Saturday, 3 November 2012
Decisions decisions?
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Frankly, it is a little weird doing this. Just typing without academic purpose, feels a little filthy until I remember that was what I was doing long before I started my Honours year (which for the uninitiated is the fast track Masters equivalent here).
For the past however many months, as honestly I have found myself completely foreign to the concept of time and its chronology unless I had a due date looming (which I recently did and I was late for the first time! No, not my period! You should know better…), my day-to-day life has been so routine, chugging away at my Honours thesis at my desk (weekends included) that if they didn’t have a separate public transport schedule for weekends, I really don’t think I would have been able to differentiate between the weekdays and the weekends…
I see that I can still sidetrack with ease, anyways the point I was trying to make above was that over the past months I have been immersed with my Honours program to the detriments of many aspects of my life, this blog included. Any time I had for writing was devoted to the writing of my thesis (which is now finally finished and to be submitted this coming Monday) and frankly I don’t think I ever had any free time unless I carved it out of time that I could have been doing more productive work for my project, like I am doing right now. Surprisingly, even after I have finished the draft (and revisions) for my thesis, there is still plenty of work for me to do which I suppose is both good and bad. The good is that I will be getting paid for a couple more weeks to do it, the bad is that who knows where my sanity will end up at the end of it?
The main reason that I am writing this now is the same as I always have. To unload some of the thoughts and ramblings I have swirling in my head which have accumulate for a very long period of time now, and hopefully find some clarity at the end of it all. If that happens to be of interest for any of you to read, then come along for the ride. Otherwise, I’m sure the internet has more than enough material (and then some) to keep you occupied.
So, let’s get started, shall we?
Well, I say/write that but I don’t actually have a plan of action at the moment. I have a few general opinion ideas, some contemplative thoughts to write about (which I should really jot down somewhere before they just get lost in the recesses of my brain) and I can also write what I’ve been up to this past few months but all that require a little more planning than I want to manage at the moment. So, let’s just see what my subconscious has to offer…
I suppose I can try talking about the one main predicament that I am currently still contemplating over and see if writing it out would provide any new insights. So for the past month or so, I have been meeting a few different lecturers to discuss PhD projects (for me) to undertake beginning next year. I was lucky that everyone I’ve talked to was more than happy to accommodate a meeting with me and I had quite a few options to choose from, which is a good thing in general, but not so for me as I have a hard time choosing unless I had a very clear preference. Many a dinner plans have suffer from this indecisiveness (but my friends are somewhat to blame as well as they seem to be just as indecisive).
So it was good that there were some projects that I just knew that I would not be able to sustain an interest in for the whole 3 years (but most likely more) and those were the first few that I (politely) declined. Then there was one which offered a substantial gap between the completion of my Honours and the commencement of that PhD project in a research area that was only so-so on my preference list but had an extremely good supervisor attached as well as being a joint project with a French university which is a good thing I suppose since a lot of people frown upon doing one’s entire tertiary studies in one institute, particularly in the US (but then again, I’m not there am I?).
I did try to widen my search to other universities (particularly after the insistence of the two American PhD graduates in my family) but there were a substantial amount of loopholes to jump through (as I couldn’t just fly to various universities and knock on potential supervisors’ doors for both cost and time constraints, not because it would be weird or anything….) and the added difficulty of being considered as an international applicant (Yes, we get discriminated pretty much everywhere, but life back home has prepared me well to deal with it.). Also, I was left wondering what the hell was the purpose of university websites when there were so little to no information available on them for my purpose (less so for those bilingual ones if that’s even possible). Wait, what was that you said? They didn’t create those to cater for my purposes? Well, that’s just rude, isn’t it?
However, I did managed to get in contact with one or two external lecturers but they were either again not aligned with my research interest (which I didn’t know I had such a thing until I starting writing up my academic CV, and yes, it’s definitely not the same as a regular CV. It’s definitely more smug…) or they were very pessimistic about funding of the project(s) (granted this was in the EU so it was understandable given the current economic predicament over there). So none of them panned out and my options were now limited to those just within my university which was not too big a concern for me as not staying at the same institution just for the sake of it sounded just as ridiculous to me especially when there are some top notch lecturers here as well (or so I would like to believe). But who knows if or how I might pay for that decision in the future?
