At the tail end of my PhD. in a science/engineering field at an Ivy League School. I need to finish up a few projects but am way too interested in pursuing my own ideas. So consumed...that it is VERY difficult to find anything I am working on interesting anymore. The work is not difficult, but it's just very difficult to get myself to do it. Especially since it does not hold the great promise in the immediate future that I had initially believed it had. I considered dropping out, but it's pretty impractical for my specific situation. Anyone been in this situation before? What's the best way to get through this?
Venkatesh RaoWritten 279w ago · Upvoted by Badreddin Edris, Stanford PhD and Leo C. Stein, Ph.D. in physics from MIT
Venkatesh Rao
Written 279w ago · Upvoted by Badreddin Edris, Stanford PhD and Leo C. Stein, Ph.D. in physics from MIT
Get over yourself. There's a point at which "passion for my own ideas" becomes a symptom of intellectual greed, lack of discipline or rationalization of some underlying fear. Methinks you protest too much about the remaining work not being difficult. Technically, perhaps. Psychologically, chances are you are avoiding a tough challenge that can turn you from a could-have-been piece of potential into a finisher/closer. Or to put it bluntly, you are avoiding facing up to the fact that perhaps you're not a closer. Delay for too long, and you will never even be a has-been. You'll end up as a never-was.
Finishing a PhD is the beginning, not the end, and the sooner you get this level of the game done with, the more freedom you'll have to do other things with greater passion at more advanced levels of the game with more resources at your disposal. Get it done. Unless you are a genius, you mainly here to get your passport to better places, pick up some skills to protect your creativity, and learn the political game of research and publishing.
Subscribe to the ABDSG list (All But Dissertation Survival Guide). It is run by positive psychology types out of U. Penn and can be rather annoyingly positive/self-improvement
http://www.abdsurvivalgui
Read Feibelman's essential little book (though a little dated), A PhD is Not Enough.
http://www.amazon.com/PhD
If you plan to go into academia, read Richard Reis' Tomorrow's Professor to learn how people pretend the game is played. Then talk to successful-but-cynical tenure track professors or industrial/government R&D types to learn how the game is actually played. Let that dose of realism enlighten you but not turn you into a cynic.
Reis' book will teach you the superficial language and culture that you have to blend into. Actual candid conversations with people will tell you how things really work.
http://www.amazon.com/Tom
Avoid downer jokes and comic strips like
http://www.phdcomics.com/
They are Dilbert for PhDs, and will easily suck you into being an ABD lifer of sorts. Save the lifer humor for the life sentence (i.e. Dilbert if you go into the corporate world, plenty of academia humor if you go that way).
Be pragmatic, grow up and get it done. But don't lose your sense of romance.
I wrote this piece for the ABDSG list partly as a romance-preserver.
http://www.ribbonfarm.com
Get your head out of the sand pondering problems that just interest you NOW and start thinking about an entire life as a researcher. You've got 30-40 years to fill. Resist intellectual greed, don't try to do it all at once. Time is nature's way of preventing everything from happening at the same time.
Good reading to broaden your perspective to a lifetime instead of a little grad school bubble:
Richard Hamming's excellent talk, You and Your Research
http://www.cs.virginia.ed
Easily the single most concentrated source of great life advice for researchers I've ever read.
If you think you might eventually drift out of formal research environments into broader engineering, read Samuel Florman's The Existential Pleasures of Engineering.
http://www.amazon.com/Exi
If you graduate, you'll at least partly be a philosopher. Own it. The P in your PhD will stand for "Philosophy" and you should attempt to deserve it. Right now, to be blunt, you sound like a 100% engineer with no trace of philosophy in your intellectual DNA. That's a dangerous state to be in, for your future mental health.
Without a philosophy, you'll end up as just another snooty, jargon-spouting hack with a chip on his/her shoulder, thinking (with an undercurrent of doubt) that you are smarter than everyone else, but resentful that you are making less money and having less real impact than the "hands on" people of the world. Worse, you'll never come to terms with the fact that there are and always will be, real geniuses around doing work you'll never match. Philosophy is what will help you avoid the path of resentment and get back to enjoying the company of geniuses, ordinary PhDs and non-PhDs.
