how to get a PhD when you aren't a goal-oriented person

This afternoon I found myself in a conversation where, once again, I described myself as not terribly goal-oriented. Nearly every time this comes up people express surprise—how can I not be goal oriented and yet have a PhD—isn't that achievement only possible if one is driven to achieve a fairly major goal? The answer is that, no, that is not the only way to get that degree. Certainly many who have one are goal oriented and used that goal as the driving force for all of the work that is required, but not me.

In my case I went to University because I loved learning and had so much fun in high school that I wanted it to continue. For me there was never a question of "what kind of job will this degree get you later?", but only the question of "what cool things do I wish to study now?". The beauty of my approach is that one gets to ask that question over and over again, each time one registers for a new term, and each time the answers will be slightly different. What got me to move on from undergraduate classes to graduate school was the discovery that someone would pay me to be a student. This sounded much better than paying to spend my time learning things, so I completed my Bachelor's degree and enrolled first as a Master's student, and later as a PhD student. Once I enrolled in graduate school I did work towards completing the degree, but not because I was driven by the goal of obtaining the degree, but because when someone else is paying for my education it comes with a certain obligation of actually doing well in my classes (with the Masters) and the research (both Master's and PhD). Besides, both programs came with a limited-time offer on their funding—the rules of the game were clear—your funding runs out after a certain number of years and you have a choice—get the degree by then, or go without. I may not be goal oriented, but I do have a fairly strongly developed sense of responsibility, and if my part of the bargain for the "free" education is to complete the degree, well, yes, I do have what it takes to do it.

too busy too be bored; too happy in the north to want to move south

I have some friends who are unemployed and looking for work who complain on certain social media sites that they are bored. My contract ended with the end of December, so, technically, I am also unemployed, but I am far, far too busy to be bored (as people might be able to guess if they compared frequency of my posts before and after the contract ending).

What am I doing to keep busy? I'm getting close to done processing the data I generated during the last couple of weeks before I left; I should be able to actually begin the writing process within a week. I'm settling into a new home with a new partner in a new country, and trying to learn a new language. Our evenings are full with folk dance classes, choir practice, gaming with friends, visiting a local climbing wall, martial arts practice, and, of course Medieval Re-enactment. My days are full with finishing up my last research project, trying to keep up with personal correspondence, studying my new language and attending class for that, dealing with the bureaucracy at the Uni (why do they need copies of my highschool, BS, and Master's transcripts before they approve my enrolment in a beginning language class when they have my PhD transcripts? (Doesn't the one sort of imply the existence of the others?) I am also starting the paperwork for appropriate visas to actually be able to stay here.

I'm also continuing the job search, but now that there are two of us to consider I'm being a bit fussier about the jobs for which I will apply—I have never been interested in hot climates, but had been applying for interesting sounding jobs located in such places anyway, with the thought that I could endure hot weather for a short time and then when I have more experience move on to someplace with good weather. Now that I'm happily living somewhere far enough north to have real winter I am much less inclined to consider locations without winter, and my partner, like me, loves the snow and cold weather.

I listen to friends who live in more southern locations complain about winter—that it is cold, dark, wet, and depressing. I am convinced that the reason they think this is because they are too far south. Up here in the north (though still south of the Arctic Circle) winter may be cold, but it isn't wet, and it isn't dark or depressing. Instead the snow reflects light beautifully, making even overcast days brighter than their counterpart down south. And day, like today, when there are no clouds, are sometimes overwhelmingly bright. Yes, the sun does set early, but we are living in a town, which means that there are street-lights, which means that the snow is reflecting that light all night long, so visibility is good and it is neither dark, nor depressing.

I have been saying for a decade that I really miss real winter. Now that I have it again I don't wish to move somewhere without it. Now for the fun part: either finding an academic job which will let me do interesting research and live in the north (but with mountains, too, please!), or obtain funding which will let me choose my own location to live and do research…

What could be more fun than extending the boundaries of the sum of human knowledge?

