When you say “I have really thought about this a considerable amount”, I hear “I have diagnosed the problem quite a while ago and it’s creating a pit in my stomach but I haven’t taken any action yet”. I can’t give you any points for that.
When you’re dealing with a difficult problem and if you’re an introspective person it’s easy to get stuck in a loop where you keep going through the same sorts of thoughts. You realize you’re not making much progress but the problem remains so you feel obligated to think about it some more. You should think more, right? It’s an important decision after all?
Nope. Thinking about the problem is not a terminal goal. Thinking is only useful insofar it leads to action. And if your thinking to action ratio is bad, you’ll get mentally exhausted and you’ll have nothing to show for it. It leads to paralysis where all you do is think and think and think.
If you want to make progress you have to find a way to decompose your problem into actionable parts. Not only will action make you feel better, it’s also going to lead to unexplored territory.
So what kind of actions can you take?
Well, your claim is that major conferences require short term commercial papers. So if you go systematically through the papers published in the last year or so you’ll find either (a) all the papers are boring, stupid, silly or wrong. (b) there are a bunch of really cool papers in there. In case of (a) maybe you’re in the wrong field of research. Maybe you should go into algorithms or formal semantics. In this case look at other computer science papers until you find papers that do excite you. In case of (b) contact the authors of the papers; check out their departments; etc, etc.
To recap: Find interesting papers. Find departments where those interesting papers were written. Contact those departments.
Another strategy. Go to the department library and browse through random books that catch your eye. This is guaranteed to give you inspiration.
This is just from the top of my head. But whatever you do, make sure that you don’t just get stuck in a circle of self-destructive thought. Action is key.
If you’re certain you want to eventually get a faculty job, do a combination of teaching and research, own a house and regularly go on holiday, then I can’t think of any alternatives to the conventional PhD → faculty route. What’s the best way to achieve a faculty job? I don’t know. Probably a combination of networking, people skills and doing great research. If you want a faculty job badly enough you can get one. But once you get it there’s no guarantee you’re going to be happy if what you really want is complete autonomy.
I’m sorry I can’t give any targeted advice.
(PS: some people like the idea of travel more than they like travel and some people like the idea of home-ownership more than they like home-ownership. For instance, if you haven’t traveled a lot in the past 5 years you probably don’t find travel all that important (otherwise you would’ve found a way to travel).)
If you want a faculty job badly enough you can get one.
I disagree. I think much of the evidence about the rise of post-docs as principal investigators and the diminishing number of tenured positions is at odds with this claim. This claim is essentially why most students go to a Ph.D. program and they become depressed when they learn it doesn’t work like this about 3 years into the process.
For instance, if you haven’t traveled a lot in the past 5 years you probably don’t find travel all that important (otherwise you would’ve found a way to travel).
In the last 5 years, I’ve taken low-paying math research jobs several summers so that I could live in Paris, Hong Kong, and College Station, TX, just to experience parts of the world I had not been to. I’ve moved (at great personal expense) 3 times in the past 4 years to get out of life situations that I found unsatisfactory. I think that my thinking-to-action ratio is not bad.
You seem to dismiss the possibility that there can be real life Catch-22s. Given my preferences, I think I am in a Catch-22 and I cannot determine an actionable step. Some of my favorite life advice came from a high school math teacher who said “when you don’t know what to do, do something.” I think I am more insightful than just to wallow in akrasia.
So if you go systematically through the papers published in the last year or so you’ll find either (a) all the papers are boring, stupid, silly or wrong.
Yes, this is exactly what I have been doing for the past 2 years. But when I have discussed the option to switch to other research fields with faculty and older graduate students, they are telling me that the condition (a) is going to be true in every research field where there is actually enough grant money to finance my studentship, and that (a) is just a part of life in science and that I should be more focused on just doing programming tasks and coming up with small software developments that cater to commercial interests, leading to papers that fit into condition (a). I completely reject their point of view; I think they are wrong, and I think that if academia is set up this way, then my options are to leave academia for jobs that I think are very suboptimal or else agree to unhappily suffer through the academic hoop-jumping that I don’t like.
