Professor = Smart?

If you think all PhD advisors are smart, it means you've never seen mine..... =)

So the story goes like this..

For the past week, I worked full 7 days for a report that is to be meant for a school's biannual update. The report is actually a compilation of 3 persons' works (a Junior's, a Senior's, and mine), and at first, I was supposed to be the one who collate all the works. I was told this on last last Sunday (20 Feb) and Prof said that he "would like to see it by last February", which I assumed that today it should have been submitted to him.

So, since that last last Sunday, I totally put myself into making the report. Because I believe that the deadline is rather tight ahead. It was quite tiring work (making the report), because firstly, Prof asked a review of a current building design guideline to be put in the report, and since Prof never asked to whom, I assumed that's my work, and I found no previous work about that that I could copy (:P), so I gotta work on it, and secondly, after my colleagues' part arrived to me, I found even more troubles, because it seems that my colleagues did not see how the report is going to be "logic". So, my brain was totally working on "how" to make the report logic, and it really absorb my time. Collating works is totally not easy, esp when you really want it to be good. (Anw, this is the first time my Prof ask me to be responsible of such thing, so of course I'd like to use this time to boost my performance).

Well, days went by, (and I worked fully in Saturday and Sunday too, making table of contents, number of pages, creating abstract and such), after a few editing after comments from my colleagues (the junior and the senior), the report was submitted to the Prof by my senior colleague at 2 pm today (and I feel my body is having fever today, I know I'm going to be sick). And of course I know that my work doesn't end just like that. Since it is just submitted, I expect some update in my email regarding editing of report after Prof's comments.

So, as expected, an email came regarding the report from my senior. But I felt so angry after reading the email. My senior said:

************************

From: "Senior"
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011 2:09 PM
To: "Me"
Cc: "Prof"
Subject: report


Hi "Me",

Can you please send me the report of Word format. Prof. asked me to check the English and I need to edit the report. Thank you.

Best regards,
"Senior"

From: "Prof"
Sent: 2011年2月28日 15:47
To: "Senior"
Subject: report

Dear "Senior"

Have you read through the report and sort out the English part?
Please try to do that first before I read it. How is your family?

Thank you.

"Prof"

*******************************

My senior said he needed to edit the report. I found it so rude. How come he can just say he "need to edit" the report. Hello! Those are my words in the report that I have spent my time just to write nicely and in orderly manner. At first when I sent to him for him to see (I finished yesterday night (830pm) actually, so I have sent to others by then in "pdf" format, cos "Words" format seems messy), he said nothing about the language usage. Means, he WAS OK with what I wrote. But, just because Prof asked :"Hello, have you checked the language usage in the report?" And he said he wanted to edit it? NO WAY!! How if he really edit and change the words composition I have worked on?!?!?! And furthermore, Prof DON'T ask us to EDIT! Hello.. he just asked whether the report HAS BEEN CHECKED AGAIN. Ok, so I replied "nicely" to him saying that that's not what Prof meant. But he replied to me like this:

*****************
From: "Senior"
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011 4:28 PM
To: "Me"
Subject: RE: report

As shown below in the email sent by Prof. , he asked me to check English first before he reads it. If you are very confident that there is no English errors in this report. Please tell Prof. directly that there is no need to check again for me. If not, please send me the Chapters 1, 2, 4 and 5. Thank you!

Best regards,
"Senior"
*****************

What the %$^&#$^%! Of course, I am confident. He even asked only my part that is to be sent to him. So, you think yours don't contain logic error?? I am the one edited the report, including your part, so that it would be logically sound, you know!! (ok lah, disclaimer: overall his part contain no logic error, because it is an excerpt of the paper he has written before, however i need to edit them to fit into the report). And furthermore, you have cc-ed Prof asking about the works to be sent to you at the first time (see above first email). So, I believe (if my Prof is "really" clever), Prof knows that it is me who do everything, yeah! But still, as my senior said, I said directly to the Prof that I'm confident about the report, and that I am the one who collated the report, bla bla bla. Huff.. no comment reply from Prof yet, I hope it really means good. #expectingfor"important"emailtomorrow

Hm, it's 530pm now. The conversation between the senior and me has stopped. Just need to wait for Prof's comments about the report. Still need to present this Wed, akh, no update yet! Works, works, works.. I hope that it is right for me to defend myself in front of my Senior #onlybosscancorrectme

***


Anw, has any of my friends here wondering how come from Prof ask me to collate the work at first then my senior is the one in the end seem to be responsible?

