The curse of Ctrl-C-Ctrl-V

Student plagiarizes.

Student appeals to the committee on being reported, pleading "not guilty".

Student emails to tell me I have made a false accusation.

Student makes an appointment and calls my office.

Student starts the conversation by telling me that it is not plagiarism. 

Student tells me it was a formatting error.

Student tells me that other classmates read the paper and did not say that it is plagiarized, so it is not plagiarized.

Student tells me that English is not their mother tongue.

Student tells me that I should consider changing my opinion (It wasn't my "opinion," I had evidence of plagiarism that I submitted to the committee with my report).

Student tells me that they will see me at the hearing (like a court hearing in a university setting where people resolve their differences in front of a neutral committee).

If only the student had written in their own words instead of a blatant copy-paste, they'd have skipped all the drama and save me a bunch of time.

sunshine

Your adviser is the driving instructor

In a previous post, “working for myself,” I drew an analogy between driving and doing research as faculty. The next obvious question would be “How do I know as a faculty where I should drive to?” It is not easy to know that, it takes years to figure that out (I am still figuring out, maybe some do it sooner). A PhD training plays an invaluable role in this.

Role of your adviser

Consider your doctoral program a well-known driving school and your PhD adviser a renowned driving instructor. Their main and perhaps only duty is to teach you how to drive (do research). Sure, you can learn driving from your parents, neighbors, or the distant cousin who is visiting from Canada. But learning from a good driving school prepares you for real driving on the bumpy roads of life (getting your hands dirty with real data) and not just in the parking lot or in simulated roads on video games (made-up data we sometimes use to practice statistics in class). Sometimes, your adviser is a big-shot training instructor. In that case, other lab members such as senior PhD students and postdocs take you out for a ride to teach you those driving skills. So it is important that you have a good relationship with everyone in the lab. Your adviser doesn’t just teach you how to drive. They let you go to conferences where you showcase your driving skills in front of an audience. They write grants and get you funding so that you always have fuel in your car. They write you good recommendation letters so that other places can hire you as drivers. They advise you when your car isn’t running well or your engine is making a funny sound and you need to troubleshoot. They give you a pep talk on days when it is snowing outside and you don’t feel motivated enough to drive. They teach you life-saving skills such as changing lanes, looking at your blind spot, racing, parking on mountains, parking downhill, and avoiding drunk drivers on the freeway.

Couple of other things that happen in your PhD training

1. You take coursework. Consider courses as the tools that help you to be able to do research. If you are training as a driver, it will help to know a little bit about the mechanics, the nuts and bolts, where the engine is, how the brakes operate, how the radiator works, how to change a flat tire, and why driving in a certain way may be better than driving another way. Coursework just doesn’t teach you the skills to drive, but also the knowhow to stop, park, check engine oil or maintain the car.

2. You build collaborations with your peers and other professors. In the world of research, carpooling is way more fun than driving singly. Sometimes, you get more gas/petrol (funding) if you are able to show that if you are carpooling (collaborating), rather than taking a lonely trip from Seattle to Boston and not being fuel-efficient. Gas stations most certainly frown upon single drivers. But how do you ensure that you get along with the other carpoolers and don’t end up going for each other’s throats on the freeway? Graduate school lets you find other drivers you might get along with. Big gas stations (funding agencies) like the NIH and NSF will not even give you any fuel if you are young and applying singly or as the main driver. That’s when established professors will be on the driving seat and you in the passenger seat.

3. You identify mentors in other professors. Remember, you have the closest relationship with your own driving instructor. But sometimes, they are too busy or gone. Sometimes, you don’t get along with them. Sometimes, they do not know a skill that you need to know because driving regulations have changed in your generation. That is when the other mentors ensure that you continue to do well and your car(eer) doesn’t stall in the middle of the freeway.

Your research agenda

Your primary research agenda is usually an offshoot of your adviser’s research agenda (it could be different, but I am speaking from my experience). You spend maximum time with your dissertation data that is based on your adviser’s project and research interest. Let’s say for my PhD, my adviser trained me to figure out the shortest, safest, and the most fuel-efficient way to drive from Seattle to Mount Rainier National Park. I demonstrated to my dissertation committee that my car runs fine, I can check blind spots, I don’t get killed while driving on I-5, don’t run out of fuel, and can apply the proper gears and brakes depending on road or weather conditions. Now the fruit doesn’t usually fall too far from the tree. So after this, perhaps my own independent research could look into how to find an optimal route that connects all three national parks in Washington State in the most efficient way. I create that knowledge for other people to use. Or maybe now, I base my research on a real-life problem, for example, why do most people who take a particular smaller state freeway from Mount Rainier to Mount St. Helens after sunset get killed. If I never took that Seattle to Mount Rainier training for my PhD, I would have never figured out how to move ahead in life from Mount Rainier. I would not even have reached Mount Rainier.

And the convocation ceremony? Consider it as a public event where your adviser officially gives you your driving license. He comes wearing his driver’s uniform and you wear yours. The world rejoices, your parents fly to attend the ceremony beaming with pride and wiping tears of happiness, and some big-shot celebrity driver comes to give the convocation speech.    

