Recommendations for New PhD Students

[bsharpe269]

I've seen a lot of great advice on this forum already for incoming PhD students but most of it is fairly general: choose an advisor who is a good personality fit, balance school and life, publish a lot, network at conferences, etc. I will be keeping all of this advice in mind as I start my PhD this fall.

 

I have seen much less on specific things that have positively impacted your productivity that incoming students can try as well. For example, specific books you wish you had read a couple years earlier, specific practices that have really helped you (for example, reading a paper every morning or starting work by X time). I am also interested in things like methods for tracking your time and tasks like todo list apps that help you stay organized. 

 

What would be the one specific thing that has really helped you that you would recommend to others? Thanks to any current PhD students who are willing to share!

 

 

[rising_star]

One of the pinned posts in this section is full of advice for first year PhD students. 

[bsharpe269]

One of the pinned posts in this section is full of advice for first year PhD students. 

 

That post is definitely full of useful information that I will keep in mind. Most of the info in there falls under the general information that I mentioned in my first sentence. In addition to keeping in mind the general info, I am interested in whether anyone can offer some specifics... less along the lines of "you will feel like an imposter"and "personality fit is more important than research fit in an advisor" and more along the lines of "this particular calender software has been perfect for organizing my research and has helped me stay productive."

 

The specifics will of course be highly variable for each person but I have started reading some books like Getting What You Came For and have been looking into various to do list apps and calendar apps. I haven't found any that I like yet. I am interested in forming habits when I start like reading at least 1 paper a day and writing small summaries of my work as I go along. Hearing details of what others found helpful would be great.

Edited June 4, 2015 by bsharpe269

[rising_star]

My guess is that a lot of the specifics that you want are very much field-specific, which is why people tend not to list or discuss them. For example, my strategies for reading articles may not apply to you because, if you're into computational work, you likely pay far more attention to methods sections than I do. As for apps, a lot of that depends on whether you're PC/Android or a Mac user so again, it can be hard to say. The main thing is to find whatever works for you and stick with it, regardless of what others might think. If you write best on paper, then continue to do that even in grad school. 

[Eigen]

The advice you're looking for is very field and personality specific. 

 

All of the stuff that worked for me hasn't really worked for any of my colleagues- we all had different approaches that worked for us. 

 

What you need to know going into grad school is yourself- how you work best, how you learn best, when you work best, etc. Then apply that to what you have to do. And then iterate from your results. 

 

I've found very few broadly useful books (i.e., Getting What You Came For). Most are quite field specific, as well as specific to institutional culture. Similarly, apps/calendars/to-do lists... I don't use any regularly. TBH, none of my peers do either. I tend to have lists all over my desk and make extensive use of sticky notes. 

 

But really, for anything, the best use of your time is to pick a couple that look good and try them. 

 

One general recommendation I have is to read Inside Higher Ed/Chronicle of Higher Education regularly. Knowing the culture, and where your institution fits is a very, very useful thing to have in your abilities. 

 

As to reading papers.... I think starting out, you'll get more mileage from skimming a bunch of papers/journals in your field than you will from in-depth readings. Sit down early in the week, and go through the table of contents in 4-6 journals, and read abstracts. Flag a handful of interesting looking papers to read. Skim those, then pick a couple that look really well done and read in detail. Then pick references from those papers, and repeat the cycle. 

 

For professional fluency, nothing will help you like having a firm grasp on what's being published and what's of interest- i.e., skimming every issue of major journals in your field (and Science and Nature, usually). 

 

But all of this is highly field specific- I'm making recommendations for chemistry/biology, but from talking to my friends in the humanities/social sciences, they would advice completely different reading methods. 

 

I think you'll find some of the specifics you're looking for here (), and there are other similar topics in that forum if you search back relating to software, etc.

 

The only sweeping piece(s) of advice I'll give, that I think are broadly applicable:

 

Set aside time to read every day. Set aside time to write every day. 

Keep track at the end of the day of what you did. This will help you looking back over your week/month/year. 

