Day in the life of a PhD student: your photos

Our office mate went away for a few days so we decided to wrap their desk in tin foil. We wrapped everything, including the microscope, every thumb tack and even an origami bird. It looked like a 'space desk'

FOR MORE IMAGES< YOU HAVE TO VISIT THE FOLLOWING LINK
https://witness.theguardian.com/assignment/542542cce4b0d4b1d5b66fee?order=votes_interesting

Five alternative things successful PhD students would never do

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Have alternative interests
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Are you a PhD student? Yes? Are you reading this? Yes? Then you are a BAD PhD student! The fact that you have time to fritter away reading pointless blogs show you aren’t dedicated enough to your research. Shame on you!

You have been given 3 years’ worth of funding (if you’re lucky) to do enough research to fill a thesis. Not funding to “go out”, “have hobbies” or “enjoy life”, it’s to do research! And can you guarantee that your research will be successful? No? Then you’d better get cracking with it. And no, you can’t blog about science; if you have that much free time then why not just knit a blanket with your results on and use it to keep a horse warm?

If you have an experiment that takes several hours to run, then that’s a perfect opportunity to sleep and avoids all this “going home” nonsense. When people go home at the end of a working day, do you know what they call that? Quitting time. And are you a quitter? You want to experience a 9 to 5, get yourself a watch and stare at it while you write up your data with the other hand.

Some people whine about needing to leave the lab to “eat”, but anyone who can’t find sufficient nutrients from lab refuse and out of date chemicals doesn’t deserve to call themselves a scientist. Science doesn’t sleep! Isaac Newton didn’t get to switch gravity off for the weekend for a caravan holiday. Science sets the schedule, not you, and science. Never. Stops! If you can’t keep up, then go amuse yourself in an easier role. There’s plenty more where you came from!

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Maintain relationships with friends and family
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Some people like to see their family, friends, partners, etc. Some people don’t have PhDs. If you drew a Venn diagram of these people, it would be just a circle. What is a friend? A friend is someone who isn’t responsible for doing your research, and can only distract from it.

What are family? They’re the people who “raised” you perhaps, but did you ask for that? No, you didn’t. Forget about staying in touch with them, being able to say you’ve got a PhD will provide them with enough vicarious pride to more than make up for it. Imagine the satisfaction they’ll feel when they tell people you’re a proper scientist (assuming they can remember your name).

And as for partners/lovers, well they’re like a combination of friends and family except they're around more often.

The pipette, the centrifuge, the accelerator, the stats software; they are your family now. They ask for nothing, they just give. If they don’t give you the things you need? Well, you obviously did it wrong.

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Show emotions
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Feeling stressed or panicked? Well stop it. There, doesn’t that feel better. Some might say you can’t control your emotions like this, but those people aren’t scientists. In Star Trek, the Vulcans are a superior race because they control their emotions, so if you want to live long and prosper in science then you’d better do the same.

Yes, you may hear about people having a breakdown due to the stress, or just generally feeling overwhelmed. Don’t worry about them; it’s just simple Darwinian selection, they shouldn’t be here in the first place, they are weak. You are not weak, you are strong! And strong people don’t show emotions.

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Avoid getting published
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Of course, there are many PhD students who don’t care about getting published in a high-impact journal during their PhD. Feel free to ask them about why they chose this route next time they’re serving you an Americano.

But you, you want to succeed don’t you? If not, why are you even here? Then you need to publish or perish. And don’t think of that as an exaggeration, you should genuinely assume that your supervisor is going to have you assassinated if you don’t publish. You’re essentially squandering his grant money and resources by doing work that nobody will hear about, a hit squad would probably be cheaper in the long run.

Many societies have specific Rites of passage in order to be accepted as a success. In modern day science, it’s publishing in a journal, which is probably as gruelling and ethically dubious as any. But it has to be done, if you want to prove you’re a man (it helps if you’re a man).

