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UMD ASTR 680 - More hints about graduate research

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More hints about graduate researchIlya Mandel, Caltech1. Make sure your first project is well-defined and interesting.Don’t be afraid to say no to your adviser’s first suggestion for a project. Don’t beafraid to say no even if you’ve already accepted a project, but realize that the project isgoing nowhere or you are not excited by it. Your adviser should be able to help you pick aproject that has a clear set of goals achievable on a reasonable time frame. Yes, eventuallyyou may choose some open-ended projects where the expected result is not immediatelyclear when you start your research, but these might not be a good choice for your firstproject. It’s very inefficient, not to mention discouraging, to spend several years on anunappealing task without an end in sight.2. Working in a group vs. working aloneYou can work on a research project on your own (with occasional advice), in a smallgroup of two or three people, or in a large group. There are positives and negatives toall three approaches. For example, working in a large group guarantees that you alwayshave a group of people very familiar with the project who have a vested interest in helpingout if you are stuck, but it could also delay things when your collaborators are busy withother work. Of course, different projects might be more or less amenable to working alonevs. in a group, and much depends on your personal preference. Try to work with differentcollaborators to see what you like best.3. Time in the officeSpend reasonable amounts of time in the office, and at reasonable hours. It’s usefulfor interacting with colleagues, for making sure others remember that you exist, and foryour general mental health.4. A paper a day keeps the angry committee members awayIt’s very embarassing to realize when fielding questions after a talk or defending yourcandidacy that you are not familiar with the literature in your field. It’s also bad for yourresearch. Reading literature is an acquired skill: how do you quickly go through a paperto pull out the significant results with a critical attitude? Perhaps a plan of reading apaper a day might help. It could be something related to your current project, one of thehistorically famous papers in your field, or just an interesting paper you noticed on thearchives that will help you broaden your horizons.5. Keep good notesWhen working on problem sets, you’ve probably made scratch marks on the back ofenvelopes that you’ve then thrown away (perhaps along with the problem sets themselves,after they’ve been graded). This is not a good approach to research notes. You should findthe most convenient way to keep them organized - whether you prefer to write everythingin one big notebook, to keep several folders or binders for notes on different projects, or totype things up in LaTeX the moment you get an idea is up to you - but the important thing1is to have access to your ideas and calculations from several months ago. It might alsobe nice to keep notes and bibliographical information on the papers you’ve read, perhapsin a large .bibtex file so that you can easily reference them once you go to write up yourresults. And if you obtain a result that you suspect will go into a future paper, you mayfind it helpful to write it up then and there: one reason some people have trouble gettingpapers out is that even if the initial research was fun, writing it up months later, afteryou’ve moved on to other research and the results are half-forgotten, is


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