Pick a citation manager. Which doesn't really matter. Start using it to organize all those paper's you're reading. 

Learn TeX.

[Cookie]

Set aside time to read every day. Set aside time to write every day. 

Keep track at the end of the day of what you did. This will help you looking back over your week/month/year. 

Pick a citation manager. Which doesn't really matter. Start using it to organize all those paper's you're reading. 

Learn TeX.

 

Great advices as always!

I want to add:

Keep a log book. Im a theorist so I have a google doc to keep track of everything I do everyday: what I learn, what Im doing and what I should do next, in short sentences. I paste screenshots of my preliminary data/plots here as well. You'll be surprised how quickly you forget something you have done/learnt. When I need to find something, I just Cmd+F in my log and voila!

Edited June 5, 2015 by Cookie

[themissingsock]

In terms of specifics, I can think of recommending certain software and habits.

 

I use Google Keep to make to do lists and notes that sync from web to my phone. I use Google Calendar to schedule dates and course schedules that remind me on my phone. (I am very into using Google and the cloud to keep me organized). I use Google Docs for most of my research paper writing. I find it helpful to share it with collaborators, and I enjoy the ability to access it easily across computers. I don't carry my flash drive anymore. I use Google Sheets for collaborative spreadsheets as well. Google Slides for collaborative research presentations. I've been impressed with the whole free Google suite, as you can obviously tell, but moving to the cloud and using Google has made working with other colleagues on research so much easier. 

 

For research papers, I used Endnote for most of my cite as you write and for organized references. However, a free and social alternative is Mendeley. I recommend both highly for research work. 

 

For research posters, if you can learn Adobe InDesign, it makes making them so much easier and cleaner. This is something not too many people think of.

 

In terms of work habits, spatial location means a lot to me. I can't work in one place for too long. I need to work in places where other people are visible. I feel like it keeps me accountable. I find that this helps for others as well. Changing locations can also help you come up with new ideas and give you a fresh perspective. 

[Eigen]

I actually prefer MS Publisher for posters... Cheaper, too.

[juilletmercredi]

My general thoughts on this topic are:

 

 

1. I'm not saying you are, but in my experience students often ask this question sort of thinking that there's some magical workflow that makes this behemoth of a task more manageable/enjoyable/easier/I don't know what. There really is not! There are lots of PhD students who get by pretty well just using pen and paper. A colleague of mine still writes all of her appointments in a paper date book that she carries everywhere. I have friends who still print their articles and clip them in binders. Technology will not save us. The PhD sucks just as much with or without it 

 

I also wouldn't say that technology has helped make me productive, per se; it's helped me manage my productivity in ways that made my brain a bit happier.

 

2. There are hundreds of productivity apps out there; someone probably uses every single one of them. My workflow won't necessarily work for you, though. You kind of have to experiment with things to find out what works.

 

With that said, here are some that I use:

 

Reference manager: I loved Papers 2 (a Mac app). Then they "upgraded" to Papers 3 and it broke and it doesn't work very well, IMO. So I switched to Sente (also Mac), which is satisfactory. Better than Papers in some ways, but I really miss Magic Manuscripts. Another good reference manager is Bookends. EndNote isn't that bad, and a lot of systems have integration for it (including some journals that let you submit EndNote produced manuscripts) so you might want to try it. Your university might provide it to your for free.

 

Word processing: Word is, of course, the standard. It's ok. My preferred word processors are Scrivener and Mellel. Scrivener is really great for writing large projects (like my dissertation) because it breaks them down into organizable sections. Mellel is good for shorter things (like journal articles), because it does give you an outline along the side bar and has Live Bibliography support that integrates well with Sente and Bookends. It's also for Macs only. Word is fine and great for most tasks, however, I would just advocate exploring some word processing alternatives to see if you like anything else. That includes Google Docs; the benefit to Google Docs is the syncing.

 

To-do: I use Wunderlist, which is the best to-do app IMO. Google's to-do was too stripped down for me (I never tried Google Keep). Wunderlist lets you organize things by project/topic and has a lot of cool functionality and integration with other apps.