I am waiting for the day I will be sitting in the main driving seat as the principal investigator (PI), my adviser and other colleagues in the passenger seat as co-PIs, and together, we will drive around the world with tons of fuel supplied by the NIH or NSF looking at interesting research problems.

sunshine

Building your processor while in graduate school

I spent a lot of time during my PhD resisting whatever my adviser would say. He had a clear plan for me to graduate on time, but I was the one who did not believe that I could meet my graduation deadline. As a result, we argued a lot.

Once we were arguing about my scintillating academic life (or the lack of it) and how much coursework would be enough to make me a desirable PhD candidate when I start job hunting. We started our conversation about job hunting pretty early, at around 6 months into my PhD, when my peers were still comfortably settling in. “I never want you to feel comfortable or settled in. That way, you will never graduate,” he said bluntly.

We were arguing because my adviser wanted me to take as many methods/statistics courses as I can. Being able to analyze and make sense of large-scale data is vital in my field. I think I eventually took 5 levels of statistics courses and 3 levels of qualitative methodology courses alone other than the core courses and a mixed-methods class. I made a face and told him that I do not want to drown in methods courses, that I would learn on my own or take online classes later. To that, he gave me a great analogy that I will paraphrase because I found some wisdom in what he said.

This is what he said. In graduate school, we are like a computer processor in the making. With new courses, we get to learn new skills and thereby build our processors. Our configuration is constantly improving. We get to take classes, write exams, get feedback (from the instructors) and interact with peers that are great ways to learn new skills. By the time we are out of graduate school, the features in our processor are set. It is not malleable anymore. Sure, we can go for an external upgrade, adding a feature every now and then by auditing a class or attending a conference. But these are external features. The core has already been built by then.

Graduate school learning builds the core, the inherent qualities of a researcher. Therefore it is important to take every remotely relevant methodological course, write exams (and not just audit courses), and learn every new skill we hesitate to learn (because we are too afraid to fail) fooling ourselves into believing that we will learn them once we get a job. Graduate training is the only chance to build the processor from the scratch. The rest gets added along the way. One can afford to skip a "Writing literature review" class because that is a skill one can pick along the way. However, one cannot afford to skip a class on methodology. So go take that class because it is already paid for, and because once you graduate, you will never get to take a class again, not this way.

I don’t understand much of computers or technology (other than what I need for work), but I loved his analogy. Years after finishing graduate school, I see the value in what he said. No more arguments after that, I buried myself building my processor, and I have not regretted it. Although I do not apply the methodological know-how in everyday work life, I know enough about it to be able to navigate my way around. For example, I do not dabble with differential item functioning or item response theory every day. However, when I read a paper that did those, I do not have the “deer in the headlights” look. I exactly know what they are talking about. 

Listen to your adviser (not blindly though). For they may be as clueless about your future as you are, but given their vast experience, chances are less that they will give bad advice. 

sunshine   

New school year

For as long as I can remember of my childhood, spring used to be the most exciting time of the year. This is because spring to me also meant new academic beginnings. The next grade. The smell of new books and notebooks. Baba painstakingly covering each one of them with brown paper and then writing my name and class in all of them with his beautiful handwriting. A new grade meant a new class teacher, new subject teachers, a new classroom, a new seating nook, and experiencing all the newness of the world with old (and some new) friends. There used to be a vibrant energy about week one, everyone wearing new school uniforms and looking ready to take over the world. And then, there would be new things to learn. New chapters, new knowledge, and new ways of making sense of the world. I used to be most excited about my math and science classes. Through those, I made sense of my world, fueled my imagination, met people in textbooks who inspired me, and nurtured my dreams (I had plenty, one of them was being an astronaut). My textbooks opened the doors to new and exciting worlds that existed mostly in my imagination, but were very real for me.

You can tell that I am a lifelong academic, and in a way, I am so glad that I never left school (rather, school never left me). For that is the only life that I have mostly known. This week has seen one more round of excitement, with the new academic year beginning. It might not involve smelling new textbooks this time, but there will be other things new. I am teaching a new online course, and this one is way outside my comfort zone. I have neither developed, nor taught this course before. The first semester, I was so scared of teaching that every week after class I would go and check if someone had dropped out. This time, twenty-five odd students will be spending their time and energy learning with me, and I am excited about facilitating their learning and leading this class.

I am also excited about starting a brand new research study I recently got funding for. I will be presenting at a key conference in Boston soon, and I am looking forward to a restaurant that serves Bengali food in Boston. I am also excited about kicking out those new papers and proposals that I have worked over this summer. You can tell that I never really got over my love for school. I hope that you are as excited about school (if you are in one) or about anything you are pursuing right now.

Cheers to new beginnings, learning and exploring new things, making sense of the world we created around us, and to a brand new academic year. 

sunshine

Graduate Application in Public Health: A Personal Insight into the US Application System

Applying for a graduate degree in public health in the US: My few cents on the application process.

The application process for a PhD in public health has changed considerably since I applied last, about 8 years ago. If this is how arduous it was when I applied, I don’t think that I’d have had the energy or the money to apply then.

Back then

·         You went through school websites and made a list of schools you wanted to apply to, based on the fit between the school and your research interests.

·         You took the standardized exams (GRE and TOEFL).

