1. What it Means to Get a PhD Marc Snir Department of Computer Science

3. More  Never took sabbatical  Co-director UPCRC –Make parallel programming synonymous with programming  Co-PI Blue Waters –Largest academic supercomputer (in 2011)

4. What Getting a PhD Does Not Mean  Going to an academic career  Choosing a career  Choosing a lifetime research field  Not having a life

5. What It Can Mean  Opportunity for five years of unimpeded creativity –"CREATIVITY is thinking up new things. INNOVATION is doing new things." -- Theodore Levitt  Opportunity for five years of unopposed perfectionism –"In art as in science these is no delight without the detail." – Nabokov  Unrivaled opportunity for soaking knowledge broad and deep  An opportunity to reach to your limits and learn what you can and can’t do

6. But Disciplines, Departments and Advisors are not all Equal  Freedom to roam vs. “early binding” of advisor  More or less constrained academic program  Big projects vs. individual projects  Face time  Quality

7. Bad Reasons not to Get a PhD  I am not really sure I can do research  I can do it later  I really do not like my School  I can never see my professors  I am frightened to death whenever I have to give a presentation

8. Ways to Choose Research Fields  Are you a hedgehog or a fox? –"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing“ – Archilochus  Do you want to do, or do you want to know?  Do you want to change the world?