Fond memories of CMU in the 80's!! They had genuine academics who wanted to solve problems and advance human knowledge. Most cared about their students and wanted to teach. (Sorry to say, I left there for CA weather and getting my masters in an institution of higher earning, or that is how it looked to my immature self back then.)
I don't know, it really depends on the person. Writing things out by hand doesn't help me, and I don't see any difference at all between handwriting and typing
I'm not saying this is what's happening to you, but in my case this is exactly what I believed for many years.
And then it turned out that typing-vs-hand-writing benefits being equal was in fact due to how atrophied my hand-writing skills were.
I've learned that once I got back into fluent hand-writing in a flow-state, the benefits for learning, memorizing, and understanding, were so overwhelmingly superior to keyboard-typing, that I resented the cognitive handicap I had placed upon myself for literal decades.
Now I always carry a tiny spiraled notebook and a Rotring pen. They're as indispensable and practically useful to me as my smartphone.
I just...could never see myself EVER going back to using a pen or pencil (in fact, I would need to dig for one, I don't even have one at my desk at the moment). What exactly are you even writing that you need to carry a notebook on your person at all times? For me it was the opposite, I complained I would never use cursive in college/as an adult, and that I would just type everything...which is exactly what happened. Hell, outside of doctor's forms and signatures for those, I can't really recall the last time I even needed to pick up a pen or pencil.
Writing by hand is harder and slower. This gives you time to ponder, understand the important point better, try to formulate it shorter and thus search for and extract the key points. IOW, it forces you to study what you write, not just register.
Many software engineers in the bay area from abroad pursued Master's or Ph.D. degrees in the US to qualify for the additional 20,000 cap-exempt H-1B visa slots.
The key is to make the most of the opportunity and don't take poor treatment as the norm. It is always unacceptable. Plus at some point you will potentially be the world's most knowledgeable person on your very niche area, appreciate that and run with it.
My advice to a prospective graduate student is that if you can do literally anything else with your life, do that instead. The cost of going through graduate school is only worthwhile if you really need to be there to be happy in your life. Too many people wind up there for not great reasons, and it hurts them both emotionally and financially compared to having done something else.
This can be good advice if worded a different way: only go to grad school if you really love doing research. If you love research, then the right graduate program is the best place for that. Getting a PhD was the hardest thing I’ve ever done but I don’t regret a single day of it.
The challenge is how do you really know if you love doing research, committing to graduate school, before really doing research? It is hard to know how the sausage is made without spending/doing time at a meat-processing plant. My undergraduate experience doing research, including be published, was much different than the graduate experience. And graduate experience was much different than the assistant professor experience.
It took me two trips to grad school to get a PhD. The first on their terms, I burned out. The second, on my terms, was a much better/different experience.
I had the same experience; grad school is the best preparation for grad school. I had wonderful experiences participating in NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduate projects during two of my summers as an undergrad, and I also had a wonderful eight-month internship in a research lab at a major Japanese IT company, but grad school was a different beast, even though I was a grad student at the place I did my NSF REUs. The internships felt like the “demo version” of the real thing.
Come to think of it, I had similar whiplash in industry of full-time jobs being far more stressful than my internships, which I now realize were more-or-less “demo versions.”
To make a long story short, after grad school and working as a researcher in industry for nearly a decade before becoming a professor at a community college (where the emphasis is teaching), I learned that I love doing research as a hobby but not as a career, where there are many pressures.
I understand your argument for people who pursue research degrees but there are plenty of non-research professional programs that people should be encouraged to pursue if relevant for their goals.
E.g. masters in teaching
> Getting a PhD was the hardest thing I’ve ever done but I don’t regret a single day of it.
my phd was tough because my advisors was useless and i do regret it because i lost 4 years of industry high-salary pay. way more common than your experience i think.
To counter the idiotic flagged dead troll who replied to your comment, I hope society helped pay for your scholarships and loans if you could not afford them, because everyone deserves a good education, and that's why we pay taxes. It's a much better use of resources than endless wars and $5000 bribes conditioned on Republicans winning elections via fraud.
Your advice is good, but it comes from a position of privilege. Privilege of having opportunities, having a first world passport, having the social security to take risks, having 200k TC tech jobs available for everyone (this one seems to be going away quickly).
Getting a PhD from a reputable university and working with an advisor and others who are the best in the world at their niche fields opens doors that one wouldn't even know of otherwise. It's one of the most reliable low risk ways of getting you and your family out of a lower middle class life.
Fond memories of CMU in the 80's!! They had genuine academics who wanted to solve problems and advance human knowledge. Most cared about their students and wanted to teach. (Sorry to say, I left there for CA weather and getting my masters in an institution of higher earning, or that is how it looked to my immature self back then.)
