今天紐約市終於「正式地」下了今年第一場雪。
希望隨著這場雪，心情能有所轉換，不愉快順心的事能夠隨風而飄去。
Showing posts with label 碎碎念. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 碎碎念. Show all posts
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Mastering Your Ph.D.: Countdown to Your Thesis Defence
Time to prepare for my thesis defense, although it might still be one year away... Gotta plan early!!!
Source: Nature by Bart Noordam, Patricia Gosling, Netherlands, 23 November 2007
For a couple of years, you have been doing research, research, and more research. But now the final deadline for your Ph.D. is in sight, and it's time to transfer your research results into a thesis. Where do you even begin?
You've got a lot of things to do before you can actually start writing, and you will have to work in a more structured way than you probably have been used to for the past couple of years. Here we provide a five-step framework to guide you toward your goal.
1. Establish your achievements.
Presumably, you sketched out a plan for your research projects at the beginning of your Ph.D. program, so now you need to get a clear picture of where you are in that process and see how it will all fit together in your thesis. Start by making a list of the projects you've finished, such as the research you've already published in a journal article that only needs a bit of editing to fit into your thesis.
Next, list the unfinished projects you are working on and identify the steps you'll need to take to finish them, whether it's sorting out the relevant data, writing and running a data-analysis programme, extracting a message from the data you've collected and analysed, writing up your findings, or all of the above. You'll also have to think about how you want to write up these last few experiments: You'll need to balance the short-term benefits of writing it up as a thesis chapter--which will save you the time of finishing a peer-reviewed article--with the longer term benefit of adding a journal article to your list of publications.
Once you have a good idea of what you have accomplished so far and what it will take to finish the ongoing projects, you should verify your achievements with your supervisor.
2. Determine what should be included in your thesis.
Mastering Your PhD cover art
You and your supervisor will likely agree about what you've accomplished so far and what still needs to be done to complete your ongoing projects. However, opinions might diverge when it comes to whether you need additional material for your thesis. You should meet with your supervisor (and thesis adviser, if different from your supervisor) to discuss exactly what should go into your thesis. Perhaps you believe that finishing ongoing projects will provide sufficient content for a thesis, whereas your supervisor wants you to include a minor (or major!) addition, and your thesis adviser wants you to start a new, ambitious project.
Coming to agreement on these issues will not be easy, so you should be well-prepared when you meet to discuss your thesis content. You will need to decide what you believe is a proper balance between the quality and quantity of the content and the time it will take to finish your research and start writing. If there is truly a need for you to do one more project, make a comprehensive and very specific plan for it.
In the course of these negotiations, remember that even if your adviser's motives for keeping you around are self-serving, the extra time and effort you spend to extend and sharpen your work might make a big difference in your career. So don't stretch it out too long but, assuming you can keep food on the table, don't be in too much of a hurry, either.
3. Make a countdown list.
Now that you have established a "still-to-do" list, make a plan for when to do it. This will be your countdown list, a schematic timetable that describes week by week how you plan to finish your thesis by your target deadline. Most of the activities on your list should directly contribute to thesis chapters.
Use your still-to-do list to estimate the amount of time you'll need to finish those last few projects and allocate that time on your countdown list. Then, draft a table of contents for your thesis. Estimate how many weeks it will take to finish each chapter and block off that time on your countdown list as well.
Next, allocate time for other activities, such as arranging for the printed version of your thesis, preparing for the defence, and setting up job interviews. In reality, you will be working on several tasks in parallel, but writing down the tasks sequentially will help you get an impression of the total time the thesis preparation will take.
Finally, toward the end of writing your thesis, you will have to deal with the procedures that come with submitting it for approval. The university likely has a long checklist of these usually extraordinarily complex and often time-consuming tasks. Make sure you know well in advance what needs to be done and when, and include them on your schedule.
Once you've created your countdown list, you may realize that writing your thesis is going to take longer than you thought. Don't panic. This is the time to hone your time-management skills and your ability to focus on what is important. Your schedule is tight, so good planning will count. Try to minimize delays caused by others.
4. Anticipate uncertainties.
It may be difficult to plan how much time you will need for some tasks. Perhaps that one last set of experiments relies on a sample that needs to be prepared by other people, and you can't count on them delivering it when you need it. Without that sample, the project will be impossible to complete.
