This blog posting is about how to flourish in graduate school. Here I comment on some of the suggestions from the readings for the course and explain how a few of their tips work or do not work for me.
Two suggestions that I found interesting from How to be a Good Graduate Student (http://www.cs.indiana.edu/how.2b/how.2b.html) were "Keeping a journal of your research activities and ideas is very useful" and "One of the keys to balancing your life is to develop a schedule that's more or less consistent." These are two things that I try to do. I am starting to keep of notebook with all of my research activities so I can go back and check what I have done in the past and what I ideas I might have thought of. This is particularly useful when I have to talk with other people about my research because it means I have a reference that I can look at to help me remember exactly what I have been doing.
As for the second suggestion of developing a schedule that is also something I try to do. I know from experience that if I want to get much work done I need to start soon after I get up. If I do not start first thing in the morning I am likely to procrastinate if the tasks I am trying to accomplish are things that do not need to be done immediately. In order to deal with this I try to make myself get up and start work by around 8:00 every weekday so that I will get more work done than if I wait and work later in the day. In addition, I frequently try to go to the IST building and do work there because I am less likely to get distracted if I am not in my own home. Even on weekends I will frequently go into my office for at least a little while so that I will make sure and get some work done.
From Alice Domurat Dreger's graduate school survival (http://www.alicedreger.com/grad_school_survival.html) Two connected tips that I found were "Enjoy yourself in grad school: sleep late when you can, take naps, eat good food and enjoy great conversations with smart people..." and "...but don't laze around." The two are obviously connected. I can understand the don't laze around part of the tips and the enjoy yourself but some of the other parts do not work for me. Other people may have different ways of working and thus they may be more useful for them but for me I know sleeping late and taking naps are not good ideas. I can sleep late occasionally but generally I get more work done if I get up early and start working. Likewise naps cause me to get less work done because I have more trouble sleeping and thus am not able to get up as early and start working the next morning. So those are two specific tips that I like but that I can only do when I am certain that I do not have much to do at the time because otherwise they will impair my ability to get work done and will encourage me to laze about which is contrary to the second part of the tip.
Two suggestions that I found interesting from How to be a Good Graduate Student (http://www.cs.indiana.edu/how.2b/how.2b.html) were "Keeping a journal of your research activities and ideas is very useful" and "One of the keys to balancing your life is to develop a schedule that's more or less consistent." These are two things that I try to do. I am starting to keep of notebook with all of my research activities so I can go back and check what I have done in the past and what I ideas I might have thought of. This is particularly useful when I have to talk with other people about my research because it means I have a reference that I can look at to help me remember exactly what I have been doing.
As for the second suggestion of developing a schedule that is also something I try to do. I know from experience that if I want to get much work done I need to start soon after I get up. If I do not start first thing in the morning I am likely to procrastinate if the tasks I am trying to accomplish are things that do not need to be done immediately. In order to deal with this I try to make myself get up and start work by around 8:00 every weekday so that I will get more work done than if I wait and work later in the day. In addition, I frequently try to go to the IST building and do work there because I am less likely to get distracted if I am not in my own home. Even on weekends I will frequently go into my office for at least a little while so that I will make sure and get some work done.
From Alice Domurat Dreger's graduate school survival (http://www.alicedreger.com/grad_school_survival.html) Two connected tips that I found were "Enjoy yourself in grad school: sleep late when you can, take naps, eat good food and enjoy great conversations with smart people..." and "...but don't laze around." The two are obviously connected. I can understand the don't laze around part of the tips and the enjoy yourself but some of the other parts do not work for me. Other people may have different ways of working and thus they may be more useful for them but for me I know sleeping late and taking naps are not good ideas. I can sleep late occasionally but generally I get more work done if I get up early and start working. Likewise naps cause me to get less work done because I have more trouble sleeping and thus am not able to get up as early and start working the next morning. So those are two specific tips that I like but that I can only do when I am certain that I do not have much to do at the time because otherwise they will impair my ability to get work done and will encourage me to laze about which is contrary to the second part of the tip.
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