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

Teach-Me-Not

Graduate-level students do not follow basic directions, write 8 pages when asked to write a 15-page paper, cite popular websites instead of peer-reviewed research papers (or do not cite at all), write twisted sentences like "Of the previously mentioned topics, the latter of the five has by far the most implication ......" and on being graded accordingly, write me emails like, "Professor, I am really disappointed with your grading." (Technically, they are addressing me incorrectly too, but I'll let that pass. I am doctor, not professor, not yet).

Many native English speakers struggle with basic grammar and punctuation, messing their commas and apostrophes, using colloquial language as if they were chatting with their buddies, using words like "cool" in an academic paper and writing "student's" instead of "students" repeatedly. It makes me think, "You only had to learn one language, and you messed that up too?" I won’t even talk about how bad some of their handwriting is. They most likely haven’t done a single day of cursive writing practice.

And for those who got a zero on their assignment for plagiarizing (I used a plagiarism tracker software to show them objective evidence of their plagiarism too), they write me emails like, "I am both shocked and appalled at your plagiarism allegations" and "I am offended at the language used in your email by saying that I plagiarized. This leaves no room for error on your part." Error on my part?

And then, a student wrote half the minimum required length for a final paper, and when graded accordingly, wrote me an aggressive email about how the student was extremely disappointed with my grading (My grading? Not their own writing, or the lack of it?). The student also played the "I am an international student, I was not able to follow directions" card. Understanding how students push your buttons has been a learning experience. I wrote an objective reply, addressing all the concerns with a compassionate stance, letting them know that I understand it is hurtful to get a low grade. However, I could not resist asking one question:

"Can you explain what aspect of you being international contributed to you not following directions or not asking me for clarification?" When a British talks about not following directions written in English, I am not sure what language I should use to give direction.  

I don’t know if they do this with everyone, or just me.

Teaching graduate-level classes here has given me a first-hand picture of what entitlement looks like. I wonder how I can break this pattern and encourage the students to learn from feedback rather than challenge my grading.

There is an extreme end in India where many teachers are treated like gods. And here, when students do not get the grades they expected (their expectations being asynchronous with reality), students will not think twice before treating you like you don’t know your shit. If a few points less (because of their own fault) disappoints them so much, I wonder how they will handle the stress due to constant rejections that is so characteristic of life in academia. The bigger question here is: Is our education merely training us to ace standardized tests like robots, or is it teaching us real life skills, like handling rejections and disappointments in life?

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

The dilemma of choice

A write up based on personal reflections.

In the year 1994, my father was transferred from a small town to a somewhat larger city a few hours away. Work being work, we had all decided to move with him. I was starting eighth grade, and my small school from the small town did not offer computer science as a subject then. But the bigger school that I was joining taught computer science as a compulsory subject from the sixth grade. Needless to say, my parents were worried.

When I joined the eighth grade, I started with collecting all the class notes, homework, and assignments worth two years. That was the first time I had ever typed on a computer. With the number of subjects we study in school, and the amount of things we learn, catching up on two years’ worth of learning was going to be a lot for me. I was neither terribly excited, nor discouraged. I just knew that I had to catch up. There was no other way out.

I put in a lot of hard work. Other than learning everything taught about Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) in school, the computer guy working in my father’s office recommended that I should join coaching classes. So I spent a hot summer going for computer classes in Link Road at 10 am four days a week during my 1.5 month long summer vacation. I got more exposure to the subject, more practice with working on a computer, and learnt about floppy discs and flow charts and binary code conversions. My performance in the first school exam was bad. I did not fail, but scored in the low sixties. By my next exam, I had moved up to the late eighties. Everyone was happy and relieved. At home, everyone saw it as a difficult situation that was overcome using hard work and interventions, a disaster prevented in due time. No one really saw it as a gateway to a wonderful career of possibilities.

I had enjoyed learning everything about computer science that year. When I moved to the ninth grade, we had to make a choice of taking computer science, economics, or home science. My father never interfered in what I should study, or how much I should study. My mother didn’t do it either. But in this particular case, she decided that I should study home science. She said that she would be able to help me with the subject, and since the ICSE (10^th boards) would be my first important exam, I should do everything to get maximum marks, no matter what I decide to study. My ICSE performance would determine whether or not I was able to get into a good college and study science.

