A Year Into My PhD: All the Things I Haven't Learned

I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for a year now already.¹ As a bit of background, I’m employed as what is called a Research Associate at the Technische Universität Berlin, managing a research project in the field of distributed systems, which is applied computer science. I was hired while still in the process receiving my master’s degree in computer science from that same university, so it’s my first full, real 40h/week job. Oh, and I’m also a PhD student. You see, managing a research project and generating research output is the perfect opportunity to write a dissertation as well, you’re swatting to flies with one.. fly swatter?² At least that’s what they told me. More on those doubts later, though.

They in question were actually just one person: my wonderful professor, who was also the supervisor of my master thesis.³ He offered me the position I currently hold as he 1) had this funded, open position without any qualified candidates applying and 2) believed in my abilities as a computer scientist. Needless to say, I was… skeptical. To say the least. I wanted to build cool stuff, work in a hip and cool company⁴ and make an actual impact - not sit at my desk for three years and write papers that nobody reads. Oh, yeah, three years - that was the supposed duration of the project and more or less the minimal amount of time to get a PhD. Of course, if you are slow, it might take a bit longer. I was incredibly scared, to be honest. Scared that I wouldn’t be able to do, that I would get so bored that I might quit. Honestly, the thought of starting a project this size, quitting mid-way, and having achieved nothing at all, basically that I would waste the little time I had before I could catch up to my dreams and aspirations, all that scared me. The only thing that motivated me at that point was the title - getting to see those two letters and a dot on my passport. Well, to be frank, what really motivated me was the feedback I was getting when asking friends and family for advice: “Hey, this opportunity came up for me, but it’s kind of intimidating, I don’t really think I want to do it. Doesn’t sound like fun.” “What?!”, they would say, “You were asked by someone to take on a PhD?! Other people have to fight for funding to do their research and you just get an opportunity like that served on a silver platter?! And your professor really wants you to do it?! You must be incredibly smart!”.⁵ I think that was the kind of reinforcement that made me say yes in the end. That validation. It felt good. So I guess that is a thing I did learn just now.

But that wasn’t the point of this post, I don’t know why I got so far already without getting to the actual point. After a year in this role, I had my first feedback talk yesterday, a way to express my feelings about my job and working environment to my professor, and an opportunity to hear his opinion on my work.⁶ But even more than that, it gave me an opportunity to reflect on everything. I feel like I got trapped in the mindset that I hated this thing I was doing and just wanted to get through it, which isn’t really helpful I guess. And so I thought I might need to write stuff down somewhere, somewhere other than the five cards I filled with notes to help me in my three-hour feedback talk.⁷

Normally, when you reflect on a year of work, there is often a lot of stuff that one has learned. And I have learned a lot. I have learned a beautiful new programming language, I have learned how to write a paper (and hundreds of ways not to do it), I have learned to love, I have even learned to lead a small team. But what I learned yesterday and in the last two weeks, as I was preparing my feedback and checking my feelings, was that I still have a lot to learn. And that’s a good thing. Willingness to learn is always a good trait but it’s essential when you’re doing your PhD. Learning is the whole point. It’s not about writing papers or a dissertation, it’s not about teaching young students, it’s not about raising money. All of these are only tools of the trade, if you will. It’s all about using the opportunity to work on yourself. At least that’s what I think right now.

So here are a few things that I need to learn, that I need to work on, that I might even want to work on.⁸ In no particular order.⁹ And possibly likely definitely incomplete.

Do the Deadlines First, Then Do the Work

I still make this mistake and I need to change that ASAP. When there’s a particular piece of work that needs to be done, set a deadline first. A hard one. Let’s say, to give an example, you need to write a text: it’s a constant loop of writing a bit, getting feedback, then re-writing. It doesn’t make any sense to write first and then ask for feedback when you’re finished writing. Instead, make a plan before you even start writing: “Hey, can we talk about that text on Monday?” You now have until Monday to write that text. Or do that other thing. Who knows. And you might say, “Oh, what if the thing isn’t finished on Monday?” Well, then you’re a slow worker and you should be ashamed.- It’s OK! You can get feedback on unfinished work. In fact, your text will definitely not be ready on Monday, that’s why the whole re-writing thing is necessary - if your thing was finished, you wouldn’t need feedback.