If you foresee such problems and potential bottlenecks, it may be useful to have a back-up list to your master countdown list. The master list assumes you'll get the samples on time, and the back-up list assumes the research will come to a halt until you get the sample. For this back-up plan, reschedule the order of your activities to make use of the newfound time, perhaps by identifying a (small) project that can replace the sample project. Don't adjust your overall deadline just yet. Estimating these risks up front will enable you to discuss the various scenarios with your supervisor. Most importantly, this type of forward planning will minimize the uncomfortable feeling that you have a potentially critical problem ahead that is completely out of your control.
5. Discuss your planning with your supervisor.
Now comes the tough part. This meeting might feel more like a negotiation than a discussion. At one end of the table is you, the hard-working Ph.D. student who wants to wrap up the work in a reasonable amount of time. At the other end of the table is your supervisor, possibly hungry for more research results that can be used in a future presentation or publication. Hopefully, some disagreements about how much work you need to do can be curtailed by giving your supervisor your proposed table of contents and your countdown list in advance of the meeting. These documents will show your progress and demonstrate how much you already have accomplished.
If there is a major disagreement, try not to get angry. Instead, summarize the issues you don't agree about and ask for some time to reflect on your supervisor's point of view. Sometimes these planning discussions can't be finished in a single meeting, but that's okay; it's worth doing properly. You will save yourself quite a bit of thesis-preparation stress if you can structure a countdown plan on which all parties can agree.
If, during the course of your research, you find that the project is taking much longer than anticipated, your first reaction may be to work even harder and longer hours or to go into denial about how much time you really need to finish. Rather than sticking your head in the sand, face your situation, make a new plan, and discuss it again with your supervisor.
The last year of your Ph.D. is distinctly different from the ones that have come before it, because you'll focus primarily on transforming your hard work into thesis chapters. Moreover, new activities will become more important, such as finishing projects before a pressing deadline or looking for a job for after you get your degree. This multitasking requires a more structured approach than you've probably taken previously, so be sure to plan your activities. Your countdown plan will show you what needs to be done and will force you to prioritize those activities. Effective communication with your supervisor will establish a commitment to reach your final goal together.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Apple Fifth Avenue Store
Finally got my first Mac laptop. It's a 13-inch MacBook with duo processors and 1 GB of RAM. Technically it's not my laptop, but my boss is generous enough to let me use it on a daily basis. I did fall in love with this MacBook instantly but it might still be long time before I transfer all my work to the Mac platform.
I remember the first day Apple opened its Fifth Ave store in 2006. It was already in late May but the chilly weather made people to don heavy coats still. The long line waiting to get into the store extended several blocks but it never stopped the avid Apple fans. A shiny glass cube about 30 feet tall stood about hundred yards in front of me. It was then it came to me why Steve Jobs said: “With outstanding service and an amazing location open 24 hours a day, the Apple Store Fifth Avenue is going to be a favorite destination for New Yorkers and people around the world.”
I dug out this old video from Apple Store Fifth Avenue. I was among this huge crowd swarming to be the first to see the Store. Time to find Waldo!
Friday, September 7, 2007
Google Reader and my presentation...
Just watched this video on the Google Blog. What amazed me was not what Google Reader can do, but how the G boys totally revolutionized the way of presentation. When I was in college, not too many Profs. used PowerPoint in class. Students had to squint hard to see what the profs were showing. Hand-drawn tables and figures were rarely readable. Math equations? Forget about it! Power Point slides then became the main stream when I started grad school. You had to show cool graphics and animation to catch people's attention.
Now this whole thing is getting so retro. AND I LOVE IT! Next time I present to my boss I'll be bringing in pieces of paper and shove the figures across the table. I won't draw on the table though...
Back to the Google Reader... I don't think it really helps me to absorb information. Things are just piling higher and deeper... Hey, G Boys! Listen! You guys need to ORGANIZE INFORMATION. You need to do some serious clustering or stuff to help the users. Adding some on-line learning algorithm would be a nice way for the Google Reader to know how the user categorize/read things.
Watch the video below. EOF.
