Mr. Fan的生活隨筆

I recently got the Ph. D admission offer from UCSB (University of California Santa Barbara), quite a big triumph and challenge in my life, which means I have to be fully immersed in the 
world-class research environment for at least five years. After looking through the personal website of the faculties members, I actually found some resources I hadn't noticed before.
Professor Shell, mainly working on molecular dynamics simulation, wrote several articles concerning how to be success as a graduate student.
Here I make a bried summary of one of my favorites: "From my point of view...":
 

• Unlike undergraduate student, my success will be isolated and largely independent with my peers, making high amounts of self-pressure and expectations.
• Raising money is one of the most important activites for a healthy research group. Spending a bunch of time writing proposals, no PI wants "you" to fail!
• For a faculty member, a work week averaging 70 hours is common.
• A quote says," I function more as a start-up CEO, and I see you as a project manager".
• I work hard, so I expect you to as well.
• I see no place for "9" to "5" or "never on weekends" attitude.
• Multi-tasking, never get bored.
• Read 200-300 papers per year, choose 20-30 of them working on important derivations and thinking deeply about results and implications.
• Write down everything in your notebook!
• Never have excuses for not attending a seminar!
• Write e-mail to schedule a face-to face talk (more efficent than simply discussing things through e-mail).

Evaluation of ideas:

• Anyone else has done this before? How does the idea fits into recent results in the field?
• Will it make an impact?
• Does the idea make physical sense at various scales?
• Possible subtleties or problems may arise? Discuss with someone!
• Critically assess the hypothesis! Don't start until the idea has passed the tests above!

How can I feel condident about how I'm doing?

• Are you putting in a sound investment of time?
• "Up to speed" with major methods, approaches and results of my immediate project area!
• Don't spend too much time on "low-bar" activites (e.g., creating a nice report)
• Are you approaching a task from different angles in parallel and constantly (re)prioritizing my efforts?
• Never accept anything at face value! (deep level of thought)