·         You paid an application fee for each school, that varied anywhere between $30-$60.

·         You applied separately to each school. Wrote a customized statement of purpose (SOP) for each school. You sent them your standardized scores and transcripts. You sent them the letters of recommendations from your professors. You prayed for a few months that you made it to the school of your choice, with financial support, of course.

And now

Most of the schools of public health (SPH) have a central application system now- The Schools of Public Health Application Service (SOPHAS). Theoretically, it means that instead of making six separate applications to the six schools you apply to (six being a fictitious number), you make one central application and specify the names of the schools you want your applications to be sent to. You apply once, you pay once (the application fee depending on the number of schools), and you are done. Ideally, this is supposed to make your life easier. But there are several reasons this is not the case.

Why SOPHAS does not always make your life easy?

1.      Not all institutions are a part of SOPHAS

For example, if you apply for a DrPH degree at Johns Hopkins, you need to make a separate application, pay the fee separately, and send in the documents (transcripts, recommendation letters, etc.) separately. So if you are applying to six schools, five out of which do not participate in SOPHAS and one does, SOPHAS will not help you much. Note that if a particular school goes the SOPAHS way, you have to apply through SOPHAS. It is compulsory.

2.       Application fee

Just because you apply once does not mean that you pay once. There is a two-pronged challenge to this situation. First, your application fee increases non-linearly based on the number of schools you apply to. You pay $120 for the first school, and then pay an additional $45 per school (Link). Again, from the previous logic, if you are applying to six schools, five out of which do not participate in SOPHAS and one does, you will incur a financial loss. Second, just because you pay a SOPHAS fee does not mean you are exempt from the application fee. Many schools will charge you a separate application fee, although you have paid the SOPHAS fee. For example, University of California at Berkeley mandates you to pay an additional $80 application fee along with the SOPHAS application fee. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has an additional $85 application fee. If I am making a centralized application system, I do not see why I need to pay additional money to schools individually. Of course not all schools do that. For example, the University of Texas at Houston requires you to pay no additional fee.

3.      Dual application

In addition to the SOPHAS application, many schools require you to fill out an additional application form. This means that you go through the same process of filling out the application form, twice per school. Many of us who have gone through the process are aware of the huge amount of time and patience this requires, filling out mundane information like name and address, courses taken, GPAs, etc. Each school requires a separate SOP customized for it. Doing an application twice isn’t remotely funny. It beats the purpose of applying through a centralized application system.

4.      Timeline

The way things work is, you apply to SOPHAS. SOPHAS verifies all your information and mails your application to the respective schools. In the meantime, you make separate applications to schools (if required). Now here is the catch. SOPHAS will not mail your applications unless they are complete. For example, SOPHAS has to receive ALL the official transcripts and at least two out of three recommendation letters, and your application needs to be complete before it will mail your application. So if your school has an application deadline of December 1, you cannot proceed based on a December 1 timeframe. SOPHAS will have to receive the complete application, application fee, and supporting documents (transcripts, 2 recommendation letters, etc.) weeks in advance to be able to process it and make it on time for the December 1 deadline. What this means is, a December 1 deadline does not mean that you have until November 30 to make an application. What it means is, to be on the safer side, you must finish the application by October, and then SOPHAS will take a few weeks to determine that your application is complete before it will mail your applications by the December 1 deadline.

5.      International transcripts

If you are an international student, you need your transcripts evaluated by the World Education Services. It is mandatory. What this means is, you send a sealed, official copy of your transcript to WES weeks in advance, pay an application fee, and wait. WES evaluates your transcripts, converts it into American grades, and mails them to SOPHAS or the non-SOPHAS-participating universities. The good news is, you do not individually need to mail your transcripts to separate institutions (unless you get admitted to a school, which is when you send that school an official copy of your transcript again). The bad news is, transcript evaluation takes time and money, and is mandatory, no matter how many additional US degrees you have piled on. For example, if you have two master’s degrees, one from a foreign institution and one from the US, you have to get the foreign transcript evaluated. You cannot say that since I have a master degree from the US as well, I want them to consider my US transcript and not my international transcript. Also, you pay $160 for the application, and then for each institution to want these transcripts sent to, you pay an additional $30/school and $7/school postage. If you want to expedite the process, you pay more. Then there is Fedex/postage fees. If you want to add more schools after you initiated your $160 application process, you pay more. WES takes a few weeks to evaluate your transcripts, after which, it sends the evaluation report to SOPHAS, after which, SOPHAS sends it to the respective schools. If I were to show this process diagrammatically, it will look like:

Applicant à WES à SOPHAS à School

With each extra arrow, you add a few weeks of processing time, and a few hundred dollars to the application process.

Why SOPHAS works?

I feel that SOPHAS complicates your application process. Despite this, the only advantage to this system is- The recommendation letters need to be sent just once. Even if a school wants you to make another application in addition to SOPHAS, it does not require those recommendation letters to be sent again. But then, if you have a lot of non-SOPHAS-participating institutions in your kitty, the recommendation letter advantage does not work in your favor.

What it should be ideally?

A centralized application system should mean applying once, and paying once. Either all schools use SOPHAS, or none of them use it.