>Consider writing what you read as you read it.
i would add a clarification for today's students: by hand.
typing doesn't appear to have the same power, at least for myself and my students that ive talked to about it.
I don't know, it really depends on the person. Writing things out by hand doesn't help me, and I don't see any difference at all between handwriting and typing
I'm not saying this is what's happening to you, but in my case this is exactly what I believed for many years.
And then it turned out that typing-vs-hand-writing benefits being equal was in fact due to how atrophied my hand-writing skills were.
I've learned that once I got back into fluent hand-writing in a flow-state, the benefits for learning, memorizing, and understanding, were so overwhelmingly superior to keyboard-typing, that I resented the cognitive handicap I had placed upon myself for literal decades.
Now I always carry a tiny spiraled notebook and a Rotring pen. They're as indispensable and practically useful to me as my smartphone.
I just...could never see myself EVER going back to using a pen or pencil (in fact, I would need to dig for one, I don't even have one at my desk at the moment). What exactly are you even writing that you need to carry a notebook on your person at all times? For me it was the opposite, I complained I would never use cursive in college/as an adult, and that I would just type everything...which is exactly what happened. Hell, outside of doctor's forms and signatures for those, I can't really recall the last time I even needed to pick up a pen or pencil.
Writing by hand is harder and slower. This gives you time to ponder, understand the important point better, try to formulate it shorter and thus search for and extract the key points. IOW, it forces you to study what you write, not just register.
Many software engineers in the bay area from abroad pursued Master's or Ph.D. degrees in the US to qualify for the additional 20,000 cap-exempt H-1B visa slots.
Related. Others?
Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7997158 - July 2014 (15 comments)
Manuel Blum: Advice to a beginning graduate student - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2037676 - Dec 2010 (16 comments)
Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student - Manuel Blum (CMU) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=832729 - Sept 2009 (32 comments)
I remember reading this as an undergraduate student already enrolled in LSE. My God how the times have changed.
The key is to make the most of the opportunity and don't take poor treatment as the norm. It is always unacceptable. Plus at some point you will potentially be the world's most knowledgeable person on your very niche area, appreciate that and run with it.
My advice to a prospective graduate student is that if you can do literally anything else with your life, do that instead. The cost of going through graduate school is only worthwhile if you really need to be there to be happy in your life. Too many people wind up there for not great reasons, and it hurts them both emotionally and financially compared to having done something else.
This can be good advice if worded a different way: only go to grad school if you really love doing research. If you love research, then the right graduate program is the best place for that. Getting a PhD was the hardest thing I’ve ever done but I don’t regret a single day of it.
I agree, but...
The challenge is how do you really know if you love doing research, committing to graduate school, before really doing research? It is hard to know how the sausage is made without spending/doing time at a meat-processing plant. My undergraduate experience doing research, including be published, was much different than the graduate experience. And graduate experience was much different than the assistant professor experience.
It took me two trips to grad school to get a PhD. The first on their terms, I burned out. The second, on my terms, was a much better/different experience.
I had the same experience; grad school is the best preparation for grad school. I had wonderful experiences participating in NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduate projects during two of my summers as an undergrad, and I also had a wonderful eight-month internship in a research lab at a major Japanese IT company, but grad school was a different beast, even though I was a grad student at the place I did my NSF REUs. The internships felt like the “demo version” of the real thing.
Come to think of it, I had similar whiplash in industry of full-time jobs being far more stressful than my internships, which I now realize were more-or-less “demo versions.”
To make a long story short, after grad school and working as a researcher in industry for nearly a decade before becoming a professor at a community college (where the emphasis is teaching), I learned that I love doing research as a hobby but not as a career, where there are many pressures.
I understand your argument for people who pursue research degrees but there are plenty of non-research professional programs that people should be encouraged to pursue if relevant for their goals. E.g. masters in teaching
Were you the guy in the PL lab that was playing Nightwish?
lol along those lines yes
> Getting a PhD was the hardest thing I’ve ever done but I don’t regret a single day of it.
my phd was tough because my advisors was useless and i do regret it because i lost 4 years of industry high-salary pay. way more common than your experience i think.
To counter the idiotic flagged dead troll who replied to your comment, I hope society helped pay for your scholarships and loans if you could not afford them, because everyone deserves a good education, and that's why we pay taxes. It's a much better use of resources than endless wars and $5000 bribes conditioned on Republicans winning elections via fraud.
Your advice is good, but it comes from a position of privilege. Privilege of having opportunities, having a first world passport, having the social security to take risks, having 200k TC tech jobs available for everyone (this one seems to be going away quickly).
Getting a PhD from a reputable university and working with an advisor and others who are the best in the world at their niche fields opens doors that one wouldn't even know of otherwise. It's one of the most reliable low risk ways of getting you and your family out of a lower middle class life.