Category Archives: Gradute students

The “me too” works…

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Over the last few years, I notice (though it might be anecdotal since I haven’t done a thorough review) that the less original content is present in a poster or talk, the less likely someone is to acknowledge that their work is a remake and seems to simply skip proper referencing. This year, I have seen a perfect (and I mean it!) remake of a work we have published three years ago. The talk did not even had a single reference, not just to our work but to any works…

 

These talks or posters are basically presented as original, totally new. Is this a failure of the supervisor when attributing the topic or that of the student for failing to do a proper literature review?

180 seconds to explain your thesis work?

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We have all heard of the 30 seconds elevator pitch. In  fact, if you search for those terms in Google, you will get over a hundred thousand hits. It seems that this has even been push to an art or even “engineered” systems.

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Warning, may contain a PhD

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Recently saw a comment by a student about not being advised before hand that doing a PhD had many difficulties and challenges. However, my first reaction reading that text was to start laughing. Of course, all that was said was true. But the first thing that came to my mind was the famous warning when you ask for a sundae with nuts at a McDonald : you received (at least in North America) the nuts in a small, sealed separate bag (think allergies); this bag has a warning that reads (seriously): may contain nuts!

Doh!

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PhD thesis examination: you are the expert, behave like one!

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An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.

– Niels Bohr

Quite interestingly graduate studies usually take about 5 years total in order to obtain a PhD. It can sometimes be one year less or one or a few years over (too long is usually not seen as a good sign however). Assuming that this is basically your full time occupation, have you notice that at the end of this time frame, you will have reached about 10000 hours of dedicate training in your field.

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Are you at an exciting phase of your thesis project?

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If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

– Albert Einstein

How do you know for sure that you are at a particularly interesting stage of your thesis project?

When the excitement spread to your supervisor, fellow students and the extended team (collaborators and others). When you present at a meeting and peoples come talk to you with that look in their eyes. When you are asked by scientists or other students unrelated to your project if you have published/submitted your results.

The flip side of that coin is that the pressure is on you (and your supervisor) to convert in a timely fashion to peer-reviewed publications 😉