So, on last Friday morning (it means almost report deadline), Prof emailed (I translated to human language so that everybody can understand) like this:

*****************
From: "Prof"
Sent: 2011年2月25日 7:40
To: "Senior"; "Me"; "Junior"
Cc: "Another Senior Going to Write His Thesis"
Subject: RE: Design guideline

Dear "Me", "Junior, "Senior"

ALARM! ALARM! ALARM!
There is a change in current design guideline. We have to put it in the report.
*Panic**Panic**Panic*
"Senior", I assign you to be in charge of the whole report.

Regards,
"Prof"
*****************

Prof sent that kind of email after 5 days I have been working on the report and reviewing the guideline as what he said to me firstly. The review of the guideline has been finished by me, hey! And how come Prof can say like that, has he forgotten that he firstly asked me to do all the works?? How come he can ask somebody else to be responsible without even asking me?? Well, there was some kind of misunderstanding with him since the beginning of my PhD, so actually, though upset, I'm not surprised that he still doesn't trust me. So anyway.. I replied "to" my senior "cc-ed" my Prof the parts that I have finished working on saying that I'm still working on other parts and hope to be able to be sent to my-senior-in-charge by time.

Well, on that Friday, because I was really still working on collating the parts so that the report would be logic, I asked for discussion with the senior and the junior about the direction of the report (I was stucked then). And meeting the Junior, only to find out that actually the Senior is not in town since that last last Sunday, until the next ONE MONTH!! And my Prof still asked him to be in-charge, while I know that by middle of this month, the report has to be submitted to an organization, means that the in-charge will still be not in town. HAHAHA, I JUST LAUGH at that! This is EVEN FUNNIER than GAGS! Works can't stop following you even you are in holiday, hahahaha! Oh, no, I dun't wanna be like that one day, but I can't stop laughing!!

Disclaimer: the person writing this has no bad intention or bad relationship with the Senior, basically she was just angry about the way the world treated her works. #worksonlyonweekdays

So me!!

"Better than expected might be the level of quality that's necessary to succeed.Of course, once that becomes the standard, the expectation is reset."

Thus, it is imperative to know that expectation may and certainly will kill us, especially for student with too much dose of eagerness. The best way is to adjust the boss' expectation to be lower than what we are capable of delivering (but not too low please, we all need respect and somehow satisfy our self esteem anyway). I know we are all smart and good people. But those things won't bring us far.

"Moderation is the key". Maybe that is just what's best for graduate students. Manage expectation, not only ours, but also other people's. Those higher than us in status in particular, to our advantage. Yes, for our sanity and our worth saving youth.

Resolutions of the day

Gua sering berprinsip segala sesuatu itu lebih cepat selesai akan lebih baik, namun selalu ada pengecualian untuk segala hal. Untuk hal-hal tertentu, LEBIH DITUNDA LEBIH BAIK lho.

Gua nggak pernah sadar kalau pengertian kami tentang “absurd” itu berbeda, jadi gua akan melakukan SEMUA yang dia suruh.

Gua nggak mau peduli kalau dia nggak punya pendirian dan kata2nya nggak bias dipegang, sehingga resolusi di atas nggak akan menjamin keselamatan gua, tapi kalau hal itu terjadi, gua akan TETAP DIAM.

Gua sadar akan hobinya menyindir ornag dengan sinis dan kalau itu terjadi gua TIDAK AKAN BEREAKSI.

Terakhir, thesis gua sudah disubmit sehingga gua sebaiknya berhenti bersikap seperti gua adalah muridnya.