My two cents:

Cent one: Start early.

With the number of steps it will require to complete your application, and the amount of jumping through the hoops, I’d strongly recommend that you start applying at least 2-3 months before the deadline.

Cent two: Be prepared to spend a lot of money.

SOPHAS needs its application fees, which increases with the number of schools you apply to. Then, many schools require you to pay additional application fee. WES will require additional fees to evaluate your international transcripts. Then there are costs for postage, fedex, and other miscellany. If you are applying to six schools, be prepared to be staring at a ballpark figure of $1000 dollars, give or take a few hundred.

Note: I do not vouch for the factual accuracy of the information presented in this article. The views and opinions expressed here are solely mine, based on my examination of the SPH application process for professional interests. I have no professional affiliation with any of the organizations or institutions mentioned in this post. This article should only be used as a guideline to time your application.

sunshine

Tears

          After about two months of concerted effort, I finally finished writing my dissertation proposal yesterday. I finished it sometimes past two in the morning, emailed it to my adviser, and went to sleep. When I woke up the next day, ready to meet the adviser and go over it together, the world outside was shrouded in white. The biggest snowstorm of the season had hit me, and after those 10-12 inches of snow, there was no going outside, no meeting the adviser. What followed the snowstorm was a power outage, which meant no electricity, no internet, no heat in the house, a dying phone, a dying laptop and ipad, almost no food (unless you were ready to drink cold milk and refrigerated food). I was amazed how much of my connectivity depended on technology.

            I called a friend who fortunately had electricity. If I could make my way to her place in time, I could perhaps recharge my phone, still have a phone meeting with my adviser, and continue to work on my dissertation. I tried shoveling my way to get my car outside the driveway, but even after shoveling for an hour, there was no way I could take my car out. Ironically all the snow that had accumulated on my car was now on the ground, blocking its way. Perhaps it was a sign to stay out of danger. My friend offered to pick me up, but she called me twenty minutes later to tell me she could not get her car out either. My only option now was to walk to her place.

            Which I did. I walked for another hour in the snow, oddly feeling at peace. I realized I had never walked this path before although I had driven it a hundred times now. I started noticing things I had never noticed before, the railway crossing, the houses, the trees, the lack of  a phone signal, and how oddly at peace the disconnectedness made me. By the time I had reached her place, I had managed to step into several puddles of snow and slush, and now my shoes, socks, and half of my jeans were soaking wet. What are the odds, that by the time I had reached her place, she lost electricity too. The world was conspiring against me and forcing me to take a break from work.

            I cleaned up at her place, took a shower, put my clothes in the dryer, and finally managed to eat something after exactly eating one banana and nothing more in the morning. The hour long shoveling and the hour long walk had tired me. Later that afternoon, I called the adviser, who rescheduled our meeting to the next day.

            The next day (which was today afternoon), I met with him for more than two hours, and spent the time going over what I had, the text, the tables and graphs, and all those tiny little components that went into formatting a dissertation manuscript (except the list of references, which I am yet to start making). He had some great feedback for me (which translated into more work), for the manuscript as well as for the proposal defense which is due in less than 3 weeks. I am trying not to think about the proposal defense.

            By the time I came back from the meeting, I was too tired to work. So I watched Silver Linings Playbook (did not like it at all). I still could not bring myself to work. There was something wrong I felt, something that was depressing me, although I could not specify what. And then without preamble, I started crying. The tears just fell without rhyme or reason. It wasn’t shallow or superficial, the kind of tears that fall when a favorite hero in a movie dies. Those were tears of intense pain, wrenched out of something deep inside. A part of me was weeping, and a part of me was observing me weep, without judgment, just letting it happen. Soon I was in a fetal position in bed, sobbing, gasping for breath, letting the tears flow freely. A dozen soiled tissue papers in the trashcan later, I was able to get up and write this post.

            Ever noticed how clear the weather gets after a heavy downpour? That is how I feel right now. Finishing that proposal on time was a big fat deal, and barring those revisions the adviser recommended, it felt great to get this thing off my plate. The last two months have been intense. It was not just about sitting and writing for hours every day. The process of writing a dissertation has had more meaning for me.

            For me, it opened windows to other spaces in me I have never explored fully. I have not done the typical things one does every day the last few months- I was a recluse writing away, did not socialize much, hardly met anyone, hardly drove anywhere for fun, and barely went out for dinner. However, I started working out with a vengeance. I started to feel this energy inside me building, that I had to release at the gym regularly. I became more aware of the acute muscle pains as I lifted more and more weights every day. The only days I skipped the gym was when either it was too cold or I had too much to write.

            And then other than gym, I got into more writing. This isn’t the dissertation kind of writing I am talking about. I stated writing stories (which is ironic, given one would not think of writing anything other than the dissertation at this point). My brain felt so fertile, I kept getting parallel ideas as I analyzed more data, and I itched to put them all down on paper. I started sleeping with pen and paper because some nights, I would get ideas and would have to write them down on paper. If you are judging me right now, you would think I was going insane. Actually I stopped judging my actions and learned to become a passive observer. I just kept getting wonderful, unconventional ideas and I had to write it on paper. I wrote about a poor mother who did not have enough to feed her baby. I wrote about a promising young scientist on his first date. I am so full of fictional ideas right now. 

