Note: This article is automatically translated, please turn to the Chinese version for more accurate expression if possible.

There is still no clear plan for my future. There are many ways to go in the future. Beiyou Zhibo, foreign school insurance research, overseas study and study/reading blogs must be slowly understood. At the same time, you need to figure out what you want, but these also require more experience to make a decision. Ph.D. Grind is a memoir of a Ph.D. student in computer science at Stanford University from 2006 to 2012. I have simply read this little book these days and have a general impression of the doctoral life.

This book can be found on the author’s personal website , with some questions and a lite version.

If the English is not good, some people have translated the Chinese version. I uploaded a copy on OSS. Of course, the direct search for “博士研磨” can also be found.

Summary of content

The author’s Ph.D. program has gone through six years. How did the author decide to persue a PhD? His childhood impression was that the father of work faced the risk of unemployment, and the mother of the professor was stable and very free. It is stupid to decide according to the impression of a child. The real motivation comes from the fact that the author did not experience well in the company’s previous internship. On the other hand, he felt the experience of teaching assistants (teaching assistants) and research assistants (assistant research). interest. He finished the Master at MIT, and his excellent experience helped him apply for a Ph.D. in Stanford, and there are scholarships from other institutions that do not need to follow a specific professor to get funding.

The above is my timeline for reference.

Some thinking

To sum up, it is mainly necessary to persue a PhD carefully. The main function of this memoir still gives me some more realistic impressions of the doctoral life. Here are some aspects that I have not thought of before:

• The research direction cannot be based on your own interests, and it must be consistent with the professor’s fund (there are other scholarships that are different).
• The papers are checked by human. People in different directions in the computer field have different appetites, so it is important to know how the papers in this field should be modified.
• Lower grade doctoral students usually only does the hard work
• Professors who have obtained tenure positions are not eager to publish papers, and temporary professors are different. Inconsistent goals during the research process can have serious consequences.

Personally, I don’t want to stay in BUPT in the future. According to the current situation, it will be divided into two lines of work and academics in the future, and the master’s and doctoral degrees correspond clearly. What is more confusing is that it seems that the artificial intelligence direction doctors transfer to the industrial sector after the salary is much higher than the master’s degree, then the reading will not be a better choice to enter the industry?

Still need to try in the lab and company internship to see which one suits me better.