Had this happened now, I would have politely told her, no thank you, please let me decide things for myself. But 20 years back, I did not have much perspective in life. I am not sure what I was thinking back then, and I was not even a lazy student who wanted to score good marks using short cuts. I now realize that my mother’s motivation to push me to study home science was well-meant, but solely based on the fear that what if I don’t do well studying computer science, since I have missed out on two years’ worth of knowledge. My improving grades in school did not convince her enough. I was not too sure about what I wanted, and somewhere down the line, her fear might have rubbed off on me. For much to everyone’s surprise, I opted for home science.

Although we talk about all subjects being equally important, we usually have a pre-conceived notion of their hierarchical importance. In India, science is valued more than the humanities, and an engineering degree is valued more than a pure science degree. Let’s face it. No society is free of biases or stereotypes. These biases are mostly governed by our future usefulness to the society when we seek jobs, or even making ourselves more marketable in the marriage industry. I have a lot of female friends who got a master degree because that would upgrade their status from getting an engineer husband to getting an IIT-graduate working in the US. We don’t live in an ideal world. So back in school, we had a trend too. The hierarchical choices of subjects based on the brightness of the students were computer science, economics, and home science respectively. And much to everyone’s surprise, I chose home science. My mother must have considered offering coconuts to the local deity that day.

Honestly, I did not know what I wanted to study. I liked studying everything. I was doing well in school. But my mother’s fear somehow became more real than my own confidence in acing a subject. At age 14, I was being asked to make a decision which I was told would affect my career for the rest of my life. And I did not want to make mistakes. So the decision was clear.

Did I enjoy studying home science? I sure did. I learnt about cleaning, stain removal, first aid, and safety measures. For my practical classes, I was expected to polish metal, arrange flowers, and bake. My mother mostly helped me in those projects. I have enough reasons to believe now that she influenced me so that she could do half my assignments on my behalf, for her enjoyment. Force and motion and atoms and molecules, she did not understand so much.

My teachers were surprised about my decision. And so were my friends. I used to hang out with the “computer science” gang of students, and when the bell rang for class, they would often forget and wonder why I was not coming with them to the computer lab. I never had any associations about studying a “less challenging” subject. I was scoring in the nineties, getting help from my mother, and was enjoying hanging out with a new set of friends. I even passed the ICSE with flying colors, scoring in the higher nineties, and easily got admitted to the science stream after the tenth grade. For ISC (11^th and 12^th grades), my new school in Calcutta (we had moved once again) only had a choice between biology or computer science, physics, chemistry, and mathematics being compulsory for all science students. It became even easier to make my choice. Students who wanted to be doctors opted for biology, and the future engineers chose computer science. I didn’t know what I wanted to become, but biology was my default choice.

Twenty years ago, my mother had influenced my decision with the best of her intentions that I score maximum marks in the exams. So the short-term interests were served. But did it serve me long time? I am afraid not. For most of the things I learnt in those two years studying home science, I do not apply in my life anymore. I don’t arrange flowers, I use a washing machine to remove stains, and I learnt all my cooking after moving to the US. There is nothing I need for my home that I cannot Google and find out. I know my acids from my bases for home remedies, and what I don’t know, the internet knows. So I need nothing that I learnt then.

However, this decision permanently steered me away from a whole new world of possibilities, and closed the door to studying computer science. I could have grown up to become a computer scientist. I could have been working at the Mountain View office of Google. I could be writing codes and inventing languages for a living. I could be a computer science professor by now. I could be doing many things right now that I am not solely because I was never exposed to this field. In the purpose of serving the short-term interests of better grades, my long-term interests were screwed. Now that did not prevent me from moving to the US, getting a PhD or working as a researcher. But something that could be did not become, because I did not know any better. And it is a universally recognized fact that a degree in computer science increases your probability of getting a better paid job, having many more opportunities of employment, rubbing shoulders with some really smart people, and never having to worry about visa issues. I am not saying that I cannot learn whatever programming I need to learn now to get my job done. But it is too late for me to know how my life would be different if I had studied computer science as a subject in school.

I often tend to reflect on my life experiences to understand what could be done better. And from this incident, I have learnt that closing our heart and mind to learning something just because it may not serve our short term interests is wrong. You don’t take that structural equation modeling (SEM) class in graduate school because it is tough, and is not a requirement to graduate. However, will taking that course make you more marketable when you look for a job in future? Will it give you skills that your peers will not have? Will it open the doors to exploring newer research possibilities? The aim of learning something cannot be either good grades or graduating on time. But that perspective, that wisdom, I have gained at this age.