 

Notes: Evernote is the best app for this. Syncing across devices, and there's an Evernote for everything (desktop, tablet, mobile, web).

 

Cloud: Get a cloud storage solution. It really doesn't matter much one, but it's really helpful to have all of your stuff stored in the cloud so when you have to move between computers, you have access to everything and don't have to worry about keeping flash drives set up. I shamefully have cloud storage in four of the major services (Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, and iCloud.

 

a) I got Google Drive for personal use - both of my files and for mail storage for my Gmail account. I pay $1.25/month for 125 GB (I have a grandfathered plan - now they charge $2/month for 100 GB).
I had to get Dropbox for sharing files with collaborators, because that's the service that they use. It's $10/month for 1 TB of storage.
c) I purchased Microsoft's Office 365 service so I could use MS Office on my iPad and in the cloud, and it automatically comes with 1 TB of storage for $7/month.
d) Apple forced me to get iCloud storage for my iPhone. I pay $1/month for 20 GB of space, which is outrageous.

 

Personally I think Dropbox is my favorite, followed closely by Google Drive, but YMMV. Google is nice because they have a smaller increment than 1 TB, which you can choose if you don't need that much space. Dropbox only has the 1 TB option. Apple is super ridiculous with their pricing - they charge $20 for 1 TB, which is twice as much as everyone else, but it's not like the quality of their cloud storage is better or something.

 

Moving on.

 

Posters: I hate designing posters! If you're on a Mac, you can use PowerPoint for posters. MS Publisher is better IMO, but not available for Macs. I've never tried Adobe InDesign. I wonder if there's a good Mac app for this?

 

Reading papers: This is going to sound terrible, but what I have discovered is that few people in my field (social sciences) actually fully read papers in-depth. They skim. Actively, but still skimming. Often they skim a few papers when they are trying to write a lit review, but you can be more proactive. Set up a Google Scholar alert to send you articles in your area, and them skim a few each morning. That way you keep up with the new literature in the field and don't have to play a huge amount of catch-up. You could potentially get the top journal in your area and just skim that, but honestly I have found that that gives me way too many articles I know nothing about and aren't useful or interesting to me. For example, sometimes Science publishes psychology articles, but only occasionally and they are rarely in my subfield anyway. So it would do me no good to scan Science. Even Psychological Science and American Journal of Public Health mostly post articles in things outside of my expertise. So if you're going to do that, pick a smaller specialty journal in your specific area.

 

IHE/CHE: I agree - read IHE and CHE relatively regularly. It's good to know the field. But - I don't know how to say this properly - a lot of the articles are pretty depressing, especially about the job market. Enlightening, but depressing nonetheless.

[fuzzylogician]

This is extremely personal. I'm not sure knowing how I choose to keep up with my reading will help you, because it's just so different from field to field. But -- I use Dropbox for syncing and file sharing; TexPad is my favorite Latex editor and I use BibDesk for my bibliography needs; I use PowerPoint for posters, and by now I have a design I've settled on so I mostly just change the text/figures when I make a new poster; I use workflowy for my list and note-taking needs. 

 

Most of the advice I can think of is much higher level, really. 

[BiochemMom]

I plan to employ the same tactic I used for my MS. My MS PI required me to write up my data and results every single week in journal article style and turn them in to him on Fridays. If an experiment hadn't been completed that week, I had to write a two page review of one or two articles related to my background. He would send me feedback (but not require revisions) every Monday.

The first year I hated him. The second year, writing a publication was easy. My thesis was done in three days from simply copy pasting all my previous writing and editing for cohesion. I was the only one to defend on time for a may graduation. I loved him for it by the end and it became a habit that made me a much better writer.

It made my life so much easier and forced me to think critically about why I was doing an experiment and helped me plan the next one. It provided a clear line to follow to fully flesh out my project. At the end, I knew how to turn my MS project into a PhD dissertation should I have had the time to continue on it.

