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aruba
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Mark's Grad School Item
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Apr 19 17:17 UTC 2002 |
I've decided to go back to grad school in the fall and finish my Ph.D.
Drawing on jep's example, I want to use Grex to journal some of my
tribulations therewith.
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| 98 responses total. |
rlejeune
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response 1 of 98:
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Apr 19 17:27 UTC 2002 |
Good luck.
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jp2
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response 2 of 98:
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Apr 19 17:30 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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remmers
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response 3 of 98:
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Apr 19 17:38 UTC 2002 |
Cool, Mark! Hope it goes well.
But if you're not going back until fall, isn't April a little early
for the tribulations to start? :)
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brighn
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response 4 of 98:
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Apr 19 17:46 UTC 2002 |
It's obviously been a while since John was in Graduate school. ;}
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aruba
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response 5 of 98:
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Apr 19 17:47 UTC 2002 |
First, some background. I graduated from Williams College in 1989 with a
B.A. in math. During the last year, I wrote an undergraduate thesis with a
professor named Frank Morgan. It didn't go very smoothly, and I'll say
more about that later.
Though I got several offers for math grad school the next year, I couldn't
face it, so I took a year off and lived with my sister in New Jersey,
working as a programmer at a small software company. (We were writing
hypertext software for DOS - we programmers thought it was a big waste of
time, and hypertext would never amount to anything. Heh.)
Then in the spring I reactivated my applications. Most places were less
keen on me this time; my offers decreased at Michigan and Cornell, and
Princeton turned me down, though they were ready to let me in the year
before. Go figure. Michigan offered me the best deal, so I packed up and
moved to Ann Arbor in the fall of 1990.
My first year in school was hard, but I lived with two other grad students
(Paul & Steve) who became my good friends, and together we made it through
the initial sequence of courses they made us take. In those days, it
worked like this: the department defined 3 2-course sequences, which they
called "alpha courses":
590-591 Topology and algebraic topology
593-594 Algebra
596-597 Complex analysis and real analysis
(BTW, if you're wondering - I don't plan to make this item be about math
per se; just about the difficulties of dealing with grad school. So if
you're thinking about forgetting the item just because you don't like
math, well, I hope you'll hang on a little longer.)
So the department defined these 3 sequences, and the rule was that you had
to pass a 6-hour qualifying exam in two of the areas, and pass the courses
in the third. Of course, most mortals couldn't pass the exam without
taking the courses, so in practice everyone had to take all 6 courses
unless they had already taken them somewhere else.
So Paul and Steve and I took the alpha courses that first year, and helped
each other through. They were hard, and my work habits weren't very
good, but I got through. I passed the qualifier exam in topology at the
end of the first year, and the one in algebra (on the second try) in the
middle of my second year.
But then it all fell apart for me after that. I was badly depressed,
wasn't wild about the idea of being a research mathematician, and Paul and
Steve went in different directions, so we couldn't work together any more.
I also had a teaching assistantship (I had been on fellowship the first
year), which in the math department at Michigan means you teach a class of
undergraduates with very minimal help from the faculty. (I.e., I wasn't
actually "assisting" anyone.)
I couldn't settle on an area of math that I wanted to work on, and in
retrospect I was just way too depressed and conflicted to have made the
whole thing work. The second year was miserable, and I only completed two
courses (and in one of them I got a C+, which for a grad course is pretty
bad.) It wasn't my finest hour.
I stuck around for a third year, but if anything it was worse than the
second. Again I only finished two courses, and the only thing that held
any allure for me was the teaching. I quit at the end of that year,
applied for and got my master's degree based on my coursework, tucked my
tail between my legs and got the hell out.
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aruba
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response 6 of 98:
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Apr 19 18:22 UTC 2002 |
Wow, 4 responses while I entered #5. I'll try to answer those questions as
I go along.
So after I quit, I bummed around a while, and then got a job working at a
software company called Supply Tech here in Ann Arbor. Steve had been
smarter than me and left for the Peace Corps after our second year, but Paul
was sticking it out in the department. He's a hard worker, and he completed
his Ph.D. more or less on time, in 1996. Paul was my roommate for 10 years,
until he left for Japan in the summer of 2000. But that's a separate story.