If life ever had an undo button, I know that right now, we would be back to 1995, sitting in the living room. I would tell my parents that I am graduating to the ninth grade soon, and will need to choose between taking computer science, economics, or home science. My father would look up from reading the newspaper and tell me that I should do what I think is the best. My mother would tell me that I should study home science so that she can help me with it. And I would smile, letting her know that I have decided to study computer science, and ask her not to be afraid about me failing.

sunshine

A letter to my PhD

Dear PhD,

Today, I have come closest to the point of breaking up with you. I call it a break up because I have considered it a relationship, perhaps a longstanding, serious, intimate and the most meaningful relationship I have ever had. At some point in life, I decided that I want to spend most of my time in the pursuit of acquiring knowledge and wisdom. I could have been a journalist, a doctor, or a lawyer, but I decided I wanted to do hardcore research, and teach as well. Hence, I started training to be a professor. When I was done with my previous job, I had a few lucrative options. I could have found another job in the US. I could have moved to India. I could have done any number of things. Yet I decided to do a PhD. I decided to give it a second chance, since I had already opted out of PhD once a few years ago. Yet somewhere deep down, I hoped that I would once again enter the research arena. So, I chose you over a job. I readjusted to living on a meager salary, roughly one-third of what I was used to earning. I moved cross-country and tried adjusting myself to a completely different city, field, and work culture. The first year, I was on a roll. I finished my preliminary exam and passed my qualifiers 6 months in advance. I had three more steps to clear, and two more years to do it. However, the disillusionment started to set in the second year. The PhD trajectory became a curved tube I was stuck in the middle of, so that I could no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was taking four courses, doing research, TAing, and traveling. I was learning new statistical software, learning to code, and trying to be as productive as I could. That was when I started to burn out and disillusionment set in. I have never been a good test taker, or a person who works well under pressure. Perhaps as it happens in some relationships (I don’t know, enlighten me), I started to question the meaning of it. I started to wonder about how what I learned would fit in the bigger scheme of things. I was overworked, tired, low on sleep, but more than most things, I started to question the value of all of it. So I had the write this post.

I wrote this post because just like a relationship, I still love you, although I have had my moments of doubt. You are my priority, and I will try my best to ensure we stick it out together. I start my day thinking of all the things I could do in research, and go to sleep planning my next day of work. But like all relationships, things are never perfect and happy all the time. We have our lows, or periods of doubt, times like these when we question the necessity of it. I wrote this post so that someday when in doubt, I will read this and know how much I have wanted you, and how important it is for me to do what I am doing right now. I write this so that someday when you and I have come a long way together after years of partnership, I can look back on times like these when I doubted my abilities to do anything meaningful, and know that I was wrong. I will know that although I have had my moments and thoughts of breakup, I would never actually do it. Yes, I am having a low moment right now, especially since I need to teach a class tomorrow and send revisions for papers by the end of this week and a dozen other things, but this moment shall pass. I know I will be back to my old self when you were my priority, and continue to do some kickass research which will make our future meaningful.

With love,

A sincere PhD student.

28 and Unemployed: Part 3/3

Part 1/3 ........

Part 2/3 ......

Part 3/3 .........

By January, I found myself sitting in music class, cleaning the cobwebs off my voice and relearning my Sa-Re-Ga-Ma. I used to sing with my grandfather as a kid. He took with him the culture of evening riyaaz when he died. 24 years later, I started my classical music lessons. Now that I was singing, I wanted to dance too. I felt self-conscious, I had gained a lot of weight in the last few years, but I had always wanted to dance with the local dance wing, and realized this could be my only chance. I auditioned with them for a show, and the weekdays saw me singing and dancing to the tunes of music for the upcoming show. My muscles screamed in pain, I no longer felt that nimble and flexible I used to feel years ago, and came so close to giving up at times but dragged on for that day I would be on stage feeling proud of myself. February saw me live that moment of pride, performing on stage.

