What is “work” for a PhD student?
Demystifying what goes on in a researcher’s life and mind
I did an earlier Medium post about what a day was like in my PhD life. However, wanting to keep the post within a typical person’s attention span and not wanting to suffer carpel tunnel at age 30, I decided to be very vague about the work that I do on “research” days. In this post, I hope to clarify a little bit more about what I do. I’ll mention some objective work items, but the purpose might sometimes be very vague or unclear (almost like magic).
Let me start by saying that the PhD, in my mind, is a research credential. My goal in a PhD program is to learn how to properly do research, which involves the whole process — finding a field, defining important and interesting questions, and solving them.
Albert Einstein once said “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” Although I love to use this quote when I’m clueless or confused, I think my advisor wouldn’t appreciate it because it’s just an excuse to do nothing. To keep this post informative and not just a musing of my random thoughts and opinions on research, I’ll just list a few common things that I do when I tell people I’m busy doing “research.”
Reading Papers
I think this is the most underlooked part of the PhD, mainly because reading never produces research by itself. However, it does generate ideas and thoughts that will lead to something in the future. Whenever a big conference passes, there will be papers in the technical sessions. I always spend about 30 minutes to one hour scouring through the sessions and abstracts, finding papers that interest me and are related to what I do, and then I mark them to read later. Some papers I skim for main ideas, but papers closer to my field or research topic at the time, I read in more depth. I usually go through 2 papers a day on days I do research (1 in-depth, 1 skim). On top of that, I save time to read a fundamental and seminal paper in a related field. For me, that’s anything from security to distributed systems to cryptography theory papers. Many times, I have good ideas when reading papers, and they turn into actionable research projects. Other times, it allows me to figure out past research on a topic I’m working on. Finally, reading papers just gives me a good intuition into what a good and publishable idea is and how it should be positioned.
Writing Code/Solving Problems
I like to refer to this as “figuring shit out.” I do primarily systems research, which requires me to build and implement systems. Sometimes, the code I write may be related to a project or it might be trying an idea out to see if it’s practical. Sometimes, I just write code for fun in an interesting area to find ideas of hard problems. I also study cryptography, which requires some math and number theory. I modify cryptography schemes to work in my system or try to learn some math to understand what is even going on. This part is nice because I feel like I always have some form of deliverable whether it be code or math written on a piece of paper.
Writing
Some researchers say this might be the most annoying part of research, and some really enjoy it. It is definitely a necessary part whether you like it or not. I write in two different forms. First and foremost, there is always writing for a paper, a grant, a fellowship application, etc. This is key to disseminating your research ideas and positioning why you’re solving an important problem. I feel that every research idea should be wrapped up with a research paper. Second, when the project is in its initial stages, I like to write down any idea or design for a system. I sometimes write down the introduction of a possible paper to define the problem or write a design of a system in clear steps. This allows me to crystallize and organize my thoughts from a discussion, and I realize that it makes writing code a lot easier because it breaks up the system into manageable parts.
Talking
Finally, I think it’s important to talk to other students or researchers about your ideas. I didn’t do this as much in the beginning of my PhD, but I’ve done it more and found it helpful. I realized that it’s good to receive many perspectives on an idea so that you won’t be stuck in “tunnel” vision and be shocked by bad peer reviews on a submitted paper. I usually talk to fellow graduate students. Many times, I also reach out to other professors that I may know from graduate school or at MIT. I feel like constant talking and discussion of ideas will not only make your idea stronger, but it’ll generate more ideas.
I’ve tried to summarize a lot of what I believe to be “research.” I put quotes because everyone has a different opinion on what “research” is and how it’s done. I find doing these four things to be very helpful. I could honestly write a 4 minute post (I guess that’s how people are defining blog posts these days) on each of these topics with specific examples, but I wanted to provide a good summary of what I refer to as “research.”