            I feel much better after crying today. It makes me realize that crying does not have to do anything with sorrow, pain, anger, or frustration. Crying is just a way of releasing the pent up energy, the stress, the emotions, and clearing the weather. I feel more prepared to nosedive into my data analysis now, and focus on the immediate deadlines. Since I have already produced 100 plus pages of text (and I am nowhere close to being done), I guess it was time to take a long deep breath and let go.

            I will be very busy for the next three months, and don’t know if I would have the desire to write here until then (these last few months, I have strangely felt far removed from blogging, photography, and socializing). The next three months, I will be defending the proposal, flying to present at two conferences, whining about the conference I am missing in Canada because I will be too close to finishing then, finishing up the dissertation, as well as defending. It’ll be an intense time, like it has been the last few months. I don’t know what happened today, but something in me just felt so far removed from all the pain and frustration. Given how philosophical, incoherent, and out of sorts I have felt of late, the aptness of what this degree is called (a PhD) is not lost on me.

sunshine

Some light at the end of a tunnel vision

The latter part of this week has been significant in many ways, and overwhelming, to say the least. By Wednesday, I was told that I have passed my comprehensive exams, clearing the stage 3 in my 5-stage PhD. I was snowed in on Thursday, and I wrote my first page of dissertation sitting in my sunny kitchen. By Friday, I had already met with the adviser, finalized my dissertation research question, formed my PhD committee, and set up a date for my defense proposal. Knowing the bearings of academic life, I wouldn’t be surprised if all this took weeks, but ever since I have returned home from Calcutta, I have immersed myself with my hunger to analyze data and get my dissertation rolling. I have five conference presentations in the US and (possibly) Canada in the next eight months. I still do not have a job, but I have been prolific in my job search. Needless to say, things look very busy, but things look optimistic too.

When a friend called to congratulate me Wednesday night, I told her that passing the comprehensives was never an issue, that it was doing a stellar job that was the challenge. For one, my adviser would not let me take the exams if he did not think that I was ready. She said that was not the case everywhere. She had anecdotal stories of people she knew who got thrown out of the PhD program right after their comprehensives. There were no statistics to back up what she said, but things went wrong nevertheless, especially if you did not get along with your adviser, if your adviser was not tenured and was competing with you for publications, or if your adviser did not have your best interests in mind. So many anecdotal stories of advisers making you mow their lawns, care for their pets, and spend Sundays in lab make it into PhD tea table discussions. At the end of our conversation, I was left with a sense of gratitude for the person who has pushed me so far.

Bear no misconception that I have had it easy. It is an intense program, and this is my 29^th month running. While the average guy dreams of getting out in 5 or 6 years, maybe 4, I am doing it in a few months short of 3 years. Does this mean I am doing half the work that someone in a 6-year PhD program does? No. On the contrary, I am doing the same work at double the speed. Does this mean I was exempt from taking courses, since I had two masters degree already? The answer is no again. Since I made a major shift in field from biological science to social science, I was required to take every course. In 4 semesters (2 years), I completed 54 credits of coursework that roughly translates to 18 courses, or 4.5 courses/semester. Most of these courses were hardcore, grueling methodological courses, statistical data analysis, qualitative data analysis, data management, you name it. Then there was research, there were conference presentations. There were papers written for publication, and the first one is in press after revisions. There was networking. I am even in charge of running a project as an administrator. And all this was made possible because of the right training.

I started looking for jobs right from the end of first year of my PhD. You would wonder why. I was looking, not applying. The requirements for these potential jobs gave me an idea of what potential employees are looking for. It helped me tailor my PhD to take the right courses, learn the right statistical software, and prepare myself for the job market. Of course I did not have this perspective, but my adviser did. And bear no misconception that he is the nicest man sitting in his office and advising lost people like me. He is extremely successful and hence busy, almost a grant churning machine, with seldom any patience for mistakes or stupidity, and is the last person who will sing praises of you. For me, there were disagreements, there were bitter conversations, there were tears, and self-doubt, and times when I wanted to give up. I did not know why he was so hard on me, why he would criticize my work, why he would make relentless academic demands. Of course I see the point now. There were times when he was not in the best of his mood, and it was an ordeal talking to him. I am still somewhat terrified of him, but now, I have enough of a research agenda to be able to move independently and not look up to him for his approval every time. The person who has been so critical of my work was the same person who was sitting amongst the audience when I made my first presentation at an international conference last year. Every time a person asked a question to prove how smart he is and how dumb I am, my adviser would jump to my rescue, leveling him down. He has been fiercely critical of me in office and fiercely protective of me outside. The point is, he cared, and he still does.

So back to my point, what little I have achieved is mostly attributed to my hard work, and to my adviser, who steered me in the right direction, who had the foresight of putting me in challenging situations, and most importantly, who had the vested interest to see me succeed, and graduate on time. Advising is somewhat of a parenting relationship, with the difference that we choose our advisers. However, we seldom know what we are getting into when we choose our universities, our programs, or our advisers. So there is no point in saying, choose wisely. However, it is critical that you pick up those little nuggets of wisdom people throw at you every now and then- your adviser, other professors, colleagues, seniors, and contemporaries. On this thought, I need to go and get some more work done.  