I had a lot of time now but no money, so I started living with a close friend. I helped her take care of her baby, another unique experience for me. Baby and I became best friends, and I learnt skills like feeding a 1 year old, keeping her entertained, talking to her, making her learn new words, and singing to her. By the end of my one-month long stay with her, she was singing Sa-Re-Ga-Ma with full confidence. I had circulated the gift of music I had got from my music teacher, to baby. Taking care of the little one taught me love, patience, and the art of understanding little humans who do not talk to communicate or make themselves understood, not to mention bits and pieces of Tamil. Next, I moved to another friend’s place where I had another baby to take care of, not a little human, but a very understanding and communicative cat. Anyone who knows me would know how scared I am of animals, and I would not even go close to a harmless, innocent animal, let alone live with one. However, I saw this as another opportunity to get over my fears and take temporary responsibility of a living being. Kitty and I had the house to ourselves and we would often sit together in the evenings watching television, playing, or talking to each other. I told her stories and she responded by purring and mewing. We even watched a Bengali movie together once.

By the end of March, I had heard back that I was not granted an extension of my US visa. I was expected to leave the US, my home for the last 4 years. It was yet another calamity that came as an opportunity. I looked at Google maps and asked myself if the world was a playground lying invitingly in front of me, where would I like to play next. I had my answer. I sold most my stuff, packed the rest of my life in boxes at a friend’s garage, left my car in another friend’s driveway, and took off. I took a flight to New York, and another flight that didn’t stop till it reached India. I was in India after 4 years, meeting my family and friends. I rejuvenated myself, felt nurtured with unadulterated love and support that a family provides, and went back to work voluntarily at my old school where I used to teach 4 years ago. I saw this as a unique opportunity to re-establish my contacts, and to do something I was passionate about- teach. All it took me to be happy and feel useful was to discover something I loved to do, and start doing it again.

Before I knew, I had spent months with family, possibly more time than anyone living outside home could ever imagine. It was time to move on. The next 2 weeks saw me backpacking, living, and breathing in the places I had only read about and dreamt of, but had never thought I would visit in this life. I had always wanted to walk the streets of Vienna where my favorite movie “Before Sunrise” was shot, and I did it. I had always wanted to visit an active volcano, and here I was climbing Mount Etna in Sicily. I walked the streets of Dresden, had Gelato in Rome, got a first hand experience of marveling at awe inspiring work of Michelangelo in Rome, stood mesmerized by the beauty of Salzburg, visited the castles of Prague, walked inside the world’s largest ice caves in Werfen, hiked the Alps, even took a train that boarded a ferry while leaving mainland Italy towards Sicily. Map in hand and an indomitable wanderlust, my dream of backpacking Europe, traveling in trains, and living on a shoestring budget had come true.

The best things in life were spread out for me as a buffet, and in 8 months I got a taste of almost everything I had ever desired. Music, dance performance, babies and pets, meeting family, teaching, and walking the streets of Europe. But I still had to figure out my life and decide what I would do after this transitory honeymoon phase. This was my chance to start something new, and learn from scratch, since I had already made up my mind not to go back to doing bench science again. After 8 months of a journey that seemed more like a never ending fun vacation, I wanted to be a student again, but not in the same field studying cells and molecules and writing scientific documents. I wanted to learn more about how people learnt. I applied to a dozen schools, got around half a dozen admits, and went back to school. It was time to start working on that unfinished dream of a PhD. Life had given me another chance to do something I loved, and I grabbed that opportunity and converted my passion for teaching to the pursuit of research. These days, I work on how to make the process of learning more effective. By changing fields, I relearned my sciences from scratch.

My greatest lesson from this journey of unemployment was to see things I built over years, things valuable to me, crumble in front of me, and for me to learn to build from rubble and from the ashes of unfulfilled dreams again. It taught me how to be significantly detached from my dreams to be able to work on rebuilding newer dreams again. I have learnt that it’s okay to have nightmares about losing your job or not succeeding in life or see people leaving you, because your insecurities mirrored through these nightmares will only make you wake up and work harder towards your commitments to ensure that things don’t screw up in real life. I feel like a new person, free of baggage, unfettered from the thoughts of how the world perceives me, and secure in the knowledge that I have taken good care of myself through these months and haven’t failed myself.

My journey through these 8 months of unemployment changed the way I learned to count my blessings. The door that had marked the end of things was also the same door that marked the beginning of brand new, and a better life for me.

sunshine

Reading between the lines

As a PhD student learning to do some credible and innovative research, one question I have often asked, and am often asked about is, how much academic reading one needs to do for a PhD. The politically correct and socially desirable answer would be, “A lot. As much as you can”. However, my frustration stemmed from the fact that terms like “a lot” and “as much” do not mean much, unless you are able to quantify it. Even if you could put a number to these values, the number is bound to vary across fields. Thus, it comes back to the same old question, how much reading must one do in order to be best equipped to do some meaningful research work.