Not too long back I got into a conversation with a friend of mine, who was complaining about his job and how little he enjoys it. It is always difficult for me to be properly sympathetic in such conversations. Having learned as a child that “work” or “a job” meant "something unpleasant that people had to do but didn’t want to do", I have done my best to avoid ever having to do such a thing myself. Indeed, this was one of the largest motivating factors in my decision to be a life-long scholar—to stay happily in the academic world, learning interesting things.

When my academic career progressed to the point of undertaking a PhD project I was totally excited about it—I was about to learn something new, something that no one else ever knew before. This is heady stuff. Sure, there can be a fair bit of tedium in research, but that is more than offset by the ability to set one’s own hours and choose for oneself the topic and direction of the research. Having finished the PhD and moved on to a post-doc position doing experimental petrology I find that I am still expanding the bounds of human knowledge. The experiments I’m doing are ones that no one has done before—each run I do provides new information that needs to be analyzed—looked at, compared with the previous information, and understood.

I am aware that there are people out there who have the misfortune to spend their days doing things that don’t interest them, and I am grateful that I am not one of them—that I have the joy that comes from learning new things. Not just new to me, but new to everyone. What could be more fun than that?

Active reading techniques to improve understanding & retention

I spent this week taking a short course on Successful Scientific Writing: from Proposal to Publication taught by Dr. Sarah Shephard at the Center for Teaching and Learning at ETH Zürich. The course provided such a wealth of useful information I’ll try to do several posts about the things I’ve learned. Today’s post will be all from memory, as I left the notebook full of handouts at home when I came into the office this morning.

Today’s topic is reading. Reading is something at which I’ve always excelled—I can’t remember the time before I was able to read, and I’ve always been one to “fall into” books, getting totally immersed in the story and not noticing time elapsing in the real world. Unfortunately, reading articles in scientific journals does not have that same effect. Narrative stories are designed to flow smoothly and to engage the audience, but most science writing is designed to communicate results of a project and discuss the implications thereof. We read journal articles with the goal of learning, not entertainment (though, in some fortunate cases both are possible), and she recommends a very different approach to reading science literature than is taken when reading a novel.

She suggests first reading the literature when you are in the “deciding upon a project to do” stage—find out what is the state of the art on the topic(s) of interest, not only what is currently known, but how those facts have been interpreted thus far, and if there is more than one “school of thought” on the topic. Which author(s) do you agree or disagree with, and why? Keep these questions in mind when doing the initial reading of the literature.

When you sit down to read a new article, first glance over the entire article—make a note of the structure of the article—how much of it is devoted to the introduction, the methods used, the results, and the discussion/conclusions? What headings did they use for the various sections? What figures and tables were used to illustrate their points or provide supplementary data? Once you are comfortable with what information is going to be presented think of specific questions you expect to be answered in the article, and make a note of them. Now you are ready to begin the reading process.

The reading itself should be punctuated by writing on the part of the reader. Read one paragraph, and then jot down notes to yourself about what it said. Paraphrase their point in your own words—this is an important component of learning the subject matter—by taking an active role in the process and writing it down, you will better remember what it said. After you have paraphrased the paragraph ask yourself the following questions: Did it provide the answers to any of the questions on your list? Did it make you think of other questions you wish to find answers to within the course of the article? After you have completed all of these tasks read the next paragraph and repeat the process of writing a paraphrased summary and determining if it has answered any of your questions or posed new questions. Once you’ve done this process for a number of paragraphs (five is a good number, but there may be reasons within the structure of the article you are reading to include more or fewer) go back and look over all five paragraphs and your notes thereon and determine what combined information they relate—write down your own summary of the whole section. Ask yourself if this section answers any of the questions you have. Do you agree or disagree with what has been said thus far and why? Does this section of the paper agree or disagree with other papers you have read? Repeat this process through the entire paper, and at the end condense it all into a brief summary of what you feel the key points are relevant to the topic you are currently studying.