I worked for Supply Tech (which was bought by Harbinger, which was bought by
Peregrine, who closed the office in Ann Arbor - so it goes) for 3.5 years,
from Feb. '94 to Aug. '97. I as a pretty good programmer, I think. I
didn't like the business realitites, which reared their heads a lot when the
company started to get into financial trouble. But I like programming and
I liked working in a team, and I especially liked that someone actually
cared aboutwhat I was doing. In academia, it seems to me, you really have
to be self-motivated to an almost solipsistic degree, because no one else is
going to give a rip about what you do. That was one of the things I
couldn't deal with in grad school the first time. But in the real world,
you do things because people want them done, and - lo and behold - they
actually *thank* you when you do them! And *pay* you! It was quite an
eye-opener.
In the mid-nineties, the cold war had just ended, and a lot of things in the
scientific world were changing. Lots of money that the government had been
pouring into math and science suddenly dried up (Bush called this the "peace
dividend", as I recall), and also a lot of Eastern European and Russian
mathematicians and scientists were suddenly free to move to the U.S. and
market their skills here.
So the upshot was that the job market for academics in math and physics
got extremely tight. Steve came back from Nepal in 1995, and looked for a
job teaching math at community colleges all over the country. He couldn't
find anything at all; finally he answered an ad from the College of
Micronesia on the island of Pohnpei, and being an already seasoned world
traveller, when they offered him a job he went without a qualm. But
that's another story.
Paul, too, couldn't find much work, so he got a short term job writing
statistical algorithms for the Biostats department. It didn't pan out
very well, but he, like me, hung around Ann Arbor out of inertia.
At Supply Tech we had two programmers, Ming and Xueqing (they are both
Chinese, and speak excellent English) who both had Ph.D.s in physics.
They were obviously overqualified for writing business software, but they
were both good at it, and didn't resent what they were doing. They became
my friends.
So the cumulative effect of these events and interactions on me was to
make me realize that if you get a Ph.D., you don't have to be an academic.
It sounds obvious - getting a degree should expand your options, not force
you into a particular small set of choices. But about 75% (last I heard)
of all mathematicians *are* in academia, and of course the people who
mentor you (inasmuch as they *do* mentor you) while you're in school are
academics, so I had absorbed the idea that that's what I was locking
myself into if I pursued the degree. It was a big barrier to my moving
on, because I felt that by choosing an area/advisor, I was choosing the
thing I was going to work on for the rest of my life. That's a pretty
heavy burden for a 24-year old to carry around.
Also, I started to believe again that I had the raw material to be a
mathematician, even though the coping skills for dealing with school had
eluded me in the past.
I had a bad year in '96, for a number of reasons, and when Steve wrote to
me that fall and asked me to come visit him in Micronesia, it was all the
excuse I needed to quit Supply Tech. I hung around for another 8 months
to finish a project I was responsible for (but that's another story). By
that time, I had messed up my back pretty bad, and was laid up for the
rest of the year. I had surgery in Feb. of '98, and went to see Steve
that May, so it worked out. But then I wasn't sure what to do next.
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aruba
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response 7 of 98:
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Apr 19 19:00 UTC 2002 |
So, this is going to sound corny, but:
Sometime in 1998 I saw Tom Hanks' HBO series "From the Earth to the Moon".
I had kind of an epiphany while I was watching episode 5, about the
engineers who designed the lunar lander: what I'd always been most
excited about in the world was the space program. I thought, wow, if I
could actually contribute something to the space program, *then* I'd feel
like I'd done something important. Then I'd be able to look my
grandchildren in the eye and say I made a difference in the world; that I
didn't squander my talents.
So I thoguth about what I could do. I knew I could probably get a job at
NASA or JPL as a bottom-rung programmer, but I'd had a friend who did that
who didn't end up working on anything except programs that JPL sold to
other people. That didn't sound so great.