Maybe a better take-away here is to say: “Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback on unfinished work.” I think that’s the true core here, my way of saying it is just how I want to learn to work.¹⁰ Yeah, maybe pretend that the other thing here is the title of this section.

Solve the Problems You Want to Solve

Let’s say you have this job that let’s you work on whatever you want and you get paid top medium dollar for it. Sounds like fun? Well, yes. Also, no. Well, actually, yes, it does sound like fun. So why do I make it so hard for myself? Sure, there are some limits to what I can actually do in my position, but those limits are… fairly limited. In the last year, there have been two things I thought about before doing any work:

First, is this like what everyone else is doing? Is this possibly a topic for a paper, like all the other papers I’m reading? Is this a problem that can be well defined, well motivated, well solved?

Second, is this what I’m supposed to be doing? Does it help my research project? Does it help me get along with my thesis?

Turns out, both of these things don’t even matter. At least in theory, because, you see, they still matter to me. And I need to learn to let these worries go and focus instead on problems, areas, technologies that I find interesting. There is always a way to fit my project into it and write a paper about it. And it will be a thousand times more interesting to read and write, because I actually care. Speaking about caring…

What I Care About

That’s a big one. In order to work on stuff you care about, it could be beneficial to learn what you actually care about. What are the areas in the world that aren’t going well right now, that would benefit from your time and energy? Climate change? Racial justice? It doesn’t even have to be a grand societal problem. It can be as small as wanting more bandwidth to scroll through memes when visiting grandma. There has to be something that motivates you. Most things have some aspect that is perfect for your skillset, whether you’re an expert in genome sequencing¹¹, sociology, or fog computing. You just have to find out what those things are and pick one to focus your time and energy on. Well, I just have to find it out and pick one. TBL (to be learned).¹²

What Skills I Want

Finally, I need to figure out what skills I want to develop. I have the opportunity to work with bleeding edge technology, foster interdisciplinary research, manage a small teams, teach students… I can leverage all of these things to learn continuously, every day, with everything I’m doing. It’s time to do just that, but I first need to find out where I want to focus all of my energy. It’s a similar problem to the one before but it’s the other side of the coin: internal versus external development. I guess.

How to Stop Snacking

Snacking, apparently, means doing “easy and low-impact work”, which is to be avoided. But I love it. I love filling out forms, doing the dishes at work, all these things that help me avoid doing the hard work, the work that really matters. The work that solves the issues I care about and helps me develop the skills that I want to have. I think this is one of those major skills that I still lack and a lesson I really need to teach myself. So far, I have no clue on how to go about teaching myself to focus on hard but high-impact work, but at least I have identified this as a problem. That’s the first step.

How to Structure a Go Project

Help, I have no idea what I’m doing. Help. How does this even work. Anyone? Peter Bourgon?

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1. Well, almost a year. Or more than a year. Depending on how you count it. My contract started in September of 2019 but my first day at work was the 4th of October, a delay that I owe to an educational trip to China and me returning with a cold from said trip. ↩︎

2. Add that to the list of idioms that don’t translate well. ↩︎

3. And my bachelor thesis before that… should I start branching out someday? ↩︎

4. You know, the ones where they have free soft drinks, a gaming console in their office, and where the dev team writes a tech blog on the side. ↩︎

5. They didn’t actually say that last part but they might as well have. ↩︎

6. On, you know, a meta level, if you will. ↩︎

7. Which, to be perfectly clear, I am incredibly grateful for. And, to be even more clear, I have expressed this sentiment to my professor. ↩︎

8. The actual inspiration for this post was my beautiful, smart, amazing girlfriend who had this idea to write down a list of her common mistakes. Identifying and listing these mistakes somewhere is the most important step to stop making them. ↩︎

9. Actually, in a very orderly manner: the order in which they came to me when writing this post. ↩︎

10. And also this just happened to me today, so it’s topical. ↩︎

11. I truly, truly believe that if you’re an expert in genome sequencing (Yes, I said it: an expert. I want to think of myself as an expert in my field, I’m a freaking research associate which makes me an associate researcher.) you can help solve the meme-bandwidth-at-grandma’s-house problem at least to some extent. ↩︎

12. I’m using the word learn here, but it’s more of a discovery I need to make. Although you can’t plan for discoveries. What word would you use? Discuss. ↩︎