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Accept reality
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So your experiment hasn’t provided the results you’d hoped for. You should probably resign yourself to this and write up an honest and insightful report. That’s what you should do if you’re a loser. But you’re not a loser, you’re a PhD student! So do it again. And again, and again, until you get the results you want. But couldn’t you just write up a null result?

Hah! Very amusing.

Is there a long waiting list to use the all-important multi-million pound equipment you need for your research? No there isn’t. Just use it. People might complain, but what does that matter? They aren’t you. Technicians are busy? No they aren’t. If they’re not doing what you want, they’re not doing anything important.

Not enough hours left in the day to finish crucial research? Run out of resources before completion. No you haven’t. Just deny the reality of the situation, and you’ll soon prove yourself a worthwhile and successful PhD student.

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Bonus tip: don’t compare yourself to others
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The whole point of a PhD is to do new, original research that reveals completely new information to the world of science, and society at large. Ergo, nobody has ever done exactly what you’re doing before. Advice, tips, examples, help, all this is great. But don’t let anyone dictate to you how you should be feeling, as it’s technically impossible for them to know for certain. And that includes this article.

This last one is real, by the way. For pity’s sake, please ignore all the others.



Dean Burnett wasn’t especially good at PhD research and now writes stuff like this for the Guardian. He provides other cautionary tales on Twitter, @garwboy


http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/may/02/five-alternative-things-successful-phd-students-would-never-do

the unknown future

Who of us would not be glad to lift the veil behind which the future lies hidden; to

cast a glance at the next advances of our science and at the secrets of its development

during future centuries? What particular goals will there be toward which the

leading mathematical spirits of coming generations will strive? What new methods

and new facts in the wide and rich field of mathematical thought will the new

centuries disclose? History teaches the continuity of the development of science. We know that every age has its own problems, which the following age either solves or casts aside

as pro fitless and replaces by new ones. If we would obtain an idea of the probable

development of mathematical knowledge in the immediate future, we must let the

unsettled questions pass before our minds and look over the problems which the

science of to-day sets and whose solution we expect from the future. To such a

review of problems the present day, lying at the meeting of the centuries, seems to

me well adapted. For the close of a great epoch not only invites us to look back

into the past but also directs our thoughts to the unknown future.

http://www.astro.puc.cl/~rparra/tools/PAPERS/hilbert_1900.pdf

http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/hilbert/problems.html

Paradoxes of creativity

To create, a person must

• Have knowledge but forget the knowledge;
• See unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder;
• Work hard but spend time doing nothing;
• Create many ideas yet most of them are useless;
• Look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different;
• Desire success but learn how to fail;
• Be persistent but not stubborn; and,
• Listen to experts but know how to disregard them.
• Get passionate about the idea and throw yourself into it while at the same time staying detached in case it doesn't take off (or even for that matter gets taken over by a collective - stronger - force later on...)
• Learn how to fail is to me, a life on its way to success.

http://blog.creativethink.com/2010/04/paradoxes-of-creativity.html#comments

The best scientific joke (On creating conclusions)

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I have been struggling with some equations, nonetheless,
there is no other way to cheer me up than having a laugh.
Arguably, this is one the best scientific jokes, to the best
of my knowledge and belief, that every time that springs
to my mind, it, literally, makes me laugh a lot. As you might
know, there are different version as a result of this, I have
just posted three versions. :)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



+++++++++++
# VERSION 1

There is an story of the old professor-zoologist who described
his work on locomotion in fleas; he fished out a flea from
his box, placed it on the lecture-table and yelled at it,
“jump”, and the flea did jump. The professor then
removed the legs of the flea, one by one, and then shouted
again “jump”; but the flea did not jump, whereupon the
professor announced his discovery that “the flea hears
through its legs”. His observation that the flea without its
legs did not jump is acceptable as valid, but not his
conclusion that the flea hears through its legs, as the flea
does not have a hearing-organ. He apparently was not
aware that a flea will respond to vibrations that his yell
“Jump” would have caused, and his conclusion was
therefore bedevilled by his ignorance of the fact that the
flea has no ears but is sensitive to vibrations. This
illustrates another requirement for valid conclusions, that
of awareness of the valid facts that have already been
discovered through proper scientific methodology, i.e.
familiarity with the scientific literature [1].