Here’s where things get a little tricky though. I am now left with two feasible options after the culls aforementioned, which was still one more than I was hoping for. This meant that I now had to choose between them and if I already made up my mind on which, then I wouldn’t be writing this now, would I? So to that end, let’s get a little acquainted with the two options I have (without giving away too much information as I still want to keep some degree of anonymity here).
Option PBFD (which was so named in order to avoid potential biases with assigning an option with 1 or A over the other) was a project related to the statistical analysis (and some mathematical modeling) of regularly collected surveillance data in healthcare institutes with the aim of studying the transmission dynamics of hospital-acquired antibiotic-resistant pathogens and ultimately how to better control the spread of such things, as if you haven’t been able to deduce (seriously?) are bad for both patients and the healthcare institutes. This project will have my current supervisor as my principal supervisor who has been much nicer to me these past few months (It’s more of a him getting comfortable with you and knowing that you can actually do research [back door compliment alert!] rather than his sneaky ploy to get me do continue on with him as he doesn’t seem like that kind of person, but then I’ve only known this man for less than a year… ) as well as a previous supervisor I worked with who I get along with very well (our meetings usually last 2 hours on average so unless we were doing something extracurricular [we were not! I’m innocent and have no idea what I was insinuating…] we must really get along rather swimmingly), and another health statistician who I have not worked with but was rather frank from our meeting which is a plus in my books (as much as I sidestep/sugarcoat issues, I much prefer someone to tell it to my face if they have something to say rather than pussyfooting it) and does seem to have a rather good reputation in the statistical community (my principal supervisor is more of an elderly figure in the community and not as active in attending conferences anymore).
This would probably have been my choice if I just went by my first gut instinct which I have used multiple times in my life. However, I can’t shake the feeling that this would be the safe option and I would not be learning from it as much as I would be with the other project, in terms of the mathematical breath anyways. Also, this is taking me further down the path of being a full-fledged statistician (which I am already if you believed my previous job’s title) which was not what I envisioned to be for the most part of my degree (which was a Bachelor of Maths, not Stats) and that is giving me a rather substantial identity crisis as well. On the one hand, it seems like a natural transition from what I am already doing (both academically and professionally) and the statistical people I’ve meet so far have all been much more agreeable and sociable than the math people (which a few exceptions as with all other generalisations, of course). On the other hand, I have arguably not been as involved in my statistic classes during my studies compared with the mathematical units so often times I feel like I’m faking my knowledge in the area and one of these days it will just blow up in my face.
Aside from intrinsic doubts, there are also some practical considerations that provided additional roadblocks to this project. This area of research is by no means new, but there were always problems with data quality and test sensitivity which cast doubt over the results (some papers have even postulated models where the most significant term was the background noise which is basically saying that “we can’t tell you anything based on what we’ve done although” they would obviously have an academic spin to make it sound less useless) thus the need to actually improve in this area. And these issues have more to do with the healthcare surveillance side of things, and less so on the mathematical and statistical side.
However this project does offer an option for a career that’s not entirely stuck in academia and chasing publication counts (although it is still a possible option if I wanted to), and also frankly speaking there is more demand and career opportunities for statistical professionals than mathematical ones.
Option SPMD on the other hand deals with the modeling of cell (particularly cancer cells) movements and growth and is the arguably more scientific option of the two (where PBFD is the more practical option) and is definitely more mathematically involved than the first option but still has some statistical aspect to it as well (mostly a ploy of the principal supervisor to attract me and my current supervisor but more about that later). More specifically, it will delve into stuff (that’s scientific, right?) that is sort of an extension or even rethinking of the stuff that I’ve learned in my undergraduate course and have also been away from for the most part of this year. By definition, it is a rather new area of interest (although it is not entirely groundbreaking either).