She cautions that this process takes longer than simply reading each word on the page in order one time through. However, she also insists that it is worth the extra effort on your part because these techniques greatly enhance one’s ability to understand and remember what one has just read. She also says that not only should one read everything one can find that is relevant to the topic at the start of the project before doing the new research, one should also go back and review all of those papers (and any new ones published subsequently) after obtaining one’s results and before actually writing the paper to publish the results. That second reading should go much faster, as you will have your old notes on the paper to look at, in addition to the paper itself. However, having done the research you may find that you now have different questions or feel that different aspects of each paper is now more important than the parts you had initially recorded.

Because this reading method is more intensive than simply “falling into a good book” she recommends that it be done in small segments—read for 10 minutes at a time, then take a short break. Someone who is experienced in this technique might be able to read (and do the writing/thinking about what has been read) for 30 minutes at a time before needing a break. However, remember to make the break short and return to the process!

filling in the gaps

One of the biggest disadvantages of having taken off a number of years between my Masters and PhD projects is that I had time to forget much of what I had learned in the way of mathematics and its application to the other sciences (use it or lose it!). As a result I have found myself skipping over the formulas and calculations presented in many of the papers I’ve read. This is, of course, a very bad habit, because if one doesn’t think about what those various symbols mean one doesn’t understand what the author of the paper was attempting to communicate.

Sometimes the text contains enough detail that one can manage without that bit of information; other times they let the equation stand alone as the most precise way to express the relationships in question. One solution I’ve used in the past to help understand equations given in a paper is to create an Excel spreadsheet in which I can set up formulas which point to other cells into which I can enter their numeric data to see if I can get the formulas to yield the same results that the authors reported.

However, this technique doesn’t lend itself very well to understanding general equations for which we have no actual numbers to substitute into the equations to solve them. Today I decided to set up a Word document to help me dissect and understand the formulas. The format I’ve decided upon is to use the Outline view mode with the first rank of the outline giving the name/number of the equation and the source paper in which I found it (e.g. Equation (2) from (Tirone and Ganguly, 2010*). Then, below that heading I add a paragraph which gives the equation (e.g. r_i = k₁√D(t-t_n(i))). Below that I add a series of level-two headers for (1) what the equation means in plain English (e.g. “The crystal radius is equal to the quantity of a dimensionless constant times the square root of the coefficient of intergranular diffusion through the matrix of the growing crystal times the amount of time which has elapsed since the crystal started growing.”) followed by (2) a “because” header which lists the definition of each of the variables

In this example:

r = crystal radius

_i = specific (growing) crystal in question

k₁ = a dimensionless constant

D = coefficient of intergranular diffusion through the matrix of the growing crystal (_i)

t = time

t_n(i) = the nucleation time of the crystal

Followed by (3) a summary of what one would use the equation to do (e.g. Calculate the relationship between the size of the crystals and how long it took them to grow.)

Setting this up and filling it in for the equations I’ve encountered in today’s 1000 words of geologic literature has really underscored my need to refresh my memory about basic chemistry. The equation (3) from the same paper as the above example was no where near as easy to fill in, because the authors first stated “The diffusion coefficient is expressed as a function of temperature according to the Arrhenius relation D=D_oexp(−E/RT)” after which they gave a new equation created by substituting the Arrhenius equation into their equation (2). In the text which followed they did not define any of the new terms which come from the Arrhenius equation. Presumably because the reader is assumed to already be familiar with said equation.

Therefore I took down my undergraduate Chemistry text book and looked up the Arrhenius equation. I found it necessary to read a couple of sections leading up to that equation as well as the section in which it is introduced in order to feel like I understood what the textbook was describing. Next I will need to figure out how the version of the equation the authors of the paper presented relates to the version in my textbook.

Is any of this really necessary? Could I just go through life not really understanding the equations I see and just jump to the part of the article where the authors describe what the results of their calculations mean? Perhaps I could. However, I think I will be a better scientist as a result of my going back and filling in these gaps in what I retained from my undergraduate education as I find them.