Souce: Find a needle in a feedstack by Google Reader
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Speech
Apple老闆許久之前對Stanford畢業生的演講，在這邊回味一下。
“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
[…] Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” - Steve Jobs
Harder to find jobs for biologists
僧多粥少，誰可以拿tenure呢？
It's official: biology postgraduates in the United States face greater competition for tenure than ever before. A wealth of data released this month will reopen discussions about employment and training in the US biomedical system.
[...] the number of students in US graduate programmes in the biological sciences has increased steadily since 1966. In 2005, around 7,000 graduates earned a doctorate. But the number of biomedical PhDs with academic tenure has remained steady since 1981, at just over 20,000. During that period the percentage of US biomedical PhDs with tenure or tenure-track jobs dropped from nearly 45% to just below 30%. - Nature
原文：Nature News
Thursday, August 16, 2007
一週效率分析圖
再偷偷貼一張PhD Comics的漫畫.
剛好今天禮拜四有lab meeting, 不錯不錯, 果然工作效率很高.
聽說禮拜六要聚餐玩卡卡頌是吧？可以預期明天週末來臨前的工作效率～
老闆你趕快幫我改好paper吧～這樣我工作效率會更高的～
Friday, August 10, 2007
Motivation trending
Where exactly am I? 
This chart is cut off for some reason. You should click on the image to see the entire trending (9 years? OMG!). Hopefully my career does not look anything like this.
Source: PhD comics
Thursday, August 9, 2007
原來bagel是麵包馬鐙啊～
老闆消失了一個月, 原來在維也納過逍遙的日子. 跟他一塊去的R 回來group meeting沒報告什麼正經事, 到放了幾張會場附近維也納廣場的照片.
大家七嘴八舌的討論維也納哪邊好玩, 突然老闆用他近視加老花的雙眼, 瞪著廣場照片, 問了今天meeting第一個問題: 「廣場中間那是什麼雕像？」
R的視力好的很, 照片看得一清二楚, 但是不敢得罪老闆, 小聲說道：「I think it's a horse and a general.」將軍加駿馬勾起了老闆的回憶, 老闆兩眼一亮, 篤定的說：「那一定是Prince Eugene! 他當初帶領軍隊擊退了土耳其人！」
這位Prince Eugene是誰啊？？？土耳其跟維也納有什麼關係啊？？？我歷史從來沒有好好念, 臉上頓時冒出三條小丸子麵線. 隔壁的兩位猶太人好像也不知道這位偉大的公子, 露出一臉茫然的表情.
原來古早以前, 土耳其還是偉大的顎圖曼帝國(Ottoman Empire), 勢力達歐亞非三大洲. 統治者曾經兩度攻打維也納, 第一次在1529年, 因為寒冬天氣惡劣不得不放棄. 第二次進攻發生在1683年(即有名的Battle of Vienna), 鄂圖曼派出14萬大軍圍城, 但是因為奧地利的友邦聯軍插手, 反遭到大敗, 也因此終止了鄂圖曼帝國在歐洲的擴張.
但是... 是Prince Eugene率領大軍的嗎？
波蘭裔的P 看不下去了, 開始嗆聲：「不是吧！！是波蘭王Sobieski帶領大軍的！是他拯救了維也納！」
OK, 當初波蘭、德國、奧地利三國一共派了七萬大軍來解救被圍的維也納, 波蘭王帶領大軍也不是什麼稀奇的事。
他繼續說道：「就是因為這場戰役，才有我們今天吃的bagel。」
啥？這是什麼推論啊？是因為為了打仗方便, 發明這種中間有一個洞, 可以用一根繩子串起十個, 方便拎著行軍殺敵的麵包嗎？
P 看大家下巴紛紛掉下, 趕快解釋, 因為維也納居民對波蘭王很崇拜與感激, 戰爭結束後軍隊勝利遊街時, 百姓爭先恐後要摸英勇波蘭王的馬鐙. 麵包師傅趁機開發出馬鐙形狀的麵包, 造成大暢銷, 流傳下來就變成今天我們吃的bagel了.
看來有這麼好吃又方便的bagel, 真的是又謝謝英勇的波蘭王囉...
註一：請不要問我甜甜圈是不是波蘭王發明的, 謝謝！
參考資料：
Prince of Eugene: here
Battle of Vienna: here
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