8 Myths about PhD & Research in CS
Warning : This is one hell of an arrogant & obnoxious post. If you feel like feeling offended, stop reading right now! (Did you notice that I did not even say ‘Please’ or ‘Kindly’?)
Myth#1 : A PhD is extended school “studies” – extended beyond tolerable limits!
Truth : I am NOT cramming books, writing suicide provoking answers in exams or submitting half-baked assignments every week here! And please, post-doc is NOT undergraduate courses extended to the limit! Anyone asking “For just how many more years do you intend to keep studying??” in spite of me politely explaining a dozen times that “I am not studying in the school sense, rather researching”, is asking to be pushed under the wheels of an auto-rickshaw at the very next opportune moment!
Myth#2 : Research is boring!
Truth : If it was, none of the researchers from Galileo to ‘Venki’ Ramakrishnan would have done what they did. Can you imagine life without electricity? Medicine? Aircrafts? Cars? Satellite TV? Computers? That beloved iPad? Or that inseparable mobile phone? If not, you better dare not call research boring!
Myth#3 : CS researchers sit at a dark corner of an attic/basement/garage 24×7 typing away to a computer that has a blinking screen with black background & green font.
Truth : We do sit typing away to a computer for long periods of time. But so do you. After all, YOU are the one at the other end of the chat session on google chat! 😛
Myth#4 : CS researchers write scary C++/Java code every waking minute. If you print the amount of code all CS researchers in this world churn out, you’d need to borrow cupboard space from Jupiter.
Truth : I don’t remember the last time I wrote 3000 lines of code. Actually, I do – it was an assignment that I did wrong. CS researchers – most of them, most often – think more, code less! And they do NOT remember every bit of syntax of every programming language and can NOT debug your code in less than 5 minutes!
Myth#5 : Feel the urge to hack into that frienemy’s GMail/Orkut account? Call that CS researcher (yes, the one swimming in caffeine in that dark corner of that attic)
Truth : Too late. You should have asked a teenage me – that was when I lost interest in hacking. Or please ask one of those “techies” around who blog only about how to get a piece of software to do what it was not designed to do! No offense to “techies”. . but please spare me these hacking requests. Hacking no longer arouses me!
Myth#6 : Need an antivirus software? Or need to purge your laptop of the zillion viruses that you have managed to attract? Call that jobless CS PhD student.
Truth : That jobless CS PhD student might just be so outdated with anything that concerns Microsoft Windows that she now fumbles to navigate the Office 2007 interface! Shocking, but true. Sad, but true. Come to terms with it. Or delete my contact details from your phone. Please. Right away.
Myth#7 : Researchers read loads of books. All these books have complicated scary formulae printed 5 per page. Or it could be huge diagrams or graphs or rows and rows of numbers with 8 digits after the decimal point. Apart from hundreds of pages of text that sounds swahili, that is.
Truth : Neither Ashok Banker’s Ramayana nor “How To Rule The World: A Handbook For The Aspiring Dictator” has any of those. Sorry to disappoint you.
Myth#8 : That PhD student is busy at all times of the day because she is busy attending classes. After all, there would be more course work for higher ‘degree’s.
Truth : Actually, please continue believing that. Saves me a lot of pointless talk which generally involves countering the questions “When would you finish that PhD?”, “When would you come over to meet us?” and “When do you plan to get married?” with subtly sarcastic replies which you wouldn’t get most of the time!
Creativity & CS Research
Happened to watch this TED talk on “Nurturing Creativity” by Elizabeth Gilbert last night. And felt moved.
When she talks of the self-doubt a creative person is almost always filled with, it strikes a chord.
When she talks of the ancient Roman way of thinking of “genius” as a magical divine entity who invisibly helps the artist and shapes the out come of the work – a brilliant psychological construct to protect an artist from both the plaguing self-doubt that comes with not-so-good results and the dangerous narcissism that comes with very-good results – it strikes a chord.
When she talks of the poem coming thud thud thud to the poet and her missing it if she doesn’t reach a paper & pen in time to catch the poem & transcribe it, it strikes a chord.
And when she finally concludes that it is best for a creative person to dissociate himself/herself from the results and just concentrate on giving his/her 100% to the creative process, it strikes a chord.
Now, me saying that would be laughed/frowned upon, given that I am this “geek” or “nerd” (or both) who calls herself a “researcher”, a “computer scientist” and spends insane number of hours in front of a computer in a depressing lab. “Where is creativity or art in that?” you ask?
Donald Knuth says “Computer programming is an art form, like the creation of poetry or music.”. By extension, CS research – with the necessity and opportunity to be able to “shift levels of abstraction, from low level to high level. To see something in the small and to see something in the large” (again in Knuth’s words) – is a higher art form. And when Knuth, one of the Gods of CS, says such things implying that CS is one of the greatest creative art forms, who the hell are you to refute, huh?
So that’s settled – I am involved in creative stuff, and hence all that Liz said in the talk applies to me. Matter settled.