*Tirone, M. and Ganguly, J. (in press (downloaded Feb 2010)). "Garnet compositions as recorders of P-T-t history of metamorphic rocks." Gondwana Research.

with understanding one becomes free to explore

I received a comment on one of my AGU highlight posts today which mentioned that “…there are as many as 6, perhaps 10 person in the world who do really understand a-X models”. Given how slowly my own understanding has been building on this topic since I was first exposed to the concept early on in my PhD project, I suspect that he’s probably fairly accurate in his count, despite having offered the number in jest.

Doing the sort of modelling metamorphic petrologists do can be compared to various skill levels in cooking. Some people “cook” by opening a box or a can and following the instructions printed on the label to heat the contents. Others “cook” by looking at a recipe and faithfully performing every step of the instructions in the sequence suggested, with no real understanding why the author of the cookbook wanted them to do step A before step B; but by correctly following the instructions they obtain a result which they are happy to eat. Still others of us decide what we are hungry for, rummage around in the pantry and throw together delicious food that brings us joy to eat, instinctively doing some tasks before others because we understand the manner in which the tasks coordinate to create a perfect dish. We do things differently every time, never fearing to improvise because we understand *why* things work in the kitchen and what things may be changed and what rules are iron-clad.

As a petrologist I’m slowly working my way from the one end of that spectrum towards the other. The first time I attempted to use Perple_X to calculate what phases should be present in my rocks I had no idea what I was doing, or why. My advisor had pointed out a recently published paper which used that tool for calculations on a similar rock type to my own, so I downloaded the supplemental data set, used the “in” file provided, and ran the program using the settings their paper reported them to have used. Low and behold, the program generated a diagram which looked just like the one they had published (open box, remove plastic from tray, put trya in oven at 350 F for 35 minutes).

Thus encouraged, I edited their in file to show the composition of my sample instead of theirs, and ran it again, getting a very different diagram. This marked my first baby step in moving away from heating packaged food to something about on the level of complexity of using a packaged cake mix (just add water, eggs, and oil). Some months passed while I used this technique for a variety of different samples. Then, one day I realized that I needed to generate a different type of diagram, so I began to learn what changes are necessary to do so. This required much reading of the tutorials accompany the program. Not unlike learning to follow a recipe (cream butter and sugar together, beat in eggs and vanilla, add flour mixture alternatively with milk…).

I find that the more papers I read on this topic, the more I understand about the many, many options for calculations available in programs such as this one (there are others out there I should like to try as well, if I can only make the time to do so). It is my hope that, eventually, I will join the ranks of those who understand a-X models and will be able to reach the same stage of confidence in using these as I enjoy each time I enter the kitchen to cook or bake myself something yummy.

Extending the parameters of my “1000 words a day” challenge

Starting in June of 2007 I set myself the goal of reading 1000 words a day from the geologic literature. The reason I chose to do this was the fact that I had a huge pile of papers I needed to read, and hadn’t been making the time to read any of it. Since then there have been numerous days in which I forgot and had to start over. My count has ranged from a low of accomplishing it two days in a row before missing a day to a high of 118 days in a row (my current count is at 42 days, which is the record for the 113 day period since arriving in Europe to commence my first post-doc position). Last night as I was finishing up my evening yoga in preparation for going to sleep I realized that I’d not yet read my 1000. I further realized that my computer and all paper copies of journal articles and textbooks I currently have in my possession were across the street in my office (I love my 2-minute commute to work!). I considered walking back over to do my 1000, but then I thought about the spirit of the rule. The goal was go get me to read a little bit, every day, so that I actually made progress and stayed current with my self-learning.

One of the things I’m doing here, in addition to my experiments, is taking classes in the local language. I’m dutifully doing my homework each day before it is due, but I’ve not been making much additional effort towards actually learning this language. All of my colleagues are so fluent in English that I can speak at my normal high rate of speed, so I don’t *need* to learn the language to do my job. Likewise when at the market it is easy enough to use the phrase I’ve memorized for “half kilo” and point, and then look at the numbers printed on the cash register to work out how much to pay. Again, I don’t *require* the local language to live my life here. Yet, it would be nice.