It's a lot of self effort (since my PI most likely won't want to do this in my PhD) but I know from experience this was one of the best things I learned in my MS.

[Eigen]

To note- I worry a bit about using google drive due for a lot of my work, due to the terms of use. Especially with any of my work that has a large potential for a productive patent, some of google's terms could be read as giving them a license to use it by storing my data on their servers.

[shinigamiasuka]

I would recommend not having a constant sync on your pc for google drive/one drive/dropbox. When you're done, upload the updated file via a web browser. Around half a year ago I got a the "fake" cryptolocker (i.e. not the original cryptolocker that was later taken care of) ransomware on my pc that corrupted all of my office 2003 format files, jpg, mp3, and mp4 files, including the ones backed up in my google drive because they were always kept in sync. I was using Live Essentials + McAfee VirusScan Enterprise for security, but after that disaster, I quit using them both and started with Malwarebytes instead. So far so good.

[rising_star]

Similar to Eigen, I don't back up any of my research data on Google Drive unless it's already anonymized (and even then I'm careful about it). I use SugarSync instead (current pricing is on their site but I have a grandfathered plan). SpiderOak is another good choice depending on your needs. I personally am fine with having my personal backup in one place (Box and Google Drive) and my research stuff elsewhere.

[Eigen]

I would recommend not having a constant sync on your pc for google drive/one drive/dropbox. When you're done, upload the updated file via a web browser. Around half a year ago I got a the "fake" cryptolocker (i.e. not the original cryptolocker that was later taken care of) ransomware on my pc that corrupted all of my office 2003 format files, jpg, mp3, and mp4 files, including the ones backed up in my google drive because they were always kept in sync. I was using Live Essentials + McAfee VirusScan Enterprise for security, but after that disaster, I quit using them both and started with Malwarebytes instead. So far so good.

Is is also one of the reasons I decided DropBox was worth paying for- a years worth of past versions backed up remotely.

That said, never trust one backup method. I back up to my home PC, several different work computers, Dropbox, and an both a personal and a work external drive.

Not all are perfectly current (external drives are monthly), but hey keep my data safe.

[bsharpe269]

Thanks guys... this is exactly the sort of information I was looking for. I will be trying out alot of advice and looking at a lot of the software mentioned to see what fits best with my needs. I've never heard of many of the tools mentioned so getting this list of options is really useful as a starting point to figure out what I like.

[fuzzylogician]

Is is also one of the reasons I decided DropBox was worth paying for- a years worth of past versions backed up remotely.

That said, never trust one backup method. I back up to my home PC, several different work computers, Dropbox, and an both a personal and a work external drive.

Not all are perfectly current (external drives are monthly), but hey keep my data safe.

 

Yep -- I do something similar. I have automatic updates to Dropbox. Once a month I update important stuff on Microsoft's cloud too. And I have two external hard drives that I back up to and they are programmed to do a "daily" and "monthly" backup, so I should never lose more than just a few weeks' worth of work. (Learned the hard way, after losing all my materials from my first year of graduate school when my laptop died in a firy blaze.)

[Eigen]

One other recommendation from me:

 

Try to find a way to keep digital copies of your lab notebooks from the start. I'm assuming here that you keep physical notebooks, of course. 

 

At least in the bench sciences, it's usually policy that notebooks (a) don't leave the lab while you're in grad school, and ( stay with the lab after you graduate. 

 

Accordingly, I've found it immensely useful to have copies of all of my raw notes and data at times when I'm not in the lab, and want to take such with me when I go. 

 

Currently, I'm digitizing (either scanning or typing) several hundred pages of notes as I prepare to leave and want copies to take with me. Don't let yourself be in that situation!

 

If you're a windows user, OneNote can work quite well. On Mac, I've found Growly Notes (and the accompanying iPad app) to be the best bet. 

 

I also strongly recommend becoming familiar with basic vector graphics (Illustrator or similar) and make yourself a website/web presence at some point (Reclaim Hosting is really, really cheap for current graduate students).