I have pored and pondered over this question for years, and over the years, I have come up with my own “Reading for Research” strategy. Since these are my own ideas that have stemmed from MY perception of the research world around me, it is needless to say that what I claim would not have any scientific basis or background research, and should be taken with a pinch, no, perhaps a fistful of salt. What works for me might not work for you.

I am the kind of person who can cure my own insomnia by reading. The moment I start reading academic papers or book, I fall asleep. Now this is ironic, given that I am expected to do some heavy reading because of what I do for a living. I heavily rely on two strategies to get my healthy share of reading nutrients for my academic diet. First, while reading a paper, I start with the abstract, the research questions, and findings. If I find it useful enough, I go on to the introduction, the literature review, the methodology, and the discussion. This is a skill my academic daddy taught me. As a person reading voluminous work, you need to master the art of skimming through, and glossing over things that would be superficial to your knowledge base, first focusing just on the findings. I am not advocating for such a practice, it’s just that it works brilliantly for me, and I heavily rely on this technique.

My second technique is even more sophisticated and less time consuming, for the lack of better terminology. While reading something, almost anything, I always try to keep track of the key words, phrases, and terminology used. I can always look it up later on when I want to, but for my primary reading needs, I hunt for keywords rather than reading every line and focusing on every word. Let me give you this analogy. In order to get an overall bird’s eye picture of a forest, you need to know that there are trees, and then there is some grassland, and a river flowing by. But you do not need to have an exact count of the trees, the small plants, or the number of fish in the river. This is how I view my world of research. It is important for me to know that the forest of information out there has trees and plants and animals. The day I need to keep a count of the number of trees, I will zoom in on the trees and count them. Till then, it is enough for me to know where things are in terms of their positionality. Let me put it this way. In order to be a good storehouse of knowledge, you don’t need to know where everything is. However, you do need to know where to look for things when you need them. My keyword strategy works excellent that way. It is far less of a cognitive load to just focus on the new words and terminology used, than to read every sentence about something. Sometimes, I even carry a scratch pad with me and write down all the new terms I learn so that later when I need it, I know where to look for it. Months later, some stalwart in the field will bounce off an occasional buzzword and already familiar with the keyword, I will know where to look it up. I get almost 4 times more reading done using this technique. Of course your reading speed and skills get better with time, and the more time you spend in the research world, the more acquainted you are with what is out there. Till then, for beginners and slackers like me, it is unproductive to fret and worry and be intimidated by the whole process of familiarizing oneself with the extensive body of knowledge out there. And like my academic daddy keeps telling me, it is important to think hard, but what is much more important to be successful is to think smart.

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Running out of fuel

As a graduate student, getting through a semester is analogous to running on a treadmill for a workout. At the beginning, it is all nice and rosy, you look at that treadmill, all new and bright, sitting far away, and you know that you are going to run on that for the next 4 months. You can’t wait to get started. You are prepping, dying to show off those shiny, new and nice gym clothes you bought, eager to show off those grey cells, get some challenging courses out of your way and go show the world what a gift to the educational fraternity you are. Classes start, the first few days look nice and rosy, you are still warming up, flexing those brain cells, getting that nice little pace for a jog. You pace yourself, eye the calorie meter in front of you, smile at the calories you are burning, the pace at which you are running, your accelerating heart beat rate, and so on. The professors are still spending their time getting to know you better, and familiarizing you with the course requirements. The lost looking TA just handed you a handout with the syllabus, course expectations, deadlines, and the grading policies all nicely written. This is the rulebook for the semester that tells you how to play. You don’t really look at it, toss it somewhere, you are just happy smelling your new textbooks, finding old friends in class, and discussing your travel and other fun plans for the rest of the semester.

