这篇书评是我大一时写下来的，收拾数字遗产时竟然见到如此让我震惊的产物，特粘来这里，大一的我竟然就已经记下如此有真知灼见的笔记，让我倒吸一口凉气，我竟然对自己的想法的发源时刻已经忘的这么多。

phd grind 讲述了作者从进入斯坦福经历6年计算机博士毕业的过程。其中经历从开始进入错的研究方向导致3年都没有发出文章，而后在许许多多其他的机会的引导下作者走上独立非常冷门的software optimize的方向，并在贵人的帮助下独立完成Incpy、CDE等5个项目，最终成功毕业的故事。

对于作者帮助最大有以下几点：

1. 在workshop的presentation后遇到贵人

2. 在自己coldemail中找到重要贵人

3. 微软实习和谷歌实习都一定程度让他转型到后来的研究方向

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令我感触比较深的有以下几点：

• Creative ideas mean nothing without the great effort to bring them fruition：看过作者经历数千小时的磨难才将自己的项目的代码完成，而这个想法确实他在博一就想出过的，这让我意识到在science领域提出新观点的确重要，但是后期的优化和不断的改进才是把理论变成产品的关键。

• 我也非常想真的做好一个产品，让更多的人喜欢上它。在作者将自己的项目放到网上，并建立社区来运营，甚至提供给其他领域的老师使用，这种成就感也让我心潮澎湃。相比作者说的其他那些只将学术成果放在象牙塔内，只留下想法而不打磨的事业，我还是比较喜欢做工程和做企业。

• Ideas beget idea：相比作者后面的几个项目，他走上这个研究领域的过程更加困难。

• 真诚的对帮助的贵人表示感谢

• 经常出去做pre能提高遇到贵人的机会，并经常身边的人讨论，simply doing good work isn't enough to get noticed in a hyper-competitive field.

• 学术圈有套路，发文章需要抱对大腿。找到领域最aggresive的教授（希望拿到tenure的）能极大简化发展过程。

• 拥有没有任何limitation 的sponsership会为你带来巨大的自由，你不用受制于任何人，而且任何教授都会愿意接受你。

• 及时止损。作者的重大转折是他停止了第一个项目，否则迎接他的就是pity graduation。在没有希望的研究项目面前，及时止损转型。（当然这是需要你拥有自己的sponsership的，btw，往往拥有了tenure的话教授就会做这种不知道发不发出来的项目，巨坑）

• 对身边的机会保持警惕，不要在一条路上走到黑。对作者最重要的几项经历反而完全不发生在他所在的实验室里。

• 对教授和博士的动机了解清楚有助于让他们更好的帮助你,比如有tenure的教授不太会在乎发论文，没有tenure的教授会非常想发论文，高年级博士着急发文需要人打杂。

• Online submission forms are black holes!!!

• Computer science research is lab our intensive,researchers often hire Ph.D students as summer interns to help implement their ideas.

• 科技公司的研究部门因为没有教职和行政上的要求，反而是做学术更好的地方。

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看完这本Ph.d grind，真真正正体会到了phd的各种grind，作者一二年级的劳动苦力，三四年级的迷惑，五六年级命悬一线，基本没有展示出任何Ph.D.的attractive point，但是正如作者在文尾说的：Ph.D. program provides a safe environment for certain types of people to push themselves far beyond their mental limits and then emerge stronger as a result. 能突破个人极限这才是要选择读Ph.D.的意义。此外学到的两点，及时止损，经常做pre。

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书摘

1. This journey has taught me that creative ideas mean nothing without the extreme e↵ort to bring them to fruition

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2. Ideas beget ideas

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3. Even a quick thank-you email goes a long way

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4. Express true gratitude

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5. whenever I felt stuck, I sought experts who could help me get unstuck. Finding help can be as simple as asking a friend in my department, or it might require getting referrals or even cold-emailing strangers

19年06月08日 04-14

6. thousands of hours of hard grinding would go to waste if I failed to properly pitch the big-picture significance of my research to my target audience: senior academic colleagues

