"Before reading his book, I too had the idealized notion of "brilliant idea, years of writing one paper about it". The reality isn't quite as fantastic, but I appreciate learning the truth over belated disillusionment."
I don't know whether that's the convention in your field (or with your advisor), so I don't want to make any generalizations. It's certainly possible to graduate with one big idea -> single paper, but that's just not what I ended up doing.
whoa thanks for the compliments!
re: focus -- yes, that's key. but of course, it's bad to be blindly focused down a bad direction, too. don't put too much pressure on yourself early on, since nearly everyone flops and flounders.
re: what to do over the summer -- i don't know if there's much you can do to prepare :) maybe reading your professor's past papers? again, i wouldn't stress about it too much.
Re:The Ph.D Grind: A Ph.D Student Memoir
by needAnAccount on Sunday July 01, 2012 @01:28AM
(#4183946)
I'm also in chemical engineering and am looking to integrate programming into my work in grad school. What did you find to work on that's programming related?
Find a grad school with access to a supercomputer. There's a lot of fun ChemE problems that require one of these to solve. Simulating classical or quantum systems (molecular dynamics) takes a lot of algorithmic knowledge from CS and a lot of chemistry knowledge to understand the principles. Then the engineering knowledge is for scaling it up so that you can make something practical with your results.
As someone who just graduated with a B.S. in chemical engineering and will start work toward my PhD in the fall (also in chemical engineering, but will actually involve a TON of programming), this strikes a chord with me.
A few takeaways from the article:
-The author does not give himself nearly enough credit. "Self-deprecating" is probably the right term. He considers himself average, but he is far above average. I mean this as a compliment of course.
-I think some of those tools he wrote could actually help me with my work (particularly CDE) -- I'll have to go take a look.
-I am going to have to learn how to focus, and very quickly. I consider myself very motivated/stubborn but I get distracted so easily that it's ridiculous, and this is not going to work for grad school unless I alter my behavior substantially before I get there.
-Before reading his book, I too had the idealized notion of "brilliant idea, years of writing one paper about it". The reality isn't quite as fantastic, but I appreciate learning the truth over belated disillusionment.
-Just realized the author is pgbovine -- excellent work! I currently have a completely free summer to do whatever -- would you have any tips on how I should prepare before I get to grad school? I already know which professor I will be working with, so I'm trying to figure out what level of "initiative" I should take before I arrive.