[fuzzylogician]

^ Along those lines, for Social Sciences / Humanities students: over time you will accumulate lots and lots of handouts, course notes, your own notes, etc. I make sure to scan everything at the end of each semester. It's somewhat of a pain but it's very helpful. I make sure to give the files informative names and keep them organized by year/course/topic so I can easily search through them. I've moved to taking meeting notes on my computer, as I mentioned above, but whatever I do by hand is also scanned and added to my collection. It makes life a lot easier when it's time to move and you don't want to carry a bunch of papers with you, and scanning 5 years worth of materials would be too daunting. 

[Eigen]

Yep -- I do something similar. I have automatic updates to Dropbox. Once a month I update important stuff on Microsoft's cloud too. And I have two external hard drives that I back up to and they are programmed to do a "daily" and "monthly" backup, so I should never lose more than just a few weeks' worth of work. (Learned the hard way, after losing all my materials from my first year of graduate school when my laptop died in a firy blaze.)

 

I learned, thankfully, from the example of a post-doc in my lab group my first year. His laptop was stolen, and he hadn't backed up his data in 6 months! That was a lot of lost data, and a lot of frustration on the part of all of us involved. 

 

A lot of the raw data could be recovered from instrument computers or lab notebooks, but none of the analysis. 

 

Taking a slight break from seriousness, in favor of PhDComics. Seriously, it has every tip you would ever need to know as a graduate student. It's like they have a camera in my office....

 

[TakeruK]

I am nearing the maximum of my Dropbox and I'm debating whether or not to pay for it. I definitely think paying for cloud storage is worth it, but I don't like that Dropbox only has the $10/month for 1TB and nothing else. I need something like 20-50GB. 

 

My school recently signed an agreement with "Box". https://www.box.com/I am considering changing because it's 25GB of storage and my school's agreement means all students get 25GB for life (even after we graduate).

 

Google Drive also gives more options. My research work is not patentable and there are no privacy issues so that does give me more options! 

 

Or, maybe I should just sit down and actually clean up my dropbox folder!!

 

For backups, I have back up my personal computer and work computer with external hard drives. Important things are also on Dropbox. My actual data (and data products) are on my departmental cluster which is backed up nightly (my hard drive failed once but everything was saved). I also keep an extra copy of important code on the department cluster for an extra backup. And the raw data itself is also stored independently by the people who operate the telescopes (by default, all of my data becomes public after 18 months).

[GeoDUDE!]

TakeruK... we use box in our lab and like it a lot. Its very good especially since other people can access it and contribute to it. 

[TakeruK]

TakeruK... we use box in our lab and like it a lot. Its very good especially since other people can access it and contribute to it. 

 

Good to know! I was hesitant about Box mostly because I have never heard of it before and didn't want to switch to something that might disappear in the future. I guess that's still possible but it's nice to know that other academics use Box. I'll give it a try soon!

[Eigen]

I use Box- I got grandfathered in for a free "faculty" account since I was on the University's IT committee when they were trialing it. 

 

It's OK- and I like some features of it- but I don't find it is as generally useful as DropBox, personally. 

 

I went ahead and bit the bullet on a $99/year dropbox plan, and I'm glad I did. I only needed about 20-50gb, but with the 1Tb storage, I end up using it for a lot more varied copies of things than I did, like raw image data from my cell studies. Nice to have it all in one place instead of a second raw data folder to back up.

 

I figured it would take me more time to try to find, migrate, and use another backup system (like I use dropbox), than the relatively small amount of cost relative to the other cloud options.

[shinigamiasuka]

Is is also one of the reasons I decided DropBox was worth paying for- a years worth of past versions backed up remotely.

That said, never trust one backup method. I back up to my home PC, several different work computers, Dropbox, and an both a personal and a work external drive.

Not all are perfectly current (external drives are monthly), but hey keep my data safe.

 

I never backed my documents up in too many different places, which I guess is what I should've been doing all along. Anyway, most of undergrad research documents remained unaffected since they were usually either docx or pdf; however, some of the lecture notes/slides that our professors gave can no longer be accessed.