The principal supervisor for this project is someone who I had not worked with before who emailed me rather unexpectedly [I was under the impression that he doesn’t even know I exist since I didn’t take his class and was not doing research in mathematics at the moment] (my current supervisor has the second largest contribution) although there has been a rather substantial amount of rumours/opinions about him. Some are rather opposed to his overly hands-on approach (which I agree with to some extent as I have been disturbed by his intrusions on more often than I would like) and also the fact that he seems to be helping his students way too much with their (read: his) papers resulting in them getting published way too early/often compared to the regular PhD candidates (which I will admit that part of me was wondering if that could just be a jealous remark). The benefit to his overly hands-on approach is that you will stick to the plan outlined and it balances well with my current supervisor who can be a bit too relaxed and/or withdrawn at times (but not the worst) although it may just add unnecessary stress or conflict between the two. Also, I would be then in direct competition with his current star student who already is way more ahead than me (and the majority of the current PhD candidates in the school) although we are in the same year (because of his help and I suppose they collaborated well with one another that he [the student] already has at least 4 publications even though the standard number for Honours students is typically 0, or maybe 1 if you were really, really good). Furthermore, it appears that this guy is just collecting the brightest students from each year and taking them on as his students only (or at least tries to) which doesn’t quite sit right with me even though I can see why one would do so. To that end, I should mention that he actually tried to purpose a PhD project with him twice; Once when it was just involving him and once more later on involving my current supervisor (bringing in some statistical aspect to the project) when I did not contact him a few weeks after our meeting (to be fair, he didn’t say to email him and I was still in the middle of weighing my options). I suppose his ambition is a double-edged sword that one will have to deal with and whether or not I will be happy to just knuckle under his rule as it seems to be happening with his students, or at least those that he particularly favours anyways… That being said, he seems to be a rather nice person, or that might just be his charisma/charm in action? This is the problem with considering starting with a new supervisor who I have no interaction with for the entirety of my undergraduate course – I can’t really tell if he is bullshiting me (and what makes considering external options even more difficult as well). He also seems to sugarcoat/be `politically correct’ in our conversations and tend to be a little too `yes man’ for my taste but who knows? Maybe that extra encouragement is good for oneself….
That being said, the project itself wouldn’t have to deal with less-than-ideal surveillance data as their data is experimentally obtained but it could also be argued that anything of real interest would have some amount of noise in it, as is true with life and meaningful interactions. Also it would be a formal mathematical-statistical collaboration in my school which is a rather rare thing to do (but does that really benefit me or just the school? I suppose it could be a two-way street there which seems to be a running theme for this project…). However, the applications of the project does not interest me as much but sometimes I wonder if that’s just a sign of me not being a very scientific person…
Also, this project is much more grounded in my current school whereas the other one is more of a split between my school and the health faculty (which is a marginally better option in terms of diversity of tertiary studies institutions). Furthermore, to do a mathematical project with this principal supervisor (who is relatively new and who I do not know) when I have turned down options from other mathematical lecturers who I know (and like) better and are more experienced in their fields with arguably more interesting application (to me anyways) seems rather like an insult to them.
A minor thing with this project as well is that one of the associate supervisors is a rather oddball character and has been a bit rude to one of his students (although he wasn’t entirely to blame in that situation). But he’s been nice to the others and seems to have a knack for editing (he’s one of those people who return your drafts dripping with red ink) as well as being a knowledgeable person in terms of mathematical knowledge.
So there you have it. Those are my two options right now and I really want to try and decide as soon as possible as the longer I put it off, the less time I will have to plan my holidays and also because I can feel myself developing bipolarity the more I think about this. Also, I believe the added stress of
Honours may very well be clouding my judgement making it harder for me to tell if what I am feeling is truly what I want in the absence of the stress. Furthermore, project SPMD has the Honours coordinator attached to it (who happens to be the oddball character) and I don’t particularly want to be on his bad side until I am done with it (there are still the final seminars). Who knows how vindictive he can get?
But what about my unbiased readers? Which project sounds better in your opinions, and why? What criteria would you use to decide? I can’t help but feel that in my writing about it, I am more biased towards one than the other, but can you tell which? Let me know about that as well to confirm/disprove my suspicions.
