Several weeks ago we held orientation for the new Ph.D. students in our program, talking them through the process of getting a Ph.D., from admission (done! check!) to that moment when they get to walk across the stage a few years down the road as newly donned "doctors."What sets earning a Ph.D. apart from other degrees is the production of original research: the doctoral dissertation. You can earn a B.A. and most master's degrees, and even other types of doctorates (M.D., J.D.) without producing original research. Not so with the Ph.D.
This production of an original work turns out to be one of the biggest stumbling blocks for Ph.D. students -- and I'm not picking on my own students. It's something that Ph.D. students in all fields at all universities struggle with.
I suggested that, though the are just starting their programs of study, they start thinking about their dissertations now, not when they finish coursework or after taking their comprehensive exams.
I gave a few suggestions, one of which was to write down ideas they have for research topics. I held up a small composition notebook, 4.5 by 3.25 inches, and suggested that carrying around a notebook like one of these is a great way to be sure you don't lose a good idea. "You never know when that spontaneous thought in class might germinate into something else. But you don't want to forget it," I wisely counseled.
Well, Physician: Heal thyself.
This morning, while driving to campus, I had Michael Chabon's wonderful memoir, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son, playing on CD. He (and it really was he reading his own book) said something about his writing process, about ideas, about how writing is his own "disorder."
This morning, while driving to campus, I had Michael Chabon's wonderful memoir, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son, playing on CD. He (and it really was he reading his own book) said something about his writing process, about ideas, about how writing is his own "disorder."
Click!
Something clicked in my tiny brain. I remembered that just two nights ago, Sunday night to be exact, I had an idea. A marvelous one. This was the idea of ideas. It was going to be my own Einsteinian unified field theory of...something-or-other. This idea, this thought, was the seed that would grow into a book or article that would win me the Pulitzer Prize. Or the Nobel Prize. Or both!
I was already in bed and I remember looking at my nightstand for a piece of paper and a pen and finding neither. Only my recent New Yorker and a couple books for nighttime reading sat under the lamp.
I was tired. "This idea is so singularly ingenious that there is absolutely no way I could forget it," I assured myself. So instead of looking for a scrap of paper and a pen or pencil I went to sleep, dreaming of the future fame I would surely enjoy from my Awesomely Great Idea...