In any case, I figured, I had better learn some science. I sudied a lot
of math in college, but almost no science. (I had read that book, "Zen
and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", when I was a senior in high
school, and it turned me off of science. But that's another story.) Paul
had been a physics major, so I had heard him talk about physics a little
(and I had taken a high school course), so I thought I should probably
learn physics. I'd digested about all The Learning Channel had to offer,
so I figured the next stop for me was the University.
Well, that was a big step, as you might imagine. The last time I was in
school it was a miserable experience, not to mention that it was not my
finest hour. So I wanted to start slow.
In January '99 I showed up at a 100-level physics class and asked the
professor (Prof. Keith Riles) if I could sit in. He said sure, probably
thinking that he'd never see me again, or that I would drift away after a
few classes. I almost did; it was stressful for me just being on campus,
so for the first couple of weeks my attendance was spotty. But I got it
together and got myself in a routine, and started to go to every class. I
stuck with it till the end of the semester, much to the professor's
surprise. I also asked a lot of questions, which at first I thought
wasn't fair, since I wasn't actually paying anything for the class. But
it turns out most of the rest of the class were freshmen who were too
bored or too intimidated to ask many questions, and the prof *loved* it
that I was so solicitous. Hopefully, the other students didn't hate me
for it. :)
So that went well, and I did the same thing in the fall, with the next
class in the beginning physics sequence (a 200-level electricity and
magnetism class). The professor (Prof. Roberto Merlin) was again very
accomodating, and encouraged me to come back to school for credit. I was
still in "baby step" mode, but I crossed my fingers and enrolled for
winter 2000 as a "special undergraduate" - i.e., a non-degree student.
I took one class, which was the equivalent of the one I had just sat
through. It went well; I worked with a couple of other students, and I
found that I could handle it. My attendance was nearly perfect - in the
old days, I had had a lot of trouble with my sleep schedule, and missed a
lot of classes. But I seem to be over that, and over depression (but
that's another (long) story), so now I go to all my classes. The fact
that I'm paying for them myself helps, too. :)
So in fall 2000 I took two 300-level physics courses, and again worked
with other students, which helps me a lot. In Winter 2001 I started in on
the 400-level physics courses that are required of all majors, and I also
took a math course, Math 450, "Advanced math for engineers". That may
have been the first really applied math course I ever took, but even so it
reminded me how much different math is from physics, and how much more
comfortable I am with math.
(Sorry for the littany of classes - this probably isn't interesting to
most people. I'm listing them because I'm trying to show how my thinking
and my confidence has been evolving over the past few years. Kind of
thinking out loud; that's part of how I'd like to use this item.)
Anyway, last fall I took two more 400-level physics courses and another
math class, about numerical methods. That was hard, taking three at once,
and I was pretty stressed out. But I survived, and made a friend out of
my math prof.
This term, I couldn't find any physics courses I wanted to take, so I took
two math courses, one of them a 500-level grad course on Coding Theory.
Both have gone well, though the grad course is certainly harder than all
but one of the undergrad classes I've taken lately. But I hooked up with
an electrical engineering grad student, and after every class we'd sit
down and go through the notes, filling in all the details that the prof
left out. That worked *very* well - if we hadn't done that, we'd both
have been pretty lost a lot of the time.
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aruba
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response 8 of 98:
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Apr 19 19:31 UTC 2002 |
During this term I started to think seriously, for the first time in a
while, about going back and finishing my Ph.D. I'll try to list my reasons.
Keep in mind, though, that if it was an easy decision, I would have made it
a long time ago. So after I list the pros, I'll list the cons.
1. I feel intimidated around people with Ph.D.s. Not necessarily because I
think they're brighter than me, but because they made it through and I
didn't. I guess you can say that grad school was the biggest thing I ever
failed at in my life, and that failure still nags at my cnfidence in myself.
I want to prove to myself that I can do it.
2. I think having a Ph.D. will incline people to respect me more.
3. I think having a Ph.D. will help me to get a job, first at NASA/JPL, and
then, if I get tired of that, somewhere else.