The "Philosophy" in a PhD is not an optional extra. It is a necessary part of the transformation that equips you with the capacity to deal with the consequences of the choice to undertake a PhD in the first place.
Because believe me, there are consequences, and they are not all pleasant, particularly the financial ones, once you start comparing yourself to non-PhDs and how much money they've made while you've been bumming around in school for the better part of a decade.
Some philosophy is your insurance policy to ensure that the PhD remains a positive memory for the rest of your life, instead of a bitter one.
All the best. Now get off Quora and start making your plans to slay that dragon. First step: set a firm defense date and schedule a weekly meeting with your advisor or a mentor who will hold your feet to the fire.
Finishing a PhD is the beginning, not the end, and the sooner you get this level of the game done with, the more freedom you'll have to do other things with greater passion at more advanced levels of the game with more resources at your disposal. Get it done. Unless you are a genius, you mainly here to get your passport to better places, pick up some skills to protect your creativity, and learn the political game of research and publishing.
Subscribe to the ABDSG list (All But Dissertation Survival Guide). It is run by positive psychology types out of U. Penn and can be rather annoyingly positive/self-improvement
http://www.abdsurvivalgui
Read Feibelman's essential little book (though a little dated), A PhD is Not Enough.
http://www.amazon.com/PhD
If you plan to go into academia, read Richard Reis' Tomorrow's Professor to learn how people pretend the game is played. Then talk to successful-but-cynical tenure track professors or industrial/government R&D types to learn how the game is actually played. Let that dose of realism enlighten you but not turn you into a cynic.
Reis' book will teach you the superficial language and culture that you have to blend into. Actual candid conversations with people will tell you how things really work.
http://www.amazon.com/Tom
Avoid downer jokes and comic strips like
http://www.phdcomics.com/
They are Dilbert for PhDs, and will easily suck you into being an ABD lifer of sorts. Save the lifer humor for the life sentence (i.e. Dilbert if you go into the corporate world, plenty of academia humor if you go that way).
Be pragmatic, grow up and get it done. But don't lose your sense of romance.
I wrote this piece for the ABDSG list partly as a romance-preserver.
http://www.ribbonfarm.com
Get your head out of the sand pondering problems that just interest you NOW and start thinking about an entire life as a researcher. You've got 30-40 years to fill. Resist intellectual greed, don't try to do it all at once. Time is nature's way of preventing everything from happening at the same time.
Good reading to broaden your perspective to a lifetime instead of a little grad school bubble:
Richard Hamming's excellent talk, You and Your Research
http://www.cs.virginia.ed
Easily the single most concentrated source of great life advice for researchers I've ever read.
If you think you might eventually drift out of formal research environments into broader engineering, read Samuel Florman's The Existential Pleasures of Engineering.
http://www.amazon.com/Exi
If you graduate, you'll at least partly be a philosopher. Own it. The P in your PhD will stand for "Philosophy" and you should attempt to deserve it. Right now, to be blunt, you sound like a 100% engineer with no trace of philosophy in your intellectual DNA. That's a dangerous state to be in, for your future mental health.
Without a philosophy, you'll end up as just another snooty, jargon-spouting hack with a chip on his/her shoulder, thinking (with an undercurrent of doubt) that you are smarter than everyone else, but resentful that you are making less money and having less real impact than the "hands on" people of the world. Worse, you'll never come to terms with the fact that there are and always will be, real geniuses around doing work you'll never match. Philosophy is what will help you avoid the path of resentment and get back to enjoying the company of geniuses, ordinary PhDs and non-PhDs.
The "Philosophy" in a PhD is not an optional extra. It is a necessary part of the transformation that equips you with the capacity to deal with the consequences of the choice to undertake a PhD in the first place.
Because believe me, there are consequences, and they are not all pleasant, particularly the financial ones, once you start comparing yourself to non-PhDs and how much money they've made while you've been bumming around in school for the better part of a decade.
Some philosophy is your insurance policy to ensure that the PhD remains a positive memory for the rest of your life, instead of a bitter one.
All the best. Now get off Quora and start making your plans to slay that dragon. First step: set a firm defense date and schedule a weekly meeting with your advisor or a mentor who will hold your feet to the fire.
