1. Welcome to Graduate School Mary Lou Soffa Professor and Chair
CS 6190 Fall 2011
Welcome to Graduate School
Mary Lou Soffa
Professor and Chair

2. Goals of Course Introduce you to research of faculty
Introduce you to emerging research areas and topics
Help you find a research adviser
Help you with skills and strategies for doing well in graduate school and in your career
Information: Personal experience, CRA-W Graduate Cohort

3. Information about schedule
Class meets every Monday and Wednesday unless noted not meeting on class schedule
No Friday Classes
Typically each class has 2 faculty speakers
Give some information about their career path
Talk about their research – projects or area

4. Requirements
Attend class – if miss more than 2, get a failing grade - retake
Participate in class
Find research topics of interest and faculty advisers
Set up meetings with faculty members
Office hours or them

5. Research talks Consult Collab for CS 1690 Schedule Announcements
Every faculty member give talk
Might not be looking for new students

6. About Graduate School How to succeed in grad school
How to manage common issues

7. Important to realize
Class performance is not as important as before – but you still have to do well
In research, no-one knows the answer!
You’re in charge of your education and career
not yet sure of your destination – cover all bases
need help – apprentice in research
Colleagues you meet can be lifelong friends
Discourse in graduate school very different from discourse in an undergraduate class. Then, you learned
the cannon, the wisdom passed down from the sages. Now, it’s normal to pick apart conventional wisdom; indeed it is often
by working to fix weaknesses in current knowledge that you can make new contributions

8. Research Success "If you want to make important discoveries, work on
important problems” - P.B. Medawar
Find problems that will have an impact and are
fun to work on
point to joys of research: collaboration, seeing contribution be meaningful to others, be of use to others, ...
sense of community.

9. Apprenticeship Learn from all aspects of grad school
Classes: engage in discussions, ask questions!
Projects: improve programming/system skills, develop assessment, writing skills
Seminars: learn how to frame an idea
... and ask more questions!
People: sound out ideas - colleagues
Papers: learn the art of reading a paper
Critical reading – goals match what was done?
Assumptions?
What if you’re not used to asking questions? Have pen and paper at talk. Write them down while listening. Listen to other
people’s questions: probably you thought about that but didn’t think to ask.
papers: what’s the simplest idea? how did paper get woven around the idea?

10. Apprenticeship - cont Attend seminars
Attend Ph.D. proposal presentations
Attend Ph.D. defenses
Broaden knowledge
Might find an interesting topic or see a relationship
Listen to how others ask questions
Pay attention to how people give presentations

11. Select courses and profs strategically
Get project experience
Learn about likely research areas
Learn about important techniques
Learn about the profs ... and impress them!
project experience: assessment of current methods
mirela example: ML
the profs... which ones are organized? give you useful feedback? are easy to approach? are in an area you want to work in?

12. Communicate technical material well
Distill complex ideas down to a few clear, concise statements
Volunteer to present in seminars
Get (and give) feedback
Write multiple drafts of papers
Talks - practice, practice, practice!
By yourself
In front of friends and family
In front of colleagues
Recall Mark Hill’s thesis” “big and dumb is better”

13. Manage your time Prioritize Eliminate context-switching overhead
Decide what is most important
Make time to think about and do research!
Eliminate context-switching overhead
For TA duties, respond to s in batches, rather than being interrupt-driven
For research, allocate several contiguous hours & eliminate distractions
Plan ahead for departmental milestones
qualifying exams, breadth requirements, finding an advisor

14. Not that you expect to, but...
Sometimes unanticipated situations arise when working closely with others...
Consensual relationships (or close personal relationships) with faculty or students are against policy, due to inherently unequal positions of power
Best case scenario:
not a good forum for experiencing & evaluating a relationship
Worst case scenario:
uncomfortable at best
may color what other faculty think of you
may compromise your career
faculty partner may have to go – and you?
Anne:

15. Always believe in yourself
it’s normal to lose confidence sometimes
if you always excel, you’re probably not taking enough risks
find others who believe in you too
ask about scholarships, travel awards
suggest paper deadlines
celebrate each step forward!
grad school environment not always supportive. always people smarter than you.
your values, ideals not aligned with expecations.
tell Michael Saks story
Rachel pottinger story
remember that you can get something very important out of gad school.

16. Outline How to succeed in grad school
Some common issues and how to manage them

17. Adjusting to grad school
Everybody arrives with different strengths & experiences
But really, everyone is in the same boat
With practice, you can get up to speed
Grad school is very “bursty”
At times, it will demand enormous amounts of time – paper deadlines, exams
Give yourself time to recover between the bursts
Candy:
-at the beginning, you might think everybody around you are so smart but you. All the new terminologies, professional big words make you feel like you are insignificant. You might even think are you belong to this world. But the fact is
-everybody goes through the same feeling when they started
-going through up and down during the grad school is normal, but need to know how to due with it
-don’t be scare, don’t blame yourself because Grad school is the time to learn what you need in order to do research
-one thing I want to share in my grad school years:
-I change my research to something totally different. Therefore, I have to start everything from scratch.
-at the beginning, reading a research paper in the new area is so hard for me. It is like if I ask you to read a Chinese book. You have to dictionary every word you don’t know.
-what I did is exactly the same thing, I made an index box. I search and write down all the terminology which I didn’t know on the card. Understand and memorize them.
-It has been really helpful and by the end of the year, I build up my knowledge base and I have no problem to read a paper (or may be only a few I don’t know)
-it works!!
-grad school is very different from undergrad. You might have lots of free time and join a lot of activities in undergrad. But in grad school, time management is very important. It is almost the key to success.
-all the deadlines like paper due always happen in bursts
-prioritize your time, you might not be able to have as much free time as in undergrad
-keep yourself motivated, excited about what you do
-at the same time, relax between the intense periods: you need to be refreshed to come up with good ideas

18. Growing as a researcher
A major transition happens in grad school
Classes are almost done
Now, you have to define your own research agenda
Self-driven schedule
Having a good support network will smooth this transition
Build relationships with mentors during first 2 years
Turn to them for support and inspiration
Re-introduce structure to your environment
reading groups
monthly social lunches to build a sense of community with peers
Candy:
-The major transition point is when you are done with your classes
-usually the 3rd year
-make up your mind which research you like
-self-driven schedule, time management is important
-story: many of the students quite school after the classes are done because:
-haven’t pick a topic
-hanging around and doing nothing (no one push you to work anymore!!)
-feel like making money and not interested at school
-To due with the problem and towards success:
-Make a study plan, weekly, monthly and yearly goal
-keep yourself busy and motivated
-mentors, advisors, friends: to support & inspire you during this time
-they go through the same tough time and they know how you feel
-they can tell you what to do and comfort you

19. You are in charge of your graduate career...
You need to make things happen
You CAN make things happen
and if you need it, help is there. Use it!