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7. Give many talks

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8. Ally with insiders

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9. Reject bad defaults

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10. By understanding the motivations and personalities of older Ph.D. students, professors, and other senior colleagues, I was able to lead my own initiatives even from the bottom of the pecking order

19年06月08日 03-58

11. culminating in getting to work with Margo at Harvard during my final year. But these fortuitous opportunities wouldn’t have arisen if I didn’t repeatedly put myself and my work on display—giving talks, chatting with colleagues, asking for and o↵ering help, and expressing gratitude

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12. Ph.D. program provides a safe environment for certain types of people to push themselves far beyond their mental limits and then emerge stronger as a result

19年06月08日 03-53

13. I received the opposite of a miracle: Both my IncPy and SlopPy paper submissions were rejected. I was disappointed but not too shocked, since I had already grown accustomed to paper rejections by this time.

There were lots of legitimate criticisms of my work, so I felt that addressing them would strengthen my future resubmissions

19年06月03日 01-48

14. This deep pain of dealing with software dependencies would later inspire CDE, the new project I started in Year Five

19年06月03日 12-42

15. One benefit of presenting a talk on a paper is that people can chat with you about it afterward, which can lead to serendipity.

new Python-based project that her student Elaine was starting. Since

19年06月03日 12-31

16. I discovered that this strategy of finding and setting short-term deadlines for myself would work wonders in keeping me focused throughout the rest of my Ph.D. years. Without self-imposed deadlines, it becomes easy to fall into a rut and

19年06月03日 12-30

17. Part of luck is always keeping your eyes open for new opportunities while simultaneously focusing enough to make consistent progress

19年06月03日 12-29

18. Thus, top-tier com- That said, having workshop papers can be a path toward “pity graduation” because it’s still better than having no published papers.

That said, having workshop papers can be a path toward “pity graduation” because it’s still better than having no published papers.

puter science professors strongly encourage students to publish more selective conference papers and eschew workshops altogether

19年06月03日 12-27

19. since if the paper gets accepted (which is likely), the professor must pay around $1,500 of travel, hotel, and registration costs using their grant money for the student to attend and give a talk at the workshop

19年06月03日 12-26

20. The combination of a well-defined, short-term goal and continual helpful This is an unbeatable combination, and one that I try to provide for my own students.

that I try to provide for feedback made my internship workdays much more productive than those during my previous three years of grad school

19年06月01日 12-52

21. From this experience, I learned about the importance of being endorsed by an influential person; simply doing good work isn’t enough to get noticed in a hyper-competitive field.

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22. 学会如何和更厉害愿意帮助自己的人链接关系

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23. From this experience, I learned about the importance of being endorsed by an influential person; simply doing good work isn’t enough to get noticed in a hyper-competitive field

19年06月01日 12-49

24. Having a published paper was crucial here, since I could point Tom to a vetted document instead of just rambling about my idle speculations on this topic

19年06月01日 12-47

25. If I didn’t do a great job during my first undergraduate research project and keep in touch with my supervisor throughout the years, then this lucky connection wouldn’t have happened

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26. Online submission forms are black holes. Anything is better than blindly submitting online

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27. Since lots of computer science research is labor-intensive, researchers often hire Ph.D. students as summer interns to help implement their ideas

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也许科技公司的研究部门也是我可以考虑的暑假申请地方

19年06月01日 12-41

28. Since lots of computer science research is labor-intensive, researchers often hire Ph.D. students as summer interns to help implement their ideas

19年06月01日 12-41

29. Getting a full-time researcher position at MSR is as di"cult as Some researchers I know there also got faculty job offers at top universities. getting a job as a professor at a prestigious university

19年06月01日 12-40

30.The full-time researchers are like professors, except that they can focus nearly all of their time on research since they don’t have teaching or advising duties. But perhaps their favorite job benefit is that they don’t need to apply for grant funding, which is a tedious recurring activity that saps professors’ time

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原来科技公司的研究部门是可以更加纯粹的研究，而没有行政上的琐事

19年06月01日 12-40

31. But perhaps their favorite job benefit is that they don’t need to apply for grant funding, which is a tedious recurring activity that saps professors’ time

19年06月01日 12-39

32. The full-time researchers are like professors, except that they can focus nearly all of their time on research since they don’t have teaching or advising duties

19年06月01日 12-38

33. In e↵ect, Ph.D. students working with those young researchers were more easily able to publish and graduate, while Dawson’s students had a much harder time by comparison

19年06月01日 12-34

34. The Ph.D. Grind So what was di↵erent here? In short, neither Cristi nor Dawson were truly hungry to publish. They had already published several Klee papers together, and a cross-checking paper coauthored with me would have been a “nice-to-have” but not mandatory follow-up publication.