AYS
~kedinginan~

Oknum R: Princess Rapunzel is such a PhD-material.

ehemm...ehemmm... Yeap..just another PhD student disguised as master student. "Oknum R" is what we shall refer him as here. Sensational as usual. Lovely. Thank you Oknum R. :D

7 AM, the usual morning lineup Start on the chores .. and by then it's like 7:15 And so I'll read a book Or maybe two or three .. and basically Just wonder when will my life begin? .. And I'll reread the books If I have time to spare .. Stuck in the same place And I'll keep wanderin' and wanderin' And wanderin' and wonderin' WHEN WILL MY LIFE BEGIN.


Substitute... with....


chores....washing bottles and preparing samples
book/books....paper/papers
same place....lab or office, what else? duh..


Before dating Rapunzel, am so gonna lecture her on CFA stuffs. 

The disposable academic

Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time

Doctoral degrees

Dec 16th 2010 | from PRINT EDITIO

ON THE evening before All Saints’ Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. In those days a thesis was simply a position one wanted to argue. Luther, an Augustinian friar, asserted that Christians could not buy their way to heaven. Today a doctoral thesis is both an idea and an account of a period of original research. Writing one is the aim of the hundreds of thousands of students who embark on a doctorate of philosophy (PhD) every year.

In most countries a PhD is a basic requirement for a career in academia. It is an introduction to the world of independent research—a kind of intellectual masterpiece, created by an apprentice in close collaboration with a supervisor. The requirements to complete one vary enormously between countries, universities and even subjects. Some students will first have to spend two years working on a master’s degree or diploma. Some will receive a stipend; others will pay their own way. Some PhDs involve only research, some require classes and examinations and some require the student to teach undergraduates. A thesis can be dozens of pages in mathematics, or many hundreds in history. As a result, newly minted PhDs can be as young as their early 20s or world-weary forty-somethings.

One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some describe their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle. “It isn’t graduate school itself that is discouraging,” says one student, who confesses to rather enjoying the hunt for free pizza. “What’s discouraging is realising the end point has been yanked out of reach.”

Whining PhD students are nothing new, but there seem to be genuine problems with the system that produces research doctorates (the practical “professional doctorates” in fields such as law, business and medicine have a more obvious value). There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.

Rich pickings
For most of history even a first degree at a university was the privilege of a rich few, and many academic staff did not hold doctorates. But as higher education expanded after the second world war, so did the expectation that lecturers would hold advanced degrees. American universities geared up first: by 1970 America was producing just under a third of the world’s university students and half of its science and technology PhDs (at that time it had only 6% of the global population). Since then America’s annual output of PhDs has doubled, to 64,000.

Other countries are catching up. Between 1998 and 2006 the number of doctorates handed out in all OECD countries grew by 40%, compared with 22% for America. PhD production sped up most dramatically in Mexico, Portugal, Italy and Slovakia. Even Japan, where the number of young people is shrinking, churned out about 46% more PhDs. Part of that growth reflects the expansion of university education outside America. Richard Freeman, a labour economist at Harvard University, says that by 2006 America was enrolling just 12% of the world’s students.

But universities have discovered that PhD students are cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour. With more PhD students they can do more research, and in some countries more teaching, with less money. A graduate assistant at Yale might earn $20,000 a year for nine months of teaching. The average pay of full professors in America was $109,000 in 2009—higher than the average for judges and magistrates.

Indeed, the production of PhDs has far outstripped demand for university lecturers. In a recent book, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, an academic and a journalist, report that America produced more than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period there were just 16,000 new professorships. Using PhD students to do much of the undergraduate teaching cuts the number of full-time jobs. Even in Canada, where the output of PhD graduates has grown relatively modestly, universities conferred 4,800 doctorate degrees in 2007 but hired just 2,616 new full-time professors. Only a few fast-developing countries, such as Brazil and China, now seem short of PhDs.

A short course in supply and demand
In research the story is similar. PhD students and contract staff known as “postdocs”, described by one student as “the ugly underbelly of academia”, do much of the research these days. There is a glut of postdocs too. Dr Freeman concluded from pre-2000 data that if American faculty jobs in the life sciences were increasing at 5% a year, just 20% of students would land one. In Canada 80% of postdocs earn $38,600 or less per year before tax—the average salary of a construction worker. The rise of the postdoc has created another obstacle on the way to an academic post. In some areas five years as a postdoc is now a prerequisite for landing a secure full-time job.