Given that these are my only options, I am trying to prepare myself to choose one or the other. But the biggest opportunity cost that I feel scared about is losing the chance for theoretical research and philosophical aspects of science to be a major component of the value that I contribute over my career.
When you say “I have really thought about this a considerable amount”, I hear “I have diagnosed the problem quite a while ago and it’s creating a pit in my stomach but I haven’t taken any action yet”. I can’t give you any points for that.
When you’re dealing with a difficult problem and if you’re an introspective person it’s easy to get stuck in a loop where you keep going through the same sorts of thoughts. You realize you’re not making much progress but the problem remains so you feel obligated to think about it some more. You should think more, right? It’s an important decision after all?
Nope. Thinking about the problem is not a terminal goal. Thinking is only useful insofar it leads to action. And if your thinking to action ratio is bad, you’ll get mentally exhausted and you’ll have nothing to show for it. It leads to paralysis where all you do is think and think and think.
If you want to make progress you have to find a way to decompose your problem into actionable parts. Not only will action make you feel better, it’s also going to lead to unexplored territory.
So what kind of actions can you take?
Well, your claim is that major conferences require short term commercial papers. So if you go systematically through the papers published in the last year or so you’ll find either (a) all the papers are boring, stupid, silly or wrong. (b) there are a bunch of really cool papers in there. In case of (a) maybe you’re in the wrong field of research. Maybe you should go into algorithms or formal semantics. In this case look at other computer science papers until you find papers that do excite you. In case of (b) contact the authors of the papers; check out their departments; etc, etc.
To recap: Find interesting papers. Find departments where those interesting papers were written. Contact those departments.
Another strategy. Go to the department library and browse through random books that catch your eye. This is guaranteed to give you inspiration.
This is just from the top of my head. But whatever you do, make sure that you don’t just get stuck in a circle of self-destructive thought. Action is key.
If you’re certain you want to eventually get a faculty job, do a combination of teaching and research, own a house and regularly go on holiday, then I can’t think of any alternatives to the conventional PhD → faculty route. What’s the best way to achieve a faculty job? I don’t know. Probably a combination of networking, people skills and doing great research. If you want a faculty job badly enough you can get one. But once you get it there’s no guarantee you’re going to be happy if what you really want is complete autonomy.
I’m sorry I can’t give any targeted advice.
(PS: some people like the idea of travel more than they like travel and some people like the idea of home-ownership more than they like home-ownership. For instance, if you haven’t traveled a lot in the past 5 years you probably don’t find travel all that important (otherwise you would’ve found a way to travel).)
I disagree. I think much of the evidence about the rise of post-docs as principal investigators and the diminishing number of tenured positions is at odds with this claim. This claim is essentially why most students go to a Ph.D. program and they become depressed when they learn it doesn’t work like this about 3 years into the process.
In the last 5 years, I’ve taken low-paying math research jobs several summers so that I could live in Paris, Hong Kong, and College Station, TX, just to experience parts of the world I had not been to. I’ve moved (at great personal expense) 3 times in the past 4 years to get out of life situations that I found unsatisfactory. I think that my thinking-to-action ratio is not bad.
You seem to dismiss the possibility that there can be real life Catch-22s. Given my preferences, I think I am in a Catch-22 and I cannot determine an actionable step. Some of my favorite life advice came from a high school math teacher who said “when you don’t know what to do, do something.” I think I am more insightful than just to wallow in akrasia.
Yes, this is exactly what I have been doing for the past 2 years. But when I have discussed the option to switch to other research fields with faculty and older graduate students, they are telling me that the condition (a) is going to be true in every research field where there is actually enough grant money to finance my studentship, and that (a) is just a part of life in science and that I should be more focused on just doing programming tasks and coming up with small software developments that cater to commercial interests, leading to papers that fit into condition (a). I completely reject their point of view; I think they are wrong, and I think that if academia is set up this way, then my options are to leave academia for jobs that I think are very suboptimal or else agree to unhappily suffer through the academic hoop-jumping that I don’t like.
Given that these are my only options, I am trying to prepare myself to choose one or the other. But the biggest opportunity cost that I feel scared about is losing the chance for theoretical research and philosophical aspects of science to be a major component of the value that I contribute over my career.