I took the picture this morning from the window by my study as I wrote this post. The snow and ice hasn't melted yet.

sunshine

DUI (Dissertating Under Influence)

** Wrote this about a month ago but never published it. Don’t ask me why.

I am sure some of you might be wondering if a car hit me and I died, my spirit haunting this blogspace, trying to locate my password. I know I have abandoned this space, shamelessly, remorselessly. This used to be my stage, a space where I used to hang out with my younger selves, right from when I was in my mid-twenties. I certainly owe no apologies, but truth be told, I am too tired to write anymore. So tired that sometimes I have to pause to differentiate between write and right. I guess that is what the final year of PhD does to you. The wrapping up year, when you are busy writing your dissertation, preparing yourself for the job market, applying for jobs, going for interviews, and doing the entire dog and pony show. I did not realize how cynic this year had made me. I have such different tastes and hobbies, such different ways of spending time now, I almost feel like a different person to myself.

I keep telling people that I am dissertating, and I feel weird using the word. It sounds so similar like, umm… lactating. I know. Creating a dissertation is almost like pregnancy of the brain. These days I show so many signs that my pregnant friends do. I am moody, hormonal, less talkative, and let’s just say, in a different intellectual space. It is easier to bait me into controversial arguments. I crave for things I have never craved for before. Watermelons and coconut water for example. And eucalyptus and mint scented candles, the really strong ones. You have to see my fridge to believe how addicted I have become to watermelons and coconut water over the last few months. There are cartons of coconut water and pounds of watermelon lying there because every few hours, I crave for both. And scrabble too. I cannot go to sleep these days unless I play a few rounds of scrabble online. Eucalyptus and mint candles, watermelons, coconut water, online scrabble, and what else? Gym. I am so addicted to the gym, I try to be there 4-5 times a week, do an hour of aerobics, and then about 45 minutes of weight training. The pain, sweat, and the exhaustion give me a high, almost like being on drugs. It gives me time to think of new research ideas. It is a different story that I haven’t lost a pound of weight, but these days I feel like I could flex my wrists, punch a wall and my fists would go right through it.

My dissertation focus is based on women. This is something new as well, since I had never seen myself studying women in the field of medicine. However, the idea was exciting, and more importantly, marketable. You’ve got to write something that people are going to be interested in, and it seems like everyone from painters to filmmakers to writers and academicians are interested in women. Also being a woman gives my research idea more validation.

Online scrabble, gym, and dissertation sums up my life almost. Well, almost. I have also been taking pictures, lots of them. Last week my picture went on public showing and auction for the first time. Of course I was too busy to attend the event, as there were academic deadlines. Oh, and I also started working on the anthology of short stories I have always wanted to write. I started writing six parallel short stories, based on six different ideas and six lives (not connected in any way), only to realize that at this rate, I will end up writing six novellas. I need to cut down on the depth, because short stories need to be, well, short. So that is a project in the air as well.

I am too tired to write, or do anything emotionally taxing at the end of all this. So I watch movies until I fall asleep (watch Forget Me Not, Conversations With Other Women, The Ides of March, and Departures). Departures was an accidental watch, I brought it my mistake when I was looking for The Departed. These days I avoid people as much as I can, at parties and gathering or wherever, just because I so easily feel like snapping at them. It feels like everyone is giving me a deadline to do something. I spend hours analyzing data, and go to sleep, wake up, and analyze more data. This was a summer of rejections. Almost every research paper I wrote independently got rejected. A conference proposal got accepted miraculously though, and I will be presenting next spring in Puerto Rico. Got to tone those biceps before that.

You know, I thought I would be more sure of myself in my final year of PhD, but now, I am not so sure anymore. I do not know where my life is headed, where I would be working and living next year this time. I always thought PhD is hard, but trust me, it is easy. What is hard is figuring out your life after a PhD, when you are not protected by your adviser and school, when you are vying and murdering for grant money, when you are all accountable to yourself, and your institution. Imagine that, and your PhD will seem like a cakewalk.

Anyway, on this depressing note, I shall sign out. This week is filled with workshops where I will learn to brush up my CV, write research statements and teaching statements, and pick up skills to navigate through the academic pipeline. Sometime during my PhD, I convinced myself that I would love to be a research professor. Most of my college professors in India had left a very traumatic mark on me, making me think that all professors did was come to class with an old sheaf of papers and dictated notes to kill time. My school teachers worked much harder to train me than my college professors did. However, American professors have changed my mind. I love the way they talk about living off their creative ideas, traveling the world, rubbing shoulders with the brightest, and most importantly, working independently for themselves. Sure it is not a cakewalk, but I believe this particular journey will be worth the hard work.

More later …

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PhD Milestones

This is more of a post for me, and my children and their children, who decades from now shall read this and smile and revel in the glory of my achievements. Well, I doubt if my children will care, but I certainly will. So what is this hoopla about? Well, last Sunday, I submitted my first research paper to an international journal. A week before that, another research paper (where I am the second author) was submitted. And today, I finished writing my third research paper, which I shall submit to another national journal in the next few days.