4. I like doing math. If there's a chance I can get paid to do math, then
that chance will be greatly increased by having a Ph.D.
OK, here are some cons:
1. It will take at least 3 years, I think.
2. Those 3 years will be hard, and instead I could be making easy money
doing, say, business programming. Or working for JPL/NASA as a grunt.
3. I don't want to be a math researcher. A teacher maybe, but not a
researcher. The problem with math research is that once you get
specialized enough to prove original theorems, only a handful of
people in the world can understand what you're working on, and even they
might not care. You really have to care a lot yourself if you're going to
enjoy your work. I don't think I have the personality for that: I like
working with other people, and I like getting thanked for what I do.
While I know now that it's possible to do other things with a Ph.D. than
research, it's still the default course, and I'll have to buck the system
some to do otherwise.
4. I'm not getting any younger. Becoming a Ph.D. student means putting
other things, like starting a family and a nest egg and getting settled on
hold. To some extent, this seems like a bigger deal at 35 than it was at
23. But on the other hand, I realize now what I didn't then - life is
longer than you think, and it pays to plan for the future.
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edina
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response 9 of 98:
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Apr 19 20:06 UTC 2002 |
Actually, I think you should go for it. You sound as if you have really
thought this out and you want it. Shoot for the moon!! (so to speak)
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oval
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response 10 of 98:
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Apr 19 20:53 UTC 2002 |
i think you should go for it too. 3 years is not a long time and it will lead
you down a challenging interesting road. whereas writing business software
for easy money or being a grunt is probably less likely to do that. my friend
got his last year at age 40 and it was something that made him so proud of
himself. year and a half later he's publishing his first book. i attended his
'congrats you got a phd' party and everyone was so proud of him. not because
it's some elite category of superior people, but because it's something that
people do because they really like what they do enough to go for it, and do
it for themselves fueled on their inner drive. i think 35 is a good age to
really start to know what you want. i have a B.A. and have no idea where i
want to go from here yet. so yea - go for it!
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brighn
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response 11 of 98:
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Apr 19 21:09 UTC 2002 |
I thought that I'd be constantly defensive and regretful when I made my
decision to officially resign from Graduate school. I have major student loan
debts and an MA, and that doesn't seem like a good use of a decade of my life
(yeh, sure, I did other things while I was in Grad School).
Interestingly, I'm not very defensive about it at all. I think that it's
because I passed my Comps with flying colors and got a green light on my
dissertation topic. I was literally all bit dissertation, and I thought about
what I had to do (write a 200 page book), what it would get me (fewer job
prospects, not more, because of the field [Linguistics]), and how much I
really wanted to do it (not really), and it was enough to me that I'd proven
I *could* do it if I wanted to.
But I also remember that, before I got my thesis topic approved, I let my
confidence eat away at me, so I can understand that part, Mark. FWIW, I don't
know the other PhDs around you, but I've never gotten the impression that John
would change his level of respect for me if I had a PhD, or that he generally
uses that as a gauge for respect, and that's true of most of the PhDs I've
personally met.
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aruba
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response 12 of 98:
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Apr 19 21:46 UTC 2002 |
Thanks for the responses, everyone. Here's more:
So I ran into Prof. Al Taylor, who was the graduate chairman when I was a
grad student, and I talked with him about getting back in the program. He
was very encouraging, and told me to see Prof. Bloch, the current graduate
chair. I saw him after a few days, and he looked at my transcript and
thought there shouldn't be any problem with my being reinstated. The
secretaries helped me figure out what the right paperwork was for my case,
and on the second try we got it right. So I'm officially a grad student
in the fall.
I went back to talk with Prof. Bloch again today, to try to nail down just
where I am in the program and what requirements I have yet to meet. The
most important thing I'd like to get settled is whether the qualifier
exams I passed back in '91 and '92 are still valid now. He said that he
didn't see why not, but he sent me to see Prof. Stembridge, the "Chair of
the Doctoral Comittee" (I think I got that right). He also looked at my
transcript again and said that I nearly had enough credits in the bank.