But do ideas really “come” to me? Well, I’d like to think so. . How else can I explain the idea/solution occurring to me first and the “basis for that idea/solution” becoming clear to me only after a couple of weeks of analysis? As Leslie Lamport puts it, “When I look back on my work, most of it seems like dumb luck – I happened to be looking at the right problem, at the right time, having the right background.”
Am I filled with self-doubt? Well, only sometimes, luckily. At times when the “looking at the right problem, at right time, having the right background” combination acts all elusive. At times when faced with the skeptical “You are working on that? Just how practical or real-life affecting a problem is that?”. At times when thrown that sarcastic “Oh, so you are working for the benefit of the generation to come two decades hence. Good”.
But that said, the beauty of the whole thing is in those “Eureka moments” – when you have given your 100% to groping (almost) blindly in the dark for the right problem or its solution and happen to see nice results.
So, as per Liz’s suggestion, I am thinking of having this notion of a “genius” fairy that “gives” me ideas.. A magical creature whose thought would keep me grounded when I do see good results from my efforts. . A divine creature who would take the blame when “my” ideas fail, at whom I can shout at for not “passing along” good ideas.
Sounds fun. I just need a name for my “genius” fairy. Any suggestions? 😉
CS conferences & fun, inspiration, point or the lack of it
Say “Conference”
I think…
- Paper presentations – mostly boring
- Coffee – with stupid non-dairy creamer if the conference is abroad
- Looking for that precious seat which hides you when you nod off from the poor speaker on the stage
- Someone beating you to that seat & you ending up in the first row, struggling to keep eyes open
- Sometimes, very rarely, catching up with a dear friend, gossiping, giggling, having fun while folks around are busy talking power, performance and defects
- Keynotes speeches – may or may not awaken you
- Boring lunches if you have no one to talk to
- A registration kit – a bag, some small souvenir, a notepad, a pen, and.. a CD of the proceedings of the conference that you are never even pop into a CD drive
- Travel, exploration, experience of a new place – the best part of it
- In case of out of country travel, applying for travel grants & getting reimbursement -Arrrrgh, the most irritating part of it!
- Sleepy, tired, bored people around who have the same thought as you – “When would this end? When can I get some fresh air or some sleep or both?”
Well, it should have been, and I’d have preferred it to have been..
- Idea or Findings presentations – kicking off new ideas
- Keynote speeches – the inspiring ones of the kind that leave you with a sincere, silly grin and ideas to contemplate
- Meeting interesting people who are infectiously enthusiastic about stuff being discussed
- Lunch and Coffee breaks turning into impromptu brain-storming sessions
- That proceedings CD which you’d want to look up for details of interesting ideas/findings that you’ve just heard of
- Panel discussions, open debates, mass brainstorming sessions
- Travel, exploration, experience of a new place – an added bonus
- Inspiration, mental refreshment & enthusiasm to take back home
- The want to attend the conference the next year and every year that follows
Now, why the hell doesn’t that happen?
When a V.S.Ramachandran can make neuroscience so engaging and connect with a non-scientific audience, why can’t a CS researcher connect with a CS research audience? Forget about other speakers, why can’t even the so called keynote speakers make an impact? Why are you subjected to keynotes where the speaker doesn’t even recognize what’s there on the next slide and asks his colleague to help him with it?
When as the researcher, I find the work in my paper exciting, when the Program Committee has found it valuable enough, why can’t I hold audience’s attention for a few minutes and share the excitement?
Is it that CS is too bland, boring a subject to inspire? Is it too intimate a field of research to be able to spread the joy in the community?
I guess it’s just that we have been taking conferences too lightly .. We have been taking them as an alternative to journals – fast turn-around time, fewer pages to write, less rigour needed and voila, you can take a few days off on the pretext of attending!
I guess it’s just that there has come about this unwritten rule that “It does not really matter if your talk is as insipid as mud, you’ve got a paper published. Chill out!”.
I guess it’s just that no one really cares any longer if they enjoy the technical part of the conference. It’s about networking – be seen at the right places, be seen among the right people, be seen often, people should recall you as that guy from that institute whom we met in that conference, that conference and the other conference.
I guess it’s just that hosting a conference has become an issue of pride and has got nothing to do with how much purpose the whole drama of organizing it over months – involving a couple 100 people, a hall full of people from the world over travelling to the your place, all the food, money & effort – serves!
And as long as speakers treat conference presentations as summarizing their papers – abstract, objective, literature survey, idea, result…. As long as the audience treats presentations as a replacement to reading the papers. . As long as people attend conferences just because their accepted paper would get published only if they do. . As long as CS folks stick to rigour, completeness and formal language even in presentations. . things are not going to change.
Sadly!
And why do I write this now?
Because I just realized that the only long lasting thing that I have gained from the last conference I attended (in China) is a taste for jasmine tea!!
Read and See at your own risk 
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