Cristi was in his final year of Ph.D. and didn’t need to publish any more papers to graduate, and Dawson already had tenure, so he wasn’t in a rush to publish either. In contrast, Joel was a mid-stage Ph.D. student who was itching to publish the first paper of his dissertation, and Scott was an assistant professor who needed to publish prolifically to earn tenure. These two opposing experiences taught me the importance of deeply understanding the motivations and incentives of one’s pot

19年05月29日 12-27

35. But back then, I was so burned-out and frustrated with the traditional pecking order of group-based research— putting new Ph.D. students through the meat grinder on the most unglamorous work—that I recoiled and went o↵ on my own

19年05月26日 12-35

36. Learning to send succinct and effective professional emails has benefited my career tremendously

19年05月25日 12-12

37. In contrast, Dawson was already-tenured and had only a mild side interest in this topic. The lesson here is that it’s very hard to publish on a topic if your advisor isn’t also obsessively thinking about it, since you’re directly competing against other students whose advisors are obsessively thinking about

19年05月27日 01-01

38. One of those students dropped out of the Ph.D.

program after over nine years in the department and zero publications, and the other one graduated after nine years and only one Klee-related publication. That publication addressed the same search algorithm problem that I originally attempted. It took that student five years to publish that paper, which let him graduate

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及时止损。

体谅博士。

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39. teaming up with Peter

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和一个想发论文的老博士合作，nice

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40. His publishing track record when he was a student was beyond prolific, which is how he got a top-tier faculty job at Stanford. However, since he was now busy with professor duties such as teaching, committee work, paper reviewing, and other errands, he could not devote the thousands of hours of focused labor necessary to turn this idea into a publishable paper.

Like all professors in labor-intensive research fields, Dawson needed students to execute on his visions

19年05月31日 12-43

41. His publishing track record when he was a student was beyond prolific, which is how he got a top-tier faculty job at Stanford. However, since he was now busy with professor duties such as teaching, committee work, paper reviewing, and other errands, he could not devote the thousands of hours of focused labor necessary to turn this idea into a publishable paper.

Like all professors in labor-intensive research fields, Dawson needed students to execute on his visions

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教授生活

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42. danger. In fact, one of the purposes of tenure is to allow professors to take risks by attempting bolder project ideas

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43. Fellowships are important not for the money, but rather for the freedom from grant-related constraints

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44. The professor might need to go through several rounds of student failures and dropouts before one set of students eventually succeeds

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45. I can now see why this plan was doomed to fail.

No professor wants to join a random committee for a student they don’t even know, especially one in another department

19年06月02日 12-59

46. plan was doomed to fail.

No professor wants to join a random committee for a student they don’t even know, especially one in another department

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决定，依赖于现实

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47. The nearly ten thousand hours I had spent doing many types of programming over the past decade—in classroom, hobby, research lab, and engineering internship settings—prepared me to endure the intensely intricate programming required to implement research ideas such as IncPy

19年06月02日 01-03

48. l always miss those purer times. In my current job, there’s no way I can block off three weeks just to code non-stop

19年06月03日 06-23

49. In sum, the purpose of academic research is This is a very important point. It’s not our job as academics to ship polished products; that’s the role of companies.

This is a very important to produce validated ideas, not polished products

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50. Google Tech Talks

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51.talks lead to more and more serendipity

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52. The reviewers loved how we honestly acknowledged the failures of our evaluation and extracted valuable insights from them. Without a doubt, our paper would have never been accepted if not for Je↵’s rhetorical expertise

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