For the past however many months, as honestly I have found myself completely foreign to the concept of time and its chronology unless I had a due date looming (which I recently did and I was late for the first time! No, not my period! You should know better…), my day-to-day life has been so routine, chugging away at my Honours thesis at my desk (weekends included) that if they didn’t have a separate public transport schedule for weekends, I really don’t think I would have been able to differentiate between the weekdays and the weekends…
I see that I can still sidetrack with ease, anyways the point I was trying to make above was that over the past months I have been immersed with my Honours program to the detriments of many aspects of my life, this blog included. Any time I had for writing was devoted to the writing of my thesis (which is now finally finished and to be submitted this coming Monday) and frankly I don’t think I ever had any free time unless I carved it out of time that I could have been doing more productive work for my project, like I am doing right now. Surprisingly, even after I have finished the draft (and revisions) for my thesis, there is still plenty of work for me to do which I suppose is both good and bad. The good is that I will be getting paid for a couple more weeks to do it, the bad is that who knows where my sanity will end up at the end of it?
The main reason that I am writing this now is the same as I always have. To unload some of the thoughts and ramblings I have swirling in my head which have accumulate for a very long period of time now, and hopefully find some clarity at the end of it all. If that happens to be of interest for any of you to read, then come along for the ride. Otherwise, I’m sure the internet has more than enough material (and then some) to keep you occupied.
So, let’s get started, shall we?
Well, I say/write that but I don’t actually have a plan of action at the moment. I have a few general opinion ideas, some contemplative thoughts to write about (which I should really jot down somewhere before they just get lost in the recesses of my brain) and I can also write what I’ve been up to this past few months but all that require a little more planning than I want to manage at the moment. So, let’s just see what my subconscious has to offer…
I suppose I can try talking about the one main predicament that I am currently still contemplating over and see if writing it out would provide any new insights. So for the past month or so, I have been meeting a few different lecturers to discuss PhD projects (for me) to undertake beginning next year. I was lucky that everyone I’ve talked to was more than happy to accommodate a meeting with me and I had quite a few options to choose from, which is a good thing in general, but not so for me as I have a hard time choosing unless I had a very clear preference. Many a dinner plans have suffer from this indecisiveness (but my friends are somewhat to blame as well as they seem to be just as indecisive).
So it was good that there were some projects that I just knew that I would not be able to sustain an interest in for the whole 3 years (but most likely more) and those were the first few that I (politely) declined. Then there was one which offered a substantial gap between the completion of my Honours and the commencement of that PhD project in a research area that was only so-so on my preference list but had an extremely good supervisor attached as well as being a joint project with a French university which is a good thing I suppose since a lot of people frown upon doing one’s entire tertiary studies in one institute, particularly in the US (but then again, I’m not there am I?).
I did try to widen my search to other universities (particularly after the insistence of the two American PhD graduates in my family) but there were a substantial amount of loopholes to jump through (as I couldn’t just fly to various universities and knock on potential supervisors’ doors for both cost and time constraints, not because it would be weird or anything….) and the added difficulty of being considered as an international applicant (Yes, we get discriminated pretty much everywhere, but life back home has prepared me well to deal with it.). Also, I was left wondering what the hell was the purpose of university websites when there were so little to no information available on them for my purpose (less so for those bilingual ones if that’s even possible). Wait, what was that you said? They didn’t create those to cater for my purposes? Well, that’s just rude, isn’t it?
However, I did managed to get in contact with one or two external lecturers but they were either again not aligned with my research interest (which I didn’t know I had such a thing until I starting writing up my academic CV, and yes, it’s definitely not the same as a regular CV. It’s definitely more smug…) or they were very pessimistic about funding of the project(s) (granted this was in the EU so it was understandable given the current economic predicament over there). So none of them panned out and my options were now limited to those just within my university which was not too big a concern for me as not staying at the same institution just for the sake of it sounded just as ridiculous to me especially when there are some top notch lecturers here as well (or so I would like to believe). But who knows if or how I might pay for that decision in the future?