Therefore, I have expanded my “1000 words a day” to now be either read (at least) 1000 words of geologic literature in my own language, or spend 20 to 30 minutes translating something. One of my favourite books as a child was Anne of Green Gables . I have read, and re-read that book on numerous occasions. I also own copies of it translated into other languages. I purchased the version in the local language soon after I arrived. Prior to last night I’ve only “read” it—by which I mean open the book and look at every word, forming the sounds they make (either in my head or out loud, depending on if another is present), and looking for words which I can understand due to their similarities to the English equivalent. There are just enough of these that I am able to tell where in the story I am based on my memory of the original text. However, while doing this helps me to get a slight feel for the flow of this language, I’m not learning much. Therefore last night I went back to the beginning and actually took the time to write down each word I wasn’t positive I understood, and looked it up in my dictionary. The first two sentences of the story are long and complex and a half an hour elapsed while I looked up the 23 words I didn’t already know. I then read them out loud once straight through, then again phrase by phrase; pausing to state the English equivalent of each before reading the next phrase. It didn’t help me learn new thing in my primary field, but alternating this technique now and again with my normal 1000 a day will help me better fit into this country in which I’ll be living for another year and a bit, and so, I am happy with this change to the “rules” of the game I’m playing with myself.

Background learning has meant a reduction in posting

As the weeks slip by in my new job I find that I’ve not been making time to post. I do have a couple of draft posts which are waiting for photos to illustrate them, but they’ve been in a holding state for ages. Somehow the daily press of learning new skills, applying them, attending language lessons 6 hours a week, and doing the homework, combined with a half-hearted attempt to develop a social life in my new country has conspired me to feel as though I can’t spare the time for posting here. However, my log of manner in which I am spending my hours indicates that I have been making plenty of time for personal e-mail and reading the blogs I follow. In theory some of that time could have been spent writing instead of reading.

Ah, writing; it is such an easy way to communicate with people—simply enter the words into a keyboard at a time of your own choosing, and your audience will have the option to read it later, at a time of their choosing. No need to arrange a face-to-face meeting with them to share your information. No need to repeat yourself over and over—one typing session can communicate to hundreds of people, should you wish it to (and, at times, even if you don’t so wish, so it is always best to be careful what you commit to the written form, lest your words be shared in a venue unexpected).

So, what science have I been doing while I was busy not writing (or, in a couple of cases, not taking the photos to accompany the writing)? So far it has been simply learning the mechanics of setting up my experiments. #1 has been run, #2 is in progress, and #3 is approaching ready to go. Next week, I am told, we will look at the results of #1 in the microprobe and see what there is to see. It will be interesting to compare the two samples. My experiments are being run with about 5% H₂O and a small piece of graphite sealed into the gold capsules with the powder. When sealing the capsules it is important to do the welding with the capsule bottom surrounded by water to keep it cool so that the welding process doesn’t boil off the water before it is sealed. I failed to do this with the first capsule I filled. Likewise, I am not certain that I actually managed to get the capsule completely welded shut. If there is a small opening in the capsule it is possible for the water to boil out of the capsule early on in the experiment, and so not be available for chemical reactions.

Given the huge difference in texture between the two samples which comprised my first experiments, this may have happened for one of them. Apparently when water is present in the capsules the result is an amount of porosity in between the grains of powder, despite the high pressure of the experiment, so the end product is soft and easily torn out of the capsule after the run, if one isn’t very careful in the polishing process. However, when water isn’t present the grains of powder are pushed more closely together, and the new minerals have a chance to interlock as they grow, resulting in a much more coherent sample. One of my two samples polished up without a tendency for powder to be plucked out of it, so it is likely that this one operated under “dry” or nearly dry conditions. The other required much more care as it was soft. It was necessary to coat it with additional epoxy before the final polish to keep it from being lost. It will be interesting to compare the results of the two samples. Are there any hydrous minerals at all in the one we suspect was “dry”? I will have to wait till early next week to learn the answer to this question.