Now we're to the part of the story that prompted me to start writing this
item this morning.
Unlike everyone else I've met with, Prof. Stembridge was *not*
encouraging, nor was he much impressed with my accomplishments. He looked
at my transcript and said there was only one course on there that he would
allow to count toward the six I need to finish before I achieve candidacy.
(After the qualifiers, the next big milestone in a grad student's career
is candidacy. Getting there requires a number of things, including
those six courses, passing a language exam, and taking two "cognate"
classes outside the department. Most importantly, it requires picking an
advisor, agreeing on a course of study, and then taking an oral "prelim"
exam. The idea is that once you take your prelim, you are prepared to
start doing research in your chosen area.)
The document that defines the courses that are acceptable says (rather
unambiguously, I think) that any 500-level and above course is acceptable,
though the six courses have to be divided among at least 3 "areas". But
Prof. Stembridge turned his nose up at one 500-level course and one 700-
level independent study course on my transcript, saying they weren't
difficult enough to count.
Worse, he wouldn't commit to saying my qualifiers were still valid. He
said he had "reservations". He wanted to know what I'd been doing since
leaving school, and then he asked if I'd forgotten all of the material I
studied for the qualifier. (I wanted to ask him if he could still pass
them himself. I'm sure most people who pass the exams couldn't pass them
again a year later without a lot of study.) I *really* don't want to take
those tests again - I worked really hard to pass them once, and I feel
like I paid those dues.
He also wanted me to check with him before I signed up for any courses in
the future, to make sure they meet with his approval. This is the kind of
thing I really hate about school - being treated like a teenager. I'd
hoped I'd gotten past that, but I guess not.
So I've felt lousy and stressed out all day. I went to lunch and ordered
food, but then I couldn't eat it.
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oval
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response 13 of 98:
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Apr 19 21:51 UTC 2002 |
the chair sounds like a real dick. (are ALL chairs dicks?) massage his ego
a little and don't let him belittle you.
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mcnally
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response 14 of 98:
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Apr 19 22:07 UTC 2002 |
Don't let the old "Good Prof / Bad Prof" routine get you down too much.
If you're persistent there's usually a way to achieve what you want,
although you might have to put up with a few extra hurdles.
A few years ago I went back and finished a long-interrupted degree,
though in my case it was an undergraduate degree in the College of
Engineering. Returning to student life after working for years took
a lot of adjustment (for me, at least) and parts of the experience
were quite frustrating. Overall, however, I'm glad I did it and I
think it's likely you will be too..
Good luck..
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jep
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response 15 of 98:
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Apr 19 23:57 UTC 2002 |
Mark, where is it you're going to grad school? U-M?
I left school without finishing my bachelor's degree. After 8 years of
being a marginal student (off and on, part-time sometimes) I didn't
seem to be getting closer, and so it was time to change my life. I've
always regretted not finishing and not having a degree. My employer
pays for classes. I looked into Cleary College last year, and I'm
thinking it may be time to start looking at that, or something, once
again. Another possibility is the University of Phoenix, which has on-
line degree programs that might work better for me than attending
classes. (Or might not.
Anyway, your return to school is very interesting to me, and I
definitely wish you well in doing it. There are a lot of obstacles,
such as that stuffy professor you mentioned.
Is it possible he just doesn't think you're a serious student? Maybe
when he sees you're determined, he'll give you some more support.
I have to say that, if you wanted any more admiration from me than you
already have, you couldn't have picked a more certain way to get it
than what you've decided to do. It's very tough to change your life
and go for a better one.
As an aside... are you going to post all these other "that's another
story" stories someday?
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aruba
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response 16 of 98:
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Apr 20 01:38 UTC 2002 |
Thanks oval, Mike, and John. I would be interested in hearing ways to deal
with a person such as Prof. Stembridge. (I don't know how to massage his
ego, I'm afraid.) I guess I could go and try to impress upon him my
seriousness. He didn't seem too impressed with my transcript though. He
hardly looked at the recent part, which is the part that looks the best.
John - yes, UM. I guess I'll post more stories if people are interested.