These armies of low-paid PhD researchers and postdocs boost universities’, and therefore countries’, research capacity. Yet that is not always a good thing. Brilliant, well-trained minds can go to waste when fashions change. The post-Sputnik era drove the rapid growth in PhD physicists that came to an abrupt halt as the Vietnam war drained the science budget. Brian Schwartz, a professor of physics at the City University of New York, says that in the 1970s as many as 5,000 physicists had to find jobs in other areas.

In America the rise of PhD teachers’ unions reflects the breakdown of an implicit contract between universities and PhD students: crummy pay now for a good academic job later. Student teachers in public universities such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison formed unions as early as the 1960s, but the pace of unionisation has increased recently. Unions are now spreading to private universities; though Yale and Cornell, where university administrators and some faculty argue that PhD students who teach are not workers but apprentices, have resisted union drives. In 2002 New York University was the first private university to recognise a PhD teachers’ union, but stopped negotiating with it three years later.

In some countries, such as Britain and America, poor pay and job prospects are reflected in the number of foreign-born PhD students. Dr Freeman estimates that in 1966 only 23% of science and engineering PhDs in America were awarded to students born outside the country. By 2006 that proportion had increased to 48%. Foreign students tend to tolerate poorer working conditions, and the supply of cheap, brilliant, foreign labour also keeps wages down.

A PhD may offer no financial benefit over a master’s degree. It can even reduce earnings

Proponents of the PhD argue that it is worthwhile even if it does not lead to permanent academic employment. Not every student embarks on a PhD wanting a university career and many move successfully into private-sector jobs in, for instance, industrial research. That is true; but drop-out rates suggest that many students become dispirited. In America only 57% of doctoral students will have a PhD ten years after their first date of enrolment. In the humanities, where most students pay for their own PhDs, the figure is 49%. Worse still, whereas in other subject areas students tend to jump ship in the early years, in the humanities they cling like limpets before eventually falling off. And these students started out as the academic cream of the nation. Research at one American university found that those who finish are no cleverer than those who do not. Poor supervision, bad job prospects or lack of money cause them to run out of steam.

Even graduates who find work outside universities may not fare all that well. PhD courses are so specialised that university careers offices struggle to assist graduates looking for jobs, and supervisors tend to have little interest in students who are leaving academia. One OECD study shows that five years after receiving their degrees, more than 60% of PhDs in Slovakia and more than 45% in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany and Spain were still on temporary contracts. Many were postdocs. About one-third of Austria’s PhD graduates take jobs unrelated to their degrees. In Germany 13% of all PhD graduates end up in lowly occupations. In the Netherlands the proportion is 21%.

A very slim premium

PhD graduates do at least earn more than those with a bachelor’s degree. A study in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management by Bernard Casey shows that British men with a bachelor’s degree earn 14% more than those who could have gone to university but chose not to. The earnings premium for a PhD is 26%. But the premium for a master’s degree, which can be accomplished in as little as one year, is almost as high, at 23%. In some subjects the premium for a PhD vanishes entirely. PhDs in maths and computing, social sciences and languages earn no more than those with master’s degrees. The premium for a PhD is actually smaller than for a master’s degree in engineering and technology, architecture and education. Only in medicine, other sciences, and business and financial studies is it high enough to be worthwhile. Over all subjects, a PhD commands only a 3% premium over a master’s degree.

Dr Schwartz, the New York physicist, says the skills learned in the course of a PhD can be readily acquired through much shorter courses. Thirty years ago, he says, Wall Street firms realised that some physicists could work out differential equations and recruited them to become “quants”, analysts and traders. Today several short courses offer the advanced maths useful for finance. “A PhD physicist with one course on differential equations is not competitive,” says Dr Schwartz.

