2019 PhD Student Orientation

1. 2019 PhD Student Orientation John Ousterhout Director of Graduate Studies

2. Your Career • The next year • The next 5 years • The next 50 years PhD Student Orientation

3. The Next Year PhD Student Orientation

4. It’s All About Rotations • Job #1: find the right advisor • The Curse of the Open Door • Are you in the right subfield? PhD Student Orientation

5. About Rotations • Rotations allow students and faculty to get to know each other • Students drive the process • You approach faculty, ask to rotate • Plan ahead! • It’s a market: • Faculty evaluate students during rotations • Students evaluate faculty during rotations • Some students (and faculty) are more popular • Not everyone gets their first choice (students or faculty) PhD Student Orientation

6. Evaluating Faculty • Things to think about: • Research interests:faculty will spend more time on projects they are excited about • Compatible style:how much do you enjoy talking with them? • Hands-on vs. hands-off • How much time do they spend with students? • Talk to their existing students: • How often do you meet with XXX? For how long? • Greatest strengths and weaknesses? • Talk to senior students: • What do you know now that you wish you’d known during your first year? It’s worth extra work: know what you are getting yourself into PhD Student Orientation

7. Rotation Advice • Rotate only with faculty you can potentially align with, until you have at least one firm offer that you are happy with • Ask beforehand: • “How many new students do you expect to take this year?” • “How many students will be rotating with you?” • “How many of your slots have you already committed?” • Ask afterwards: • “How did I do? What parts were you least happy with?” • “Are you prepared to offer me an RAship now? If not, when will you make the decision, and how will you make it?” • An evasive or heavily qualified answer probably means “no” PhD Student Orientation

8. Rotation Advice, cont’d • Take rotations seriously • Don’t take more than one class at a time • Take initiative, get involved • Put yourself in harm’s way • Do something concrete (don’t be picky; any activity is good) • Work with other students • Serve as apprentice to a senior student • Be realistic • Probably can’t write a paper in a quarter • Learn about an area, a professor, and a style of doing research • Start thinking researchy ideas • Make connections with other students and faculty PhD Student Orientation

9. The Next 5 Years PhD Student Orientation

10. A New Level • You have always been the best; excelling has been easy…No more! • The people around you are very very good. • The problems will be much harder. • Some people go through a confidence crisis… don’t! • Your admission was not a mistake. • You may need to develop new work habits:your first idea is no longer good enough If things are easy, you’re not attacking a hard enough problem PhD Student Orientation

11. You Must Drive Yourself • In the past, you could just do what you were told…No more! • Few deadlines to structure your work • Your advisor can help, but only so much • It’s easy to waste a lot of time • By the time you graduate you must be able to: • Set your own agenda • Decide what’s important • Manage your time efficiently • Motivate yourself(e.g. create deadlines, force yourself to meet them) • Suggestion: always be working on something PhD Student Orientation

12. Depth vs. Breadth • Ultimate goal is depth: • Explore narrow topic intremendous detail • World’s leading expert • But, can’t go directly there Breadth Depth PhD PhD Student Orientation

13. Depth vs. Breadth, cont’d • Breadth is essential: • Learn about problems • Learn about techniques • Get ideas • Initial years: more breadth • Later years: increasing depth Breadth Courses Depth ReadPapers PhD OtherProjects PhD Student Orientation

14. Go Deep • Unique opportunity to study something in extreme depth: • Explore every nook and cranny • Answer all the questions, not just the easy ones • Don’t just staple 3 papers together • Hard to be really deep in a conference paper (12 page limit) • 3 shallow works ≠ deep • (Maybe OK if they build on each other) • Deep study → deep understanding • How the pieces contribute to the whole • Details matter PhD Student Orientation

15. A PhD is Just the Beginning • Your PhD probably won’t be the most important work of your career • Most important thing for the next 5 years:Prepare yourself to do great work over the next 50 years • Knowledge • Experience • Techniques • Mindset • You need to do, but how much you learn is even more important PhD Student Orientation

16. The Next 50 Years PhD Student Orientation

17. There’s Not Much Room on a Tombstone • Work on a small number of things, do truly great work • Focus on what’s important, not what’s easy PhD Student Orientation

18. Impact Success ≈ # papers? # papers PhD Student Orientation

19. Counting Papers → Mediocrity • The tyranny of conference deadlines • Deadline-driven research • Size the work to fit the time until the next submission deadline • Don’t do long (deep) projects • Once the paper is accepted, stop working on it (work on the next paper instead) • Excuses: • I need a lot of papers so I can get a good job • I need a lot of papers so I can get tenure • My students need a lot of papers so they can get jobs • There’s never a good time to start doing the important stuff…so start now. PhD Student Orientation

20. Impact • Papers are a means to an end: impact • What is impact? Changing the way people think or behave • An open-source software package used by thousands (millions?) • A paper that becomes standard reading in a graduate course • An idea that forms the basis for a large body of future work • An idea that leads to a new Silicon Valley startup • Teaching students in a class • How to achieve impact: • Time • Focus • Depth • Luck! Having impact is deeply satisfying PhD Student Orientation

21. Conclusion • You have the potential to do extraordinary, high-impact work • Life goal: maximize the single greatest thing you do • You are moving up to a new level: • Great people to work with, learn from • Really hard problems • This year: find the right advisor, get settled in a research group • The rest of your PhD: • Create a base of skills, techniques, experience • Be extremely deep in your PhD research • The rest of your career: • Keep thinking and working deeply • Do things that are really important PhD Student Orientation

22. Questions/Comments? PhD Student Orientation