The Illustrated Guide to a PhD

matt.might.net

410 points by chii 3 months ago


mattmight - 3 months ago

Original author of the guide here. Wonderful to see these little illustrations still making the rounds. I first published them in 2010!

To those in the comments who mentioned you are just starting your own PhD: Good luck to you! And, I hope you, like I once did, find a problem that you can fall in love with for a few years.

To those just finished: Congratulations! Don’t forget to keep pushing!

To those many years out: You have to keep pushing too, but there can be tremendous value in starting all over again by pushing in a different direction. You have no idea what you may find between the tips of two fields.

fl4tul4 - 3 months ago

Yes, I can attest that nowadays, in some fields, research has become a 'game', where:

- people torture data until it yields unreproducible results;

- people choose venues that maximise their chances of getting published (and pay for publication sometimes, I'm looking at you, APC);

- little concern given to excellence, rigour, and impact;

- the chase for a 'diploma' from a renowned institute without putting the effort;

I could go on and on, but I'll stop now.

Perhaps something changes, I am waiting for this to happen for some time now (10y and counting).

It's a bad system but that's what we have (at the moment).