A few weeks into the semester, and they have accelerated the pace on the treadmill. You are working out a nice sheen of sweat, but things still look pretty good. You are warming up, wish you had put on a little less clothes, or hadn’t been too ambitious and had taken maybe one course less, but it’s all okay. You will do it. you have your enthusiasm and self-confidence, although these days the lectures are getting a little monotonous, your eyes glaze over more often than you would like to admit, and on the last few occasions, you were caught disinterestedly sitting in the class lectures Facebooking. There is no dearth of distractions around, and monotony sets in when things fall into a pattern, you know you are required to follow a pattern, show up at the 9 am statistics class every Friday, show up for the 8 am team meeting every Monday, and so on. The professors are bombarding you with assignments, the advisor is asking you to get that report finished in 4 days, and you are slowly skipping the thrice-a-week dinner meets with your buddies.

You are beginning to get out of breath at this stage, and you look at the calendar to realize that there are maybe four or five more weeks before the semester ends. Things look really bad now, you are running as fast as you could, as if your rear end is on fire, but the speed isn’t good enough. You are sweating like a pig, and run the risk of drowning and choking in your own sweat mixed with the tears that you are now shedding at the sheer torture of barely meeting deadlines, deadline after deadline, class after class, week after week. You are now beginning to skip classes at the pretext of a stomach ache just because you know you must finish up the assignment from the other class first. You realize you were never a gift to the educational fraternity in the first place. Things are piling up, all the professors are looking at you with expectations, as if forever asking you, “When are you going to finish that homework?”, or “What were you thinking when you wrote that report and used that regression analysis? Were you stoned?” The advisor is giving you a hard time, constantly reminding you how much time and money he has invested in you, and rather than being super-efficient, you find yourself being stressed, nervous, sleepy, hungry, grumpy, menopausal, and angry all the time. You have long since stopped showing up for the 8 am class, are usually 20 minutes late for the Monday meeting, mumbling up an excuse that no one listens to, and the number of status messages on Facebook like “I hate school”, “My advisor sucks”, and “I was born intelligent but education ruined me” has significantly gone up. You are barely holding on to the deadlines now (as if they were your lifelines), submitting assignments 2 weeks post due dates, and have started to question your existence in the academic world. The sight of the advisor gets you paranoid, and you have started to take roundabout routes to the department that go through the jungles and not through the main entrance so that you can avoid eye contact with as many professors as possible. You are running on the treadmill as fast as you could, because you know some bulls named “deadlines”, “assignments”, “advisor”, “meetings”, and “conferences” are chasing you. You can hear their hooves at a distance, not a comfortable feeling I must say, and you just turned back to see the bull named “advisor” charging and sniffing angrily at you. You look at the display meter in front of you. 20 more days, 18 more days, time has lost its pace, and it seems a lifetime before you will be done with the semester and attain some kind of nirvana. Time stands still, you can no longer differentiate the days from the nights (because you are always in the lab). You are struggling to stay barely afloat, the A’s have been replaced by B pluses and then B minuses, and you would be happy to pass the course and be done, forget showing off those A pluses or giving that highhanded look because you once fell in the top 5 percentile of the class.

I am at that stage right now, happy to be alive and breathing, but so running out of fuel. Working in the department all night, showing up in classes all puffy eyed, giving blank looks whenever someone asks about a new deadline, sore, hungry, looking at that treadmill display meter and wondering if I will make it. 3 more weeks, and dozens of deadlines packed in these weeks, hopping from deadline to deadline, fighting in the battlefield with my last remnants of strength, and most importantly, just happy to be alive and breathing.

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School of Thought

It's time to start the next chapter.

It’s time to leave those fancy handbags behind and pick up that backpack.

It’s time to hunt for free food on campus and live on Maggi, Subway, and Chipotle.

It’s time to stop living in that apartment alone, and to have fun staying with roommates.

It’s time to brag about the campus you will be spending the next few years of your life in.

It’s time to get into the vicious cycle of sleeping during classes and staying up late finishing assignments.

It’s time to subscribe to PhD comics.

It’s time to start taking the bus again instead of hopping onto the car every time.

It’s time to aim for those conferences and travel at the advisor's expense.

It’s time to push myself to do something new and creative, and to try to be productive everyday.

After a break of 2 years from school, it’s time to get back to school again.