Here’s where things get a little tricky though. I am now left with two feasible options after the culls aforementioned, which was still one more than I was hoping for. This meant that I now had to choose between them and if I already made up my mind on which, then I wouldn’t be writing this now, would I? So to that end, let’s get a little acquainted with the two options I have (without giving away too much information as I still want to keep some degree of anonymity here).
Option PBFD (which was so named in order to avoid potential biases with assigning an option with 1 or A over the other) was a project related to the statistical analysis (and some mathematical modeling) of regularly collected surveillance data in healthcare institutes with the aim of studying the transmission dynamics of hospital-acquired antibiotic-resistant pathogens and ultimately how to better control the spread of such things, as if you haven’t been able to deduce (seriously?) are bad for both patients and the healthcare institutes. This project will have my current supervisor as my principal supervisor who has been much nicer to me these past few months (It’s more of a him getting comfortable with you and knowing that you can actually do research [back door compliment alert!] rather than his sneaky ploy to get me do continue on with him as he doesn’t seem like that kind of person, but then I’ve only known this man for less than a year… ) as well as a previous supervisor I worked with who I get along with very well (our meetings usually last 2 hours on average so unless we were doing something extracurricular [we were not! I’m innocent and have no idea what I was insinuating…] we must really get along rather swimmingly), and another health statistician who I have not worked with but was rather frank from our meeting which is a plus in my books (as much as I sidestep/sugarcoat issues, I much prefer someone to tell it to my face if they have something to say rather than pussyfooting it) and does seem to have a rather good reputation in the statistical community (my principal supervisor is more of an elderly figure in the community and not as active in attending conferences anymore).
This would probably have been my choice if I just went by my first gut instinct which I have used multiple times in my life. However, I can’t shake the feeling that this would be the safe option and I would not be learning from it as much as I would be with the other project, in terms of the mathematical breath anyways. Also, this is taking me further down the path of being a full-fledged statistician (which I am already if you believed my previous job’s title) which was not what I envisioned to be for the most part of my degree (which was a Bachelor of Maths, not Stats) and that is giving me a rather substantial identity crisis as well. On the one hand, it seems like a natural transition from what I am already doing (both academically and professionally) and the statistical people I’ve meet so far have all been much more agreeable and sociable than the math people (which a few exceptions as with all other generalisations, of course). On the other hand, I have arguably not been as involved in my statistic classes during my studies compared with the mathematical units so often times I feel like I’m faking my knowledge in the area and one of these days it will just blow up in my face.
Aside from intrinsic doubts, there are also some practical considerations that provided additional roadblocks to this project. This area of research is by no means new, but there were always problems with data quality and test sensitivity which cast doubt over the results (some papers have even postulated models where the most significant term was the background noise which is basically saying that “we can’t tell you anything based on what we’ve done although” they would obviously have an academic spin to make it sound less useless) thus the need to actually improve in this area. And these issues have more to do with the healthcare surveillance side of things, and less so on the mathematical and statistical side.
However this project does offer an option for a career that’s not entirely stuck in academia and chasing publication counts (although it is still a possible option if I wanted to), and also frankly speaking there is more demand and career opportunities for statistical professionals than mathematical ones.
Option SPMD on the other hand deals with the modeling of cell (particularly cancer cells) movements and growth and is the arguably more scientific option of the two (where PBFD is the more practical option) and is definitely more mathematically involved than the first option but still has some statistical aspect to it as well (mostly a ploy of the principal supervisor to attract me and my current supervisor but more about that later). More specifically, it will delve into stuff (that’s scientific, right?) that is sort of an extension or even rethinking of the stuff that I’ve learned in my undergraduate course and have also been away from for the most part of this year. By definition, it is a rather new area of interest (although it is not entirely groundbreaking either).
