 Most people don't remember the day they pass their dissertation defense or the day they get signed off because they expected it. For me, both of them seemed like a miracle because I struggled so hard in my PhD program and had such a weird dissertation. And on those days (one which just passed), I also call my advisor to thank him, which I just did. Because he wasn't my first choice. Typically, the gravitational pull for choosing an advisor is strongest for those with big reputations. Picking the hottest, most famous person in a field is one way to pick an adviser. After all what could go wrong? Case Study #1. A number of years ago at a different university, I had a good friend who was starting her PhD in environmental engineering over a second time. Her first go-around had been after she chose the “most famous” person in her field at the most famous school in her field as her adviser. She hated it, hated the school, and ended up leaving with what she called “a consolation Master’s degree.” She said her famous adviser had never around, never cared about her, never thought she was smart enough or working hard enough, never liked her ideas, and that he played favorites with the more advanced students. Case Study #2. I too had originally chosen the “most famous” person in my field, and things didn’t work out. As a 3rd year PhD student I thought I was going on the job market. Instead I was told my funding was being eliminated, and that I had 4 months to find a new dissertation adviser, a new dissertation topic, and to defend that topic, or I would be asked to leave the program (probably without the consolation Masters). One conversation rescued me from having to start a PhD a second time a different school. Three shell-shocked days after being blind-sided, I was talking to a friend who was a professor in the medical school. I told him what had happened and about my confusion. He said, “If I knew you were going through this, I would have told you what I tell my graduate students. ‘When it comes to picking a thesis committee, you pick your best friend to be your thesis adviser, your favorite uncle to be one committee member, and your favorite cousin to be your other.’” This is a radically different approach than what I had used, what the environmental engineer had used, and what Jack was using. The advice was to “Pick your best friend to be your advisor.” Not “the most famous” person in the department. Not even the person whose research interests are most like yours. Pick the person who likes and believes in you and your best interests. You might not be as “hot” when you graduate, but you might be a lot more likely to graduate in the first place. I’ve been thinking about this because this past weekend I looked up “Jack” to see if he wanted to take a dissertation break come over and meet some of my grad students. On his department’s website, I noticed that he was about the only 3rd year student who wasn’t a formal part of any of the research groups in the Lab of his “famous advisor.” That was like me. Fortunately, I was given a second chance. Picking a star-spangled dissertation or thesis committee that you think will make you “hot” on the job market is a great strategy for Super-Duperstars. For the other 90% of us, we should pick one that will help us graduate.
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 This month's post is a graphic we developed a couple of years ago when this website was originally called AcademicsOnly.org.
It describes five pieces of non-obvious advice that different students have told me was the best advice any one ever gave them in helping them finish their dissertation. Some of it's inspirational, some are work management tips, some are more strategic. Good luck making this the year you "git 'er done."
"Summer's over and I didn't get anything done."I’ve heard this every August, and I’ve said this almost every August.
Whenever I’ve asked professors and PhD students what percent of their planned work they got accomplished over the summer, no one has ever said “All of it.” Almost everyone says something between 25 to 35%. Everyone from the biggest, most productive super stars with the biggest lab to the most motivated, fire-in-their-belly PhD student with the biggest anxiety. We are horrible estimators of how productive we’ll be over the summer. I was in academia for 35 years (including MA and PhD years), yet every single summer I never finished more than 30% of what I planned. How can we be so poorly calibrated? We never learn. We never readjust our estimate for the next summer. Next summer we’ll still only finish 25-35% of what we planned to do. There are only two weeks in the year when I’m predictably down or blue. It’s the last two weeks of August. It’s not the heat (I mostly stay indoors). It’s not the impending classes (I love teaching). It’s not all the beginning of semester meetings (I loved my colleagues and loved passing notes to them under the table). Ten years ago, I realized that I felt down the end of every August because I had to admit “school’s starting and I haven’t gotten jack done all summer.” The beginning of school is the psychological end of the Academic Fiscal Year. One solution to our August blues lies in understanding what times of the year we do like most, and to see if we can rechannel those warm-glowy feelings to August. If you had to guess the #1 favorite time of the year for most academics, you’d probably guess “The end of school.” The #2 favorite time of the year you might guess would be the “Winter or Christmas break.” What would you guess the third favorite time of the year is? Surprisingly, I’ve heard people say it’s when they turn in their Annual Activity Report. That’s the summary they turn into their hard-to-please Department Chair that summarizes what they’ve accomplished in the prior 12 months: What they published, who they advised, what new things they’ve started, what new teaching materials they’ve created, and so forth. Snore. How could writing an Annual Activity Report be a highlight? Because it shows in black-and-white that we didn’t sleep-walk through the year. It reminds us that the publication that we now take for granted was one that we were still biting our nails about last year at this time. It reminds us of our advises who were stressing over their undergraduate thesis a year ago and who have now happily graduated. It reminds us of the cool ideas we've into hopeful projects -- ideas we hadn't even thought of a year ago.. Going back in a 12-month-ago time machine shows us what we did accomplish. It turns our focus toward what we did – and away from what we didn’t. Once we cross things off of our academic To-do list, we tend to forget we accomplished them. August might be a good time to do a mid-year AAR. It might not turn our August blues into a happy face yellow, but might at least turn it to green. A green light for a great new school year. Have a tremendous school year.  Thirty four years ago this month, I was drove across country from California to New Hampshire to start my Asst Professor gig. Unfortunately, it only lasted for four years.
Since then, however, I've learned a lot of things that would have made that first appointment last a lot longer. It is unbelievable how much you learn your first year as a professor, and it is also how many mistakes you make. I put together an infographic of some of the insights I've learned from people over the years. Hopefully they'll help you leapfrog some mistakes and start like a star. Let me know advice you have gotten from others or discovered yourself that was useful to you.  A person I tremendously admire off-handedly once told me, "All of the work I did that made the biggest difference in my life was work I did while other people slept."
Extra effort is what made the difference in his career. Instead of sleeping in, he started working, and it made the big difference in his success. Summer's similar. Twenty years ago, a colleague once told me "If I don't finish a summer project by the Fourth of July, it's probably not going to get finished." He went on to say that too much gets in the way after the Fourth of July: Family vacations, long weekends off, projects around the home, kid stuff, outdoor BBQs, and so on. Ever since hearing this, the Fourth of July high water mark has always been an inspiration for me to really turn on the gas for the rest of the summer so I can say I got as much done after the 4th as before. Benchmarks can be good. Especially if you think that what you do past the benchmark might be what makes the biggest difference for you. |
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