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Exams

I accidentally bumped into my exam schedule and wondered why I didn’t find it all this while. I looked at the date my first exam is going to start, and realized exams were just 10 days away. They were to last for a week, and that meant I was preparing for some 5-7 tests. The tests are pretty intense, and it is during these times that I always regret not having studied harder. I calculated the number of chapters I was supposed to study and realized that I had some 25 chapters to finish in some 10 days. Studying 2.5 chapter everyday would leave no time for revision, so I must speed up. I must target finishing at least 4 chapters a day to begin with, to give me enough acceleration. This means I need to study for 14-15 hours a day. I don’t really remember what was I busy doing throughout the year, but I am clearly not prepared for the exams. I also know that if I start to put in all my waking hours, I can manage to finish my target and do well in the exams. I will not aim for getting the highest this time as I do not have that much time. I will rather ensure that I skim through everything so that I do not end up leaving unanswered stuff. I promise I’ll study earlier and harder the next time.

But something in me doesn’t feel right. I feel the pressure, but not really the killing urge to get back to my books. It’s a bright and sunny day outside. Summer is here, and people are out there enjoying themselves. I don’t really feel like studying. I feel like standing on a railway platform, supposed to catch the train in front of me. The train starts rolling slowly. I know I must hop on to the train. But something in me doesn’t let me lunge after the train. I stand and watch as the train leaves in front of me.

I realize I am not prepared for the exams this time.

I wake up from my dream to realize that it is not quite 5am. I still have an hour’s worth of sleep. I hug my pillow tight and go back to sleep.

I am glad it was just a dream. I am glad when I wake up an hour later, I will get ready for office and not for some exam I am not prepared to take.

I wonder why even after one year of bidding student life adieu, I dream of exams approaching.

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Ad-Wiser

When I cleared my thesis defense a few months back, I had thought – “Boy, that was simple. I can now write my thesis in two days”. Two indeed it was, but weeks that it took me to write it. That’s good too, thought I, as I clicked on the “pay now” button for my flight tickets for a week-long vacation in New York. The vacation never happened. Two months later, my advisor is still kicking my ass, making changes to my thesis. So here goes the equation: 2 hours to defend it, 2 week to write it, and 2 months to edit it.

Now this 2 month thing is an exceptional situation, or more of an equation imbalance with my advisor. I mean, who edits a thesis for 2 months, making me labor my ass off even on weekends? But my hate-post for my advisor would be written another day. However, as I am finishing up my process of writing my thesis, I realize that there indeed is a list of at least a dozen things one cannot write a thesis without. If you have been there, you know what I am talking about. If you haven’t, you will soon be.

1. Caffeine- It sometimes helps you not to fall asleep on your keyboard, but there is also something glamorous about walking the department corridor at 1 in the morning, a coffee cup in one hand, your satchel on the other shoulder, while you walk in slow motion with the other prowling night owls in the department. Not being a coffee person, I use it more for my image boost.

2. Ready made food- Maggi might seem as a mass of squirming caterpillars otherwise, but there is nothing more conveniently made and slurped on while meeting deadlines. Nothing beats the soups and sushi and spring rolls from Trader Joe’s. I have survived for weeks with my pantry stored like a bomb shelter with readymade food.

3. Eveready friends who will be willing to hear your whining at any time of the day (or night). Believe me, when you are done typing a hundred pages and have had it enough, you can do with an empathetic shoulder.

4. A post-thesis fun plan. It gives you lots of incentive to push yourself. Plan a trip to the Bahamas or the Hawaii. Keep aside a thousand dollars for your post-thesis fun shopping. You probably won’t be able to carry out these plans (unless you have a sugar daddy sponsoring you). This is just to trick you into working harder.

5. Lots of suddenly built rapport with the advisor. You suddenly want to call/email your advisor and end with a “thank you for everything you have done for me”, remember her birthday, send her a box full of Haldiram’s sweets on her anniversary, make her a dabba full of the best Indian curry your mommy taught you back at home, and remind her everyday how she is more important for you than your boy friend. This might still not save you from the onslaught of her making you write a hundred extra pages, but is still a good disaster contingency plan if you can tap on her more humane side this way.

6. Super skills with MS Office- I think I don’t just deserve a degree in whatever field in am in, but also a degree in MS Office from Mr. Gates. Never before have I known how to wade my way so smoothly through track changes, formatting, and Endnote data input. Don’t balk if I tell you it took me three whole days just to format my thesis and present it the way the school wants to read it, and I am still not done. Schools tend to be picky about small things like the page number being on top right and not bottom centered, following the same font type and size throughout, and leaving a margin accurate to three decimal places.