August 2010, I joined the program. January 2011, I cleared my prelims. July 2011, I cleared my qualifiers. July 2012, I am done submitting three research papers. I have had thoughts about dropping out of the program a few times, but the number of times I have been grateful to be in the program has significantly outweighed the number of times I have wanted to quit. I need to finish my comprehensives by next month, propose (my dissertation) by the end of this year, defend by March next year, and then I will be ready to graduate by August next year. In the meantime, I need to find myself a job, hopefully in the west coast this time.

Finishing a PhD in three years is tough, but doable. You just need to have an adviser who pushes you, lots of motivation to finish fast, and 50 times more energy to push yourself. And it is not all work and no play. I have made countless trips within US, and a handful of international trips to keep myself entertained. I do everything that any grad student does- sleep, waste time, daydream, Facebook, attend potlucks, go on road trips, watch movies, to name a few. I hope that I am able to finish in three years so that I can give some gyaan about how to finish a PhD in three years.

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Teacups versus Travel Mugs

Katie Couric addressed the graduating class of UVA last month as a guest speaker. Prior to this, I had no idea who Katie Couric was, but now I do, and am reading her book “The bestadvice I ever got: Lessons from extraordinary lives”. Usually, these speeches are different variations of what I see as feel-good-get-working inspirational speeches. It is not necessarily bad, but it is one of its kinds. I quite liked listening to her speech on that hot sunny day, on the verge of dehydrating and dying. Then, I listened to the same speech on youtube a few more times. The one thing that I loved is her comparison of teacups and travel mugs, where she urges students to stop being teacups, and become travel mugs. Any word related to travel is bound to pique my interest, and honestly, I did not get her point initially. However, I figured out that she was urging people not to become decorative pieces of fine china people keep at home, and instead be strong, sturdy, and go see the world. I really liked the analogy and I had never heard it before. Perhaps that is who I have always wanted to be- a travel mug. There is a lot of value in seeing the world, traveling, and being sturdy. That part of the speech roughly starts at the 17 minute 25 second mark.

            True, being a teacup is boring. Who wants to be a prized possession, kept safe in a shelf? I really hope I continue to be a travel mug, and meet lot many travel mugs in my life.

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A PhD Post

Mentorship is a two-way process, where you shape your adviser as he shapes you. I am living proof of that. The last few weeks have been the turning point of my PhD. For those of you who do not know, I am at the fag end of my second year in the PhD program. This is when you are done with your coursework, and are beginning to think of some nice ideas, one of which could potentially turn into a dissertation. In my field of research, we usually do two kinds of studies- qualitative and quantitative. There is a third kind, the mixed-methods approach, where you mix both qualitative and quantitative data to validate each other. Quantitative studies heavily rely on data analyzed through statistics and number crunching, while qualitative studies rely on making meaning of the experiences of people through observations, interviews, focus group discussions, ethnography studies, et cetera. One approach is not necessarily better than the other, and you need to understand both methods in order to address a research question well.

            My research group is heavy on quantitative analysis. There are a couple of reasons for that. Your sample size can be way larger in a quantitative data set (tens of thousands sometimes), the sophistication of the statistical software can make you run analyses in less time, and overall, your rate of publication is higher when you do quantitative work. Clearly, the numbers speak for themselves, and that is why my group has always relied on quantitative dissertations.

            I was expected to do a quantitative dissertation from day one. My adviser is a hard taskmaster and makes you takes every possible course on methodology. It is hard, doing all that work, and I have seen myself screaming through semesters when I was taking four methods courses at a time. In graduate school, taking four courses per semester is a challenge; you can imagine what taking four methods courses would be like. I have taken the entire 3-series qualitative coursework, 5-series quantitative coursework, and various other courses related to item response theory, multilevel modeling, and so on. I have had to learn using Stata, SPSS, Genova, NVivo, and Atlas Ti from scratch. Anyway, I ended up taking a lot of these quant courses, and realized my heart was not really in there. I could run regression models and stuff, I could learn to live with that, but not love that. On the other hand, I took the qualitative courses and loved them.

            The first time my adviser learned about my newfound love for qualitative analysis, he asked me to change advisers. Clearly this is what none of his students had done before, and he was skeptical. I would be crazy to change advisers at this stage, I love this research group, so I assured him that I would do a quantitative dissertation. We were collecting a lot of qualitative data for an NIH funded study, and with my background in the biosciences and public health, I found myself attracted to that data. I would randomly do some preliminary analysis, while still looking for a quantitative research idea. This went on for a few more months. My adviser was supposed to go to an annual conference in California, a big one for sure, and I asked him if I could come. He said no, and then gave it a thought and asked me what I would do there. I said I had done some preliminary analysis and could present it to him, so that he could decide. I told him that it was qualitative data analysis. I just wanted to attend the conference and visit California, hoping to make some contacts there. I did not hope for anymore.

            The adviser gave me an evening, and asked me to present my data to him the next morning. I had an evening, which is nothing when you have to present your findings. People spend days preparing their presentations. He said that I could come with him if I could impress him. I spent that evening putting some more thought and rationale into my data analysis, and presented it to him next morning sharp at 10 am. He had some thoughts, he asked some questions, and told me to do some more. He was about to leave when I asked him if I could come to California. He told me I am on board.

