Getting Feedback
To be successful at research, it is essential that you learn to cope with criticism, and even that you actively seek it
out. Learn to listen to valid, constructive criticism and to ignore destructive, pointless criticism (after finding any
pearls of wisdom that may be buried in it).
In order to get feedback, you have to present your ideas. Write up what you're working on, even if you're not
ready to write a full conference or journal paper, and show it to people. Even for pre-publishable papers, write
carefully and clearly, to maximize your chances of getting useful comments (and of having people read what you
wrote at all).
Give presentations at seminar series at your university, at conferences, and at other universities and research labs
when you get the chance. Your advisor should help you find appropriate forums to present your work and ideas.
Many fields have informal workshops that are ideal for presenting work in progress.
Attend conferences and talk about your research. When you meet someone new and they ask you what you're
working on, seize the opportunity. Don't just say ``I'm doing my thesis on foobar applications of whatsis
algorithms'' -- tell them as much as they're willing to listen to. You should have 30-second, 2-minute, 5-minute
and 10-minute summaries of your thesis ready at a moment's notice (but not memorized word-for-word; nobody
wants to listen to a canned speech).
Talking to other people will help you to realize which aspects of your research are truly different and innovative,
how your work fits into the current state of your field and where it's going, and which aspects of your work are
harder to sell (and, therefore, which aspects you need to think more about justifying).
Giving feedback to other students and colleagues is useful for many reasons. First, it helps you to polish your
critical skills, which are helpful both in understanding other people's work and in evaluating your own. Second, it
helps you to build a network of people who will be your colleagues for years to come. Finally, if you give useful
feedback, those people will be more likely to make an effort to do the same for you.
It will be helpful (to you and to the person whose paper you're reviewing) to organize comments on a paper in
descending order of abstraction: high-level content-oriented comments, mid-level stylistic and presentation
comments, and low-level nitpicky comments on syntax and grammar. Try to keep your comments constructive
(``this would read better if you defined X before introducing Y'') rather than destructive (``this is nonsense'').
You'll want to read a paper at least twice -- once to get the basic ideas, then a second time to mark down
comments. High-level comments describing your overall impression of the paper, making suggestions for
organization, presentation and alternative approaches to try, potential extensions, and relevant references are
generally the most useful and the hardest to give. Low-level comments are more appropriate for a paper that is
being submitted for publication than for an unpublished paper such as a proposal or description of preliminary
research.
Getting Financial Support
Most graduate students (at least in the natural sciences) have a source of financial support that pays their tuition
and a small living stipend. Although nobody ever got rich being a graduate student, you probably won't starve
either. Sources of funding include fellowships (from NSF, universities, foundations, government agencies, and
industry), employer support, research assistantships (i.e., money from a faculty member's research grant) and
teaching assistantships.
Start looking for money early. Many schools arrange support in the form of an RA or TA position in the first year,
but after that, you're on your own. Deadlines for applications vary, and if you miss one, you'll probably have to
wait another year. After you apply, it can take six months or so to review the applications and several more
months to actually start receiving money.
Ask faculty members (especially your advisor, who should be helping you to find support or providing support out
of his or her grant money), department administrators, and fellow graduate students about available funding. Go to
your university's fellowship office or its equivalent, and look through the listings in "The Annual Register of Grant Support", "The Grant Register", "The Chronicle of Higher Education", and "Foundation Grants to
Individuals". Look into NSF grants (there are several different programs). Take advantage of your status as a
woman or minority if you are one (this may be the only time when it actually is an advantage). Most universities
have fellowship programs that may be administered through individual departments or may be campus-wide.
If you haven't yet begun actively doing research, getting an RA position from a faculty member may be a good
way to become involved in a research project. Working on an existing research project by maintaining or
developing hardware or software, writing reports, and running experiments will give you a feel for what it's like to
do research -- and you may even find a thesis topic. Ask around to see what's available, and go talk to professors
whose work you find interesting.
For a research grant or fellowship, you will probably have to write a proposal, so the more you've thought about
potential thesis topics, the better off you'll be. You may need to tailor your proposal to the interests and needs of
the particular funding agency or program you're applying to, but stick to something you know about and are
sincerely interested in.
Write for a general audience, since the people reviewing your application may not be in the same field. Emphasize
your goals and why the project you propose to work on is important. Talk as much as you can about how you're
going to solve the problem, and be sure that your proposed solution will satisfy the goals you've set forth. Follow
the rules for format, page layout and length, or your application may not even be reviewed.
Advice for Advisors
In order to be a good advisor, you have to relate to your graduate students as individuals, not just as anonymous
research assistants or tickets to tenure and co-authored publications. Work with all of your graduate students, not
just those whom you feel most comfortable with, or who are interested in the problems you're most excited about.
Try to get to know your students personally and professionally. Help them to identify their strengths and
weaknesses, to build on the former, and to work on overcoming the latter. Give them honest evaluations of their
work and performance: don't just assume that they know how they're doing and what you think of them.
Read this paper and others like it with an eye towards discovering which aspects of the graduate experience your
students may be having trouble with, or may not realize the importance of. Try to see the experience from their
perspective, which will be different for each student, because each student has a different background and
different talents and goals.
The roles of an advisor include:
1.Guiding students' research: helping them to select a topic, write a research proposal, perform the research,
evaluate it critically, and write the dissertation.
2.Getting them involved in the wider research community: introducing them to colleagues, collaborating on
research projects with them, funding conference travel, encouraging them to publish papers, nominating
them for awards and prizes.
3.Finding financial support: providing research assistantships or helping them to find fellowships, and
finding summer positions.
4.Finding a position after graduation: helping them to find and apply for postdoctoral positions, faculty
positions, and/or jobs in industry; supporting their applications with strong recommendations; and helping
them to make contacts.
Although guiding your students' research is normally viewed as the central task of an advisor, the other roles are
also critical to their long-term success. The section on networking contains advice for students on networking.
You can help them in this process by funding and encouraging travel to conferences and paper publication, and by
introducing them and talking about their research to colleagues.