7. Throw away all the comfortable bedding, pillows, things that make you sleep. Instead, use your bedding and comforters to cushion your room wall(s). After months of hard work when your advisor ruthlessly chops off your favorite segments in the thesis, you want something to thunk your head against.

8. Plenty of change of clothes and lots of deodorants. There will be days at a stretch when you won’t be going home but would be working in that underground cubbyhole they call the computer lab.

9. Meditation classes with half a watermelon sitting on your head every day. There are times when you will be so close to snapping at your advisor, but will still have to smile your way through the process subserviently and keep your cool.

10. Lists. Lists of sections to finish. Lists of sections completed. Lists of diagrams and tables to include that no one cares about. List of people to thank in that acknowledgement section no one is going to read. List of reasons why you hate your advisor. List of introspective thoughts on why you don’t think you want to come back to school again. Write it down. Trust me, it is therapeutic.

11. A deaf ear. Soon, you will get used to words like “No, you haven’t”, “How come you can’t”, and “This won’t”. You will be made to feel as if you were born stupid. Just learn to gulp your ego with everything that goes down the throat, take the advice you think is useful, and dispose the rest of it.

12. The ability to laugh at the unfair side of things. You will be made to do things that you consider unnecessary and catering more to the whims of your advisor. You will be told things where you would want to scream back, “No, this is not the way it is”. But remember to choose your battles and fight those you think you can win. You need those approval signatures at the end of the day, and if that means working for an extra few weeks or repeating some experiments or rewriting entire segments, you might still want to get it done with and never look back again. Handle it with humor, handle it with wit, handle it with sarcasm, whatever it takes to motivate you to GET IT DONE ! Remember, there are far better things in life waiting for you once you are finished.

Like my acknowledgement reads, dripping with sarcasm,

“This thesis would have been finished long back without your positive input, interference or distractions- but wouldn’t have looked the same as it does today”.

If only I had the nerve to show it to her.

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Be-car Ki Baq-Baq

Seldom have I met a student completely happy with her advisor, who doesn’t feel that her advisor has been unfair at some point of time. Every one of us have been there when we felt that our advisor was unnecessarily demanding, pushing and pressurizing, setting deadlines too ambitious to meet, ignorant of the fact that school life was about some work and some play, never mind the proportion of each. Be assured that I have felt the same way too. I have had an advisor who sets last moment deadlines, is capable of completely changing the focus of a project, and is not very famous for her communication skills with me. In short, she has never been “fair” and “lovely” to me. But this is not a rant post about the “100 different reasons why your advisor sucks”. There have been times when I have reached that stage where I wanted to be done with school and never see my advisor again, never mind the sagacity of this statement. I have told myself – “Three more months and I will be done. Two. One.”

I have been in one of those moods of late. Blogging has suffered, and I have not felt motivated enough to write. You don’t want to spend days writing and framing ideas and making posters and presentations and then writing again, and then your advisor disapproving stuff and you editing and writing again. You get the picture, right? Depressed. Irritated. Highly unmotivated.

It is at this time that I noticed my advisor giving me rides back home. Earlier it used to be when we were meeting deadlines and had stayed back in the lab late enough to decide between walking home or not going home at all. My advisor has happily dropped me home at 12 in the morning, asking me to be on time the next day in the lab. However I was clueless about why she would volunteer dropping me home at 6 in the evening these days. It happened the first day. The second day. And it kept happening. I often wanted to tell her that I was fine taking the bus home, that I looked forward to meeting that good looking man with spikes in the bus on his way back from office, but she was relentless to the extent that I started to doubt if she was going to change the focus of the project again and was doing the kind deed out of guilt.

Curious about her sudden philanthropic gesture, I finally asked her indirectly if the detour and the traffic snarl back home doesn’t inconvenience her. To which she surprised me, like she always does. She was quick to answer that writing a thesis is a very difficult time, frustrating and energy consuming, and she wanted me to feel supported during this process. She mentioned that it’s a stressful phase to go through, and she was doing her bit in making me feel connected and supported. Even if that meant taking a 30 minute detour and dropping me home so that I didn’t have to wait for the bus at the end of the day.

Needless to say, I was flabbergasted, unable to understand why I did not see the sensitive side of her before. I know she is still going to kick my ass and set unnecessary deadlines and put my peace of mind in jeopardy. But I am glad that she realizes the stress she puts me through, and is willing to meet me halfway – to the parking lot from where she can take her car and drop me home.

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