            I was thrilled. I spent more time into this analysis, aware that I will have to soon go back to my quantitative dissertation idea. I kept working hard at this and showing him my analysis, knowing that I had a very limited amount of time with this dataset. I still did not have a dissertation idea.

            About 2 weeks ago, my adviser approved of me doing either a wholly qualitative dissertation, or a mixed-method dissertation. He told me that I have changed his opinion about what his graduate students’ dissertation profile should look like, replete with quantitative data analysis. He reminded me of the risks I am taking being the first one in his team to do qualitative work. This has been the single most pivotal moment in my PhD career. From the day when he asked me to change advisers because I liked qualitative work to this day when he said I will be the first one in his team to do something new, I have come a long way from where I was. I never really had any expectation of him changing his mind. However, I kept doing something I am good at, and things unfolded for me serendipitously.

            I have secured a place in the California conference. I have finally decided on my dissertation topic, after 6 months of banging my head against the wall. Most importantly, I have realized that although there is a prescribed route to success that everyone before me has followed, there is also value in determining my own way based on my interests without taking the road stalwarts have taken before me. I will carve out my own niche, doing something my group has never done before. It may or may not be kick ass, like Eric Cartman would say. However, that for me is the true essence of education- authenticity, uniqueness, and doing something different with all my love.

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So now I need to talk?

As I go over my presentation slides once again, the realization of what I got myself into slowly dawns on me. I am presenting thrice, at two national conferences this year. And I am in no mood for merrymaking. I am in the second year of my doctoral program, the scintillating achievements of my seniors weighing down my shoulders heavily. Last summer when I wrote these proposals, it was more an exercise of self-assessment, to see where I stand, to find out if I can write convincingly and visit a few new places in the process. The proposals got through, and suddenly, it became serious business. I have spent a good stressful amount of the last few weeks polishing off the papers, making my presentation slides, and generally mulling over what to say in front of an audience who stare at you expectantly. I know I will fumble, race through my talk, even stammer. For public speaking is not my forte. Give me a pen and I can write you a novel. Give me a camera and I will give you a year’s worth of pictures. But the microphone makes me nervous. Standing up there, listening to my own voice, seeing all those stalwarts in the field, knowing that my adviser is tucked away somewhere in the crowd, listening to me inconspicuously, lest I become nervous. There will be questions and clarifications, there will be sighs and deep breaths, and there would be awkward silences. I have spent half a day last Saturday, picking up a formal suit in black and white that cost me three-and-a-half days worth my salary. Then there would be flights boarded, classes missed, and more work piled up as I spent the next three days at a conference. I think of all this, as I go over my slides once again, one final time, just to make sure that not even a comma or a punctuation mark is missing.

What have I got myself into?

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Writing Right

The good thing and the bad things about good writing is that there are no such concrete rules out there that can guide you through the process. Sure there are rules for grammar and punctuation, and some basic commandments, for example, clarity, precision, and so on. But these are merely guidelines, and are not formulaic. Although this means academic writers are often lost in blind alleys of words and sentences, not knowing how to navigate their way through the writing process, it also means there is more room for someone to be experimental and creative. Writing blogs or fiction is something, where one has more freedom to ramble on, engaging the reader in the rich intricacies of the language or word play. However, academic writing is different. People write with a purpose, and for a target audience who most of the time are busy, and do not have the time to deal with wordplay. If an academic paper has not caught my attention in the first five lines, chances are less that I will give it the rest of my time. I will skim through it and move on with life.

What do you do as an academic writer under the circumstances? Brevity helps, and so does clarity, but more than that, what helps most is style. A good piece of writing is something that arouses a question in the reader’s mind, and then goes on to answer it in the subsequent lines and paragraphs. You need to help the reader navigate through your thoughts and processes so that by the time they are done reading your paper, they have found almost every question answered within the paper. What we do in the research world might be complicated, but we need to master the art of putting the most complicated things in the simplistic way possible, because our reader has no time or energy to sail with us in our journeys of complications.

How one makes the reader navigate through the questions and answers them in the article is something I do not know. There is no formula to it and it is an endeavor that comes with time and mastery over one’s field. Writing is both a science and an art. It is like anything else, for example, playing a piano or cooking. You start by playing by the rules, and once you have mastered the rules, you play with your instinct. All this fluffy talk aside, I have realized that it is best to keep your target reader in mind when you write. What questions I would have if I were the reader? For example, if I wrote a few sentences about why red is my second favorite color, there should be a mention of what is my first favorite color, because that is what the reader is thinking when he reads about red. Simple and logical writing is often a product of clarity of thought, and not a way to undermine the reader’s lack of knowledge and understanding. In fact, good writing is like doing math. Every piece of your writing is logically connected to one another, and one piece leads to the other.

So how do you learn all this, given years of programming, thanks to good old Calcutta University, where the marks you score is directly proportional to the number of pages you fill up with garbage, and where the best answers score somewhere between 65-75%? Well, you simply unlearn your past learning, and relearn your art and science of writing. You read what good writers in your field write, you learn from your adviser (assuming he is a convincing writer), and most importantly, you write and ask for feedback.

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