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michaela
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response 17 of 98:
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Apr 20 03:09 UTC 2002 |
Mark - my friend just got a job at NASA in Houston. Let me know if you want
an "in". ;-)
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mcnally
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response 18 of 98:
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Apr 20 05:04 UTC 2002 |
re #16:
> Thanks oval, Mike, and John. I would be interested in hearing ways
> to deal with a person such as Prof. Stembridge.
My chief advice when dealing with someone who seems as if they present
an intractable obstacle to your plans is to remember that in *most*
cases professors don't look forward to serving on academic guidance
committees or in other similar positions and as a result they often
serve in those capacities for a limited time before the job cycle ends
and someone else is appointed to serve for the next period.. If you
find the current occupant of any particular office impossible to deal
with, the first thing to do is to see whether you can outlast their
tenancy in the position before requiring a final decision. If you
can, then do what you can to postpone or avoid a final ruling until
the committee assignments are reassigned and another person steps in,
one who may potentially be more sympathetic to your position.
In the meantime the worst thing you can do is provoke a final decision
that conflicts with your position. It's much harder to get a decision
reversed once it's official but as long as you can avoid a final
determination there's always still the possibility of getting your own
way (or at least a more favorable settlement..)
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senna
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response 19 of 98:
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Apr 20 06:55 UTC 2002 |
Go for it, Mark. Most of the people here believe that you only live once.
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mary
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response 20 of 98:
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Apr 20 11:37 UTC 2002 |
Mary thinks Mark has his head screwed on straight, admires his courage,
and believes that whatever decision he makes will be the right one.
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aruba
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response 21 of 98:
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Apr 20 12:35 UTC 2002 |
Re #18: Hmmm. That does make a lot of sense, Mike. I don't know how long
this guy will be the head of the committee; I wonder if there's a descrete
way to find out. All things being equal, I'd like to get the question of my
qualifiers settled now so that I don't worry that they'll stick it to me
right before I'm about to defend my thesis. But all things *not* being
equal, your advice to wait it out may make the most sense.
Thanks Steve and Mary, for your support. I guess I have a real problem
dealing with authority figures who seem to have infinite power and want you
to do things their way. Come to think of it, maybe everyone does. But it
makes me feel helpless and angry and like I have no worth at all.
The last few years I've tried hard to make myself useful to other people; I
thought I'd internalized a feeling of self-worth. But when I have to face
someone like this, it seems to crumble. I had a hard time sleeping last
night, and I'm still stessed about it this morning.
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jep
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response 22 of 98:
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Apr 20 13:09 UTC 2002 |
Mark, can you talk again to the other professors who were more
supportive, and see if they can give you any suggestions? Maybe they
can talk to the guy, or give you ideas on how to deal with him.
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scott
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response 23 of 98:
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Apr 20 13:36 UTC 2002 |
Talk to the prof's secretary. Years ago I figured out that the old ladies
who do the paperwork are really the ones in charge, and they really only want
politeness in return. The secretary (or the department secretary, maybe)
won't necessarily be able to change anything, but I'd be willing to bet you'll
learn something useful about the situation.
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cmcgee
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response 24 of 98:
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Apr 20 15:16 UTC 2002 |
Another tactic is to find a faculty member to be your mentor/dissertation
committee advisor and let him or her show you how to get through the
hoops.
Don't let the "rules" get in the way of getting through. With a savvy
mentor and a good relationship with the secretaries, you can do most
anything.
I've finished interrupted degrees twice (BA, then MA) and had the setup
for the PhD. It is more a matter of someone who has stature saying that
he wants you for his student, than your doing things by the book.
Think of the PhD system as a guild system, with apprentices and masters.
You need a master to apprentice yourself to, who can tell you which of
the guild rules are really rules, and which ones are just hassles to keep
out the riffraff. Your master will also be able to get some of the rules
bent for you, if he feels that you've met the spirit of the rule, but not
the picky detail.
Once I figured this out, it was a breeze to get a mentor who would work
with me to get my degree from the system. There's _always_ another way
to meet the requirements.
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