advisor, pick a research area, read a lot of papers and try small, exploratory research projects. Learn too much Some students go to Ph.D. school because they want to learn. Let there be no mistake: Ph.D. school involves a lot of learning. But, it requires focused learning directed toward an eventual thesis. Taking (or sitting in on) non-required classes outside one's focus is almost always a waste of time, and it's always unnecessary. By the end of the third year, a typical Ph.D. student needs to have read about 50 to 150 papers to defend the novelty of a proposed thesis. The price of all this "enlightenment" was an extra year on my Ph.D. Expect perfection Procrastinate Aim too low It is.
Electric meat Don't touch the electric meat Some time ago, a primatologist ran an experiment with chimpanzees. The experiment involved a hanging pallet of meat that, when touched, sent an electric shock througout the entire chimp cage. At first, the chimps responded with bewilderment every time one of them grabbed the meat and the shock rippled through the cage. Eventually, the chimps realized that the shocks came from the meat. The chimps began to attack and beat, savagely even, any chimp that approached the meat, and over time, fewer beatings were necessary. At this point, the experimenter began to replace the chimps, one by one, with chimps that had never been shocked. Naturally, when this new chimp went for the curiously untouched meat right before his eyes, he was attacked. Confused at first, he eventually connected the meat to the beatings. Each new chimp learned to attack when others approached the meat. The experimenter continued replacing the chimps. The meat was now safe to eat. Epilogue Related pages
Структура научного текста | ProMetod.ru Научные тексты различных жанров строятся по единой логической схеме. У каждого научного произведения есть свой сюжет. Сюжет научного текста необычен: автор приобщает читателя к поиску истины. Композиция – это закономерное, мотивированное содержанием и замыслом расположения всех частей текста. Композиция типичного научного текста отражает последовательность фаз научного исследования: 1) осознание проблемы (вопроса, задачи) и постановка цели _ «введение»; 2) поиск способов решения проблемы, перебор возможных вариантов и выдвижение гипотезы, доказательство идеи (гипотезы) – «основная часть»; 3) решение исследовательской задачи, получение ответа – «заключение». Способ изложения, таким образом, является способом доказательства. Научный текст, таким образом, имеет сложную организацию, в нем можно условно выделить два пласта с точки зрения того, какую информацию получает читатель: 1) фактическую, непосредственно об объекте исследования; ( метатекст – это текст в тексте ).
10 tips on how to give an academic talk The biggest mistake academics make is misjudging their audience. I've been to (many) talks where the talk itself was presented to one or two people in a room of hundreds. (Disclaimer: I've given my fair share of these talks too.) When preparing a talk, glance at the program for the event, or ask your host what you should expect of the audience in terms of background knowledge. Aim appropriately. When we speak on favored topics, our instinct is to gloss over concepts and details that once took us the better part of grad school to understand. It feels awkward, or even insulting, to recap "introductory" material. There's also a negative feedback mechanism in academic culture. When you present to a broader audience, experts in your own specialty will claim to be annoyed and chastise you in public Q & A to stroke their egos. Don't listen to them. Always ask: What needs to be understood to convey the big idea? Practice Practice is the key to a "natural" delivery. Nerves Public speaking is a common fear.
Wildest Places to Party in Europe When you travel, you're free of responsibilities. There's nothing holding you back. So why not throw caution to the wind and get in on these wild Europe party scenes? Whether you are in the south, the north, the east, or the west, when you travel around Europe, you'll find some the greatest and most diverse places to let loose. The continent may be famous for its food and culture, but with all backpackers and young travelers from around the world descending here, these European cities are prime party destinations for drinking heavily and staying up until dawn. Abeeeer, flickr 1. 2. Glen Bowman, flickr 3. ST33VO, flickr 4. 5. boltron-, flickr 6. 7. kevgibbo, flickr 8.
Join Us Undergraduates We have openings for paid urops for MIT undergraduates, both during the academic year as well as during the summers. The list of current openings can be found on the UROP openings page. We encourage non-MIT undergrads to visit for the summer, but they will have to apply for their own funding. Potential Graduate Students We have open slots for potential graduate students. Visiting Graduate Students and Postdocs We have openings for visiting graduate students and postdocs. Industry We are eager to collaborate with industry in our research. 3 shell scripts: Kill weasel words, avoid the passive, eliminate duplicates More resources There are four books at arm's length in my office: Strunk and White's The Elements of Style is still a good, if not perfect, reference on style. Young writers should calibrate their reading of Elements in light of criticism from linguistic experts. Experts claim that the good parts of Strunk and White are common sense. I take issue only with their application of the modifier common. Precision and clarity My Ph.D. advisor, Olin Shivers, taught me that technical writing is a balancing act between precision, clarity and marketing. After a recent round of paper submissions with my own Ph.D. students, I've identified mechanically recognizable ways that precision and clarity leak out of a paper: weasel words and abuse of the passive voice. So, I've written shell scripts to detect these leaks. (I don't think I'll ever be able to write a shell script that detects bad marketing for a scientific idea.) Weasel words Salt and pepper words Beholder words Lazy words Adverbs Passive voice Resources
Dont Pay for Technology: 25 Freebies for Students Jun 29, 2009 In today's economic climate, paying for technology isn't prudent, and for some students, it isn't even an option. Fortunately, there are plenty of freebies on the web that can help with document creation, research, writing, storage, collaboration, studying and more. Here are 25 free web apps and software programs that may be useful to students. Document Creation Zoho Office - Zoho Office is an amazing suite of web-based productivity and collaboration tools. Research and Writing Schoolr - This meta search engine combines other academic search engines to make research faster and more efficient for students. Online Storage and Collaboration ADrive - Offering more than 50 GB of free storage, ADrive is one of the best places to upload and store files online. Study Help and Web-Based Learning Mindpicnic - Mindpicnic is helping to revolutionize the way students learn by providing free courses and study materials online. Miscellaneous Tech Tools
Books and papers every graduate student should read Jump to For grad students in any field Resources for writing Writing is the default activity in graduate school. A discovery isn't a discovery unless you can communicate that discovery. A lot of academic writing is horrible, and it tends to be horrible in multiple ways: presentation, ordering, clarity, style, and sometimes even grammar and punctuation. Better writing makes peer reviewers inclined to invest time in it. On writing style, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace simply nails it. The Chicago Manual of Style is an indispensable reference: I didn't find A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses and Dissertations until after my defense, but it is relevant to any kind of academic or technical writing. Like the Chicago book, it's a superb reference tome. Resources for presenting (yourself) Graduate students can't avoid giving presentations. Once again, most academics give awful presentations. will make every presentation you give better at the cost of just one afternoon's reading. Practice
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