The principal supervisor for this project is someone who I had not worked with before who emailed me rather unexpectedly [I was under the impression that he doesn’t even know I exist since I didn’t take his class and was not doing research in mathematics at the moment] (my current supervisor has the second largest contribution) although there has been a rather substantial amount of rumours/opinions about him. Some are rather opposed to his overly hands-on approach (which I agree with to some extent as I have been disturbed by his intrusions on more often than I would like) and also the fact that he seems to be helping his students way too much with their (read: his) papers resulting in them getting published way too early/often compared to the regular PhD candidates (which I will admit that part of me was wondering if that could just be a jealous remark). The benefit to his overly hands-on approach is that you will stick to the plan outlined and it balances well with my current supervisor who can be a bit too relaxed and/or withdrawn at times (but not the worst) although it may just add unnecessary stress or conflict between the two. Also, I would be then in direct competition with his current star student who already is way more ahead than me (and the majority of the current PhD candidates in the school) although we are in the same year (because of his help and I suppose they collaborated well with one another that he [the student] already has at least 4 publications even though the standard number for Honours students is typically 0, or maybe 1 if you were really, really good). Furthermore, it appears that this guy is just collecting the brightest students from each year and taking them on as his students only (or at least tries to) which doesn’t quite sit right with me even though I can see why one would do so. To that end, I should mention that he actually tried to purpose a PhD project with him twice; Once when it was just involving him and once more later on involving my current supervisor (bringing in some statistical aspect to the project) when I did not contact him a few weeks after our meeting (to be fair, he didn’t say to email him and I was still in the middle of weighing my options). I suppose his ambition is a double-edged sword that one will have to deal with and whether or not I will be happy to just knuckle under his rule as it seems to be happening with his students, or at least those that he particularly favours anyways… That being said, he seems to be a rather nice person, or that might just be his charisma/charm in action? This is the problem with considering starting with a new supervisor who I have no interaction with for the entirety of my undergraduate course – I can’t really tell if he is bullshiting me (and what makes considering external options even more difficult as well). He also seems to sugarcoat/be `politically correct’ in our conversations and tend to be a little too `yes man’ for my taste but who knows? Maybe that extra encouragement is good for oneself….
That being said, the project itself wouldn’t have to deal with less-than-ideal surveillance data as their data is experimentally obtained but it could also be argued that anything of real interest would have some amount of noise in it, as is true with life and meaningful interactions. Also it would be a formal mathematical-statistical collaboration in my school which is a rather rare thing to do (but does that really benefit me or just the school? I suppose it could be a two-way street there which seems to be a running theme for this project…). However, the applications of the project does not interest me as much but sometimes I wonder if that’s just a sign of me not being a very scientific person…
Also, this project is much more grounded in my current school whereas the other one is more of a split between my school and the health faculty (which is a marginally better option in terms of diversity of tertiary studies institutions). Furthermore, to do a mathematical project with this principal supervisor (who is relatively new and who I do not know) when I have turned down options from other mathematical lecturers who I know (and like) better and are more experienced in their fields with arguably more interesting application (to me anyways) seems rather like an insult to them.
A minor thing with this project as well is that one of the associate supervisors is a rather oddball character and has been a bit rude to one of his students (although he wasn’t entirely to blame in that situation). But he’s been nice to the others and seems to have a knack for editing (he’s one of those people who return your drafts dripping with red ink) as well as being a knowledgeable person in terms of mathematical knowledge.
So there you have it. Those are my two options right now and I really want to try and decide as soon as possible as the longer I put it off, the less time I will have to plan my holidays and also because I can feel myself developing bipolarity the more I think about this. Also, I believe the added stress of
Honours may very well be clouding my judgement making it harder for me to tell if what I am feeling is truly what I want in the absence of the stress. Furthermore, project SPMD has the Honours coordinator attached to it (who happens to be the oddball character) and I don’t particularly want to be on his bad side until I am done with it (there are still the final seminars). Who knows how vindictive he can get?
But what about my unbiased readers? Which project sounds better in your opinions, and why? What criteria would you use to decide? I can’t help but feel that in my writing about it, I am more biased towards one than the other, but can you tell which? Let me know about that as well to confirm/disprove my suspicions.
Labels: my life
Monkey J
16:36
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16:36
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