Why I quit (part 1)
April 2, 2008
It has been almost two years now since I decided to quit my PhDprogram in computer science and go looking for a job. In that time, I've done a lot of reflection on what lead me to that decision and I've also had some time to experience the consequences. I decided to devote this post to putting those thoughts and experiences into words.
I realize now with clarity that part of quitting is failing. It took me a while to admit this to myself - after all, who wants to fail at anything - but I think doing so allows me to learn more from it to make sure I don't fail at a similar endeavor in the future. I failed to get a PhD for a variety of reasons. I think the largest is my lack of focus in the very early days of the program. I didn't really know what area I wanted to focus on for my research. There were a lot of things that excited me: computer graphics, algorithms, networking, and programming languages. But I couldn't find any one that completely consumed me to the exclusion of others as someone would need to do to succeed. This lack of focus on an area also lead me to put off finding an advisor. The department said I didn't need an advisor until I took the qual, so I assumed I could just wait until then to start looking.
This was completely the wrong approach. A PhD student, if he or she is to succeed, should put obtaining an advisor as the highest priority. If it can be done before starting, that's best. Everything at the beginning should start with this in mind. Do research on professors to find one that meets the following qualifications:
1) Has funding available for assistantships. This is the most important thing because if they have money you won't have to be a TA, and you can spend more time on your research. I was a TA every semester I was in grad school and I'll never get those 20+ hours a week back. In retrospect I improved my skill at public speaking, explaining things clearly, and programming on a whiteboard, but none of those things factor into your doctoral degree. I honestly can't state this point clearly enough. Money is the number 1 qualification for a potential advisor. With it, many problems are trivial. Depending on your research area, you can get publications just by having better equipment or facilities than your competitors. It makes a huge difference and I was completely ignorant of this in the beginning.
2) Graduates students. Some advisors are terrible at getting students out the door. Others seem to graduate 2-3 students a year. You want an advisor who will make sure your research is solid, but also want keep you back when you want to start shopping yourself around on the academic market.
3) Has a solid record of publications. This helps a ton as you will inevitably be working on ongoing research projects which already have a publication trail. Being able to advance the state of the art on a system that other researchers are interested in helps in getting your work noticed.
and finally a distant
4) Is working on something you are also interested in. This will keep you motivated and excited. However, you shouldn't work on something that won't help you succeed, no matter how exciting it is. If it doesn't excite other people enough to get funding and/or publications, you won't be able to graduate and get a job either.
One of the main reasons I failed was I completely inverted this priority list. I wanted to find the perfect research project with the smart, young, funny, personable advisor. Unfortunately he had too many students. Instead I ended up trying to scrape up enough work for a dissertation starting 2.5 years in with a new professor who didn't have funding or an impressive-enough research record and was trying to get tenured. I was already behind because I didn't have an advisor from the start and I was trying to catch up with less resources and less time (due to my TA position). I was pretty much doomed.
Focus is absolutely required to get a PhD in my department. There are more students than there are (good) advising slots available, and you need to have a single-minded drive towards capturing one of those slots. My idealistic position of finding the area I was most passionate about was also incredibly unrealistic. The time for working on your passion is when you've got a PhD and tenure and can afford to research whatever you want. Until that time, you need to research what is hot and will get you published. Someone like me, who loves lots of things in computer science, if he doesn't keep his wide-ranging and distracting interests in check, will find himself strung out too thin and flailing. I failed to do this.
This is getting a lot longer than I intended, so I will continue tomorrow with part 2 where I'll discuss what I now perceive as the point-of-no-return. Before that time I could have taken steps to put me on the path to a PhD, but because of earlier mistakes and my failure to correct them, doomed me to quit instead.