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# VERSION 2


A biology professor trained a flea for many months.
He was able to get a response from the flea each time
when the command was given. The professor shouted the
command “Jump” and the flea leaped into the air.
The professor decided to determine the location of hearing receptor.
Professor removed the legs of the flea one at a time.
The flea continued to leap on his command “Jump”. But as each
successive leg was removed, his jump became less spectacular.
Finally, with the removal of the last leg of flea, the flea did not
response to the command “Jump” and the flea remained motionless.

Conclusion

“When the legs of a flea are removed, the flea can no longer hear.
Therefore, the locations of hearing receptors are in legs. [2]”




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# VERSION 3

There once was a scientist. He majored in fleas.
(A flea is a six legged bug that sucks blood from other living animals.)
He decided to do an experiment one day.
The scientist placed a flea in a covered environment. (Jar)
The scientist commanded the flea to jump. It jumped. ( That's what fleas do.)
The scientist pulled one leg from the flea, and commanded the flea to jump. It jumped.
The scientist pulled another leg from the flea, and again commanded the flea to jump. It jumped.
The scientist continued this until the flea had only one leg left, and still, it jumped.

The scientist then pulled the last leg off of the flea. He commanded the flea to jump..... nothing.
Again, he commanded the flea to jump. Still nothing. The flea would not jump.

The scientist's conclusion:
If you pull all of the legs off of a flea, it can no longer hear [3].


References
[1] http://www.sljol.info/index.php/AMJ/article/download/6138/4801
[2] http://www.ift.org/~/media/Knowledge%20Center/Publications/ManuscriptPrepGuidance1009.ppt
[3] http://www.bubblews.com/news/1585633-the-deaf-flea

On writing my PhD research proposal

How everything begins is rooted in this inner hunger FOR knowledge which I acknowledged since I was 10 years. What I am going to do, to the best of my knowledge and belief, is one of milestone of a human life, probably that is why it take me a while to take the decision. Sometimes, there is a concern about how old you are to start with this degree, but as almost everything in life is, it has had both advantages and disadvantages (5).

From some blogs, I have known that pursuing a Ph.D is a sea of emotions (1) which requires three qualities for Ph.D successful students: perseverance, tenacity and cogency (2).

As you might know, I am on the verge of writing my Ph.D research proposal to which as Professor Matt Might (2) suggested that students had created a blog, which actually I did on March 2013, even if no one reads is quite beneficial.

As a result of this, a good point to start with it is by reading some sample dissertation proposals that are divided into three categories: Arts and Humanities, Social Science and Science and Engineering (3). On the other hand, it is important to check out the outline of the dissertation to which many references have been populated the Internet, you just need to google it. However, I have found one that generally entails almost every part of a research proposal (4) which goes as follows:

Title
1. Abstract
2. Contents
3. Introduction
4. Literature Review
5. Notion of original research
6. Key Assertions / Objectives
7. Research Methods
8. Analysis
9. Proposed Chapter Outline
10. Research Limitations
11. Proposed Timescale
12. References

++++Update++++Tue Feb 11 13:25:09 CST 2014

However, what is suggested by A. Bundy et. at. (6) is that we do not have to start writing at the beginning. We have to start by describing the central idea, e.g. your main technique, procedure or proof. Then, decide what
your hypothetical reader has so as to understand this central idea and put this information into the introductory sections/chapters.





References

(1) http://phdlife.warwick.ac.uk/2014/01/13/turning-30-the-phd/
(2) http://matt.might.net/articles/successful-phd-students/
(3) https://webspace.utexas.edu/cherwitz/www/ie/sample_diss.html
(4) http://www.quoteroller.com/proposal-templates/research-proposal/

(5) http://chrisblattman.com/2013/06/12/when-are-you-too-old-for-a-phd/

(6) The Researcher's Bible http://www.cs.duke.edu/~chase/cps300/resbible.pdf