Useful Things to Know About Ph. D. Thesis Research

This article was written by H.T. Kung.(Prepared for "What is Research" Immigration Course, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University, 14 October 1987)

link:
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~htk/thesis.htm

There are several interesting topic in this article. In the subject 4 he presented 4 stages for a Ph.D student. And these stages are most important processes for student.

• Knowing everything stage
  • Student: "I have designed a supercomputer even before graduate school."
  • Faculty: speechless
• Totally beaten up stage
  • Student: speechless
  • Faculty: smiling at the student's progress so communication is possible now.
• Confidence buildup stage
  • Student: "I am not stupid after all." (student thinks)
  • Faculty: "Uh oh, she is ready to argue." (faculty think)
• Calling the shot stage
  • Faculty: "I am going to design an n-processor supercomputer."
  • Student: "You are crazy, because ..."

Maybe it is a good idea to translate it into Chinese some other day.