Many students say they are pursuing their subject out of love, and that education is an end in itself. Some give little thought to where the qualification might lead. In one study of British PhD graduates, about a third admitted that they were doing their doctorate partly to go on being a student, or put off job hunting. Nearly half of engineering students admitted to this. Scientists can easily get stipends, and therefore drift into doing a PhD. But there are penalties, as well as benefits, to staying at university. Workers with “surplus schooling”—more education than a job requires—are likely to be less satisfied, less productive and more likely to say they are going to leave their jobs.

The interests of universities and tenured academics are misaligned with those of PhD students

Academics tend to regard asking whether a PhD is worthwhile as analogous to wondering whether there is too much art or culture in the world. They believe that knowledge spills from universities into society, making it more productive and healthier. That may well be true; but doing a PhD may still be a bad choice for an individual.

The interests of academics and universities on the one hand and PhD students on the other are not well aligned. The more bright students stay at universities, the better it is for academics. Postgraduate students bring in grants and beef up their supervisors’ publication records. Academics pick bright undergraduate students and groom them as potential graduate students. It isn’t in their interests to turn the smart kids away, at least at the beginning. One female student spoke of being told of glowing opportunities at the outset, but after seven years of hard slog she was fobbed off with a joke about finding a rich husband.
Monica Harris, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, is a rare exception. She believes that too many PhDs are being produced, and has stopped admitting them. But such unilateral academic birth control is rare. One Ivy-League president, asked recently about PhD oversupply, said that if the top universities cut back others will step in to offer them instead.

Noble pursuits
Many of the drawbacks of doing a PhD are well known. Your correspondent was aware of them over a decade ago while she slogged through a largely pointless PhD in theoretical ecology. As Europeans try to harmonise higher education, some institutions are pushing the more structured learning that comes with an American PhD.

The organisations that pay for research have realised that many PhDs find it tough to transfer their skills into the job market. Writing lab reports, giving academic presentations and conducting six-month literature reviews can be surprisingly unhelpful in a world where technical knowledge has to be assimilated quickly and presented simply to a wide audience. Some universities are now offering their PhD students training in soft skills such as communication and teamwork that may be useful in the labour market. In Britain a four-year NewRoutePhD claims to develop just such skills in graduates.

Measurements and incentives might be changed, too. Some university departments and academics regard numbers of PhD graduates as an indicator of success and compete to produce more. For the students, a measure of how quickly those students get a permanent job, and what they earn, would be more useful. Where penalties are levied on academics who allow PhDs to overrun, the number of students who complete rises abruptly, suggesting that students were previously allowed to fester.

Many of those who embark on a PhD are the smartest in their class and will have been the best at everything they have done. They will have amassed awards and prizes. As this year’s new crop of graduate students bounce into their research, few will be willing to accept that the system they are entering could be designed for the benefit of others, that even hard work and brilliance may well not be enough to succeed, and that they would be better off doing something else. They might use their research skills to look harder at the lot of the disposable academic. Someone should write a thesis about that.

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/17723223

Nobody is omniscient.

Yes..I, foolishly, thought that "Proffessors" are god-damn smart, in general, based on which samples of population. Distorted statistics, perception, and expectation.

The fact is that...

Duh...

Why do I have to reinstate the established fact about neurotrophic factors for my reviewers. They are supposed to know this. Duh... troublesome.discouraging. dissapointing. annoying. absurd.

Serfdom in the name of...

Qualifications Gross Starting Salary
Pass Degree $2,550
Pass with Merit $2,850
Honours $3,050 to $3,200

Above is taken from MOE website, a salary you may expect for being a teacher (primary - JC). Quite good offer, isn't it?

Let's compare that to a 'job' with requirement of:
1. minimum second upper class honour
2. expected to work 8-12 hours a day, some including weekends. no overtime compensation, in fact there is no such thing as overtime.
3. Your work may or may not gives result, nobody even sure if the result is exist. Competitors may get the result first, and make your work useless. Very high uncertainty and stress.

For the 'job' you get less than the pass degree holder being a teacher.

Dear friend, the 'job' is being a PhD student.

Some says: PhD students are not bad people, they just made a terrible life choice. :)

Too Bad

What would you do if your advisor suddenly submit a journal paper, with broken English, not comprehensive and absurd elaboration, using your name as first author... without your permission!!!