Obtaining that elusive
Your
Ph.D.—in every sense
a marriage
L.L. FIELDS
H ere is a little
humor and some
perspective for you
hard-working Ph.D.
students who can’t
seem to find any
humor in your monotonous daily stride
towards obtaining that seemingly elusive
three-letter suffix to be added to your
name. Currently a Ph.D. candidate
myself, what I have to offer is based on
my own experiences and the keen
observations of other Ph.D. students
both from my school and other institu-
tions of higher learning. You should use
this analogy and insight during those
tough times when everything that should
© IMAGE CLUB
JULY/AUGUST 2006
riage between a man and woman.
be going north seems to be heading
south. This information should also
serve as a guide to help you see the visi-
ble radiation (light) at the other end of
the tunnel (remember, this is what it
seems like sometimes). If you are a mar-
ried Ph.D. student, you are unique
because this is the only time in your life
when you will be married to more than
one spouse, which makes you a “legal”
polygamist. Remember, polygamy is not
legal in the United States of America.
The Ph.D.—a romance
The pursuit of your Ph.D. degree is
a marriage between you and your topic
and has to be treated just like a mar-
0278-6648/06/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE
adviser has to be considered as both
your attorney and local law enforce-
ment body. Now, let us look at just
how obtaining a Ph.D. is like a mar-
riage. Let’s call your carefully chosen
topic your spouse.
First of all, the quest for a Ph.D.
should be thought of as a commit-
ment because you will be devoting an
average of five years of your life to it.
Having said that, you can see why it
is so important to choose a topic that
is, without a doubt, interesting.
Secondly, you often find yourself tak-
ing your new spouse with you every
place you go—to the movies, to din-
ner, shopping, to visit relatives, to
church, and to seminars, just to name
a few places. If you are already mar-
ried, you will spend much more time
with your new spouse than with your
first spouse. For example, you will
find yourself waking up in the morn-
ing with your new spouse because
you need to plan your day around
what experiments need to be run,
what data needs to be plotted and
analyzed, what theory needs to be
understood, what journal papers need
to be written, and what presentations
need to be prepared. Breakfast will
also become a time to spend with
your new spouse. With the exception
of Sundays, my morning meal time is
currently spent reading journal papers
and pertinent topics in textbooks that
directly and indirectly relate to my
topic. By now, you Ph.D. students
should be getting the picture of how
you and your topic are for all practi-
cal purposes a married couple.
Wait! The situation gets much
more interesting, if not downright
romantic, because you also get a
chance to sleep with your new
spouse at night. At various times
you will find yourself having
dreams about your new spouse,
which are more than likely very
similar to one of the following:
a) I am at a conference on
designing nanorobots and pre-
senting my research—that is, I’m
describing how beautiful and
important my spouse is.
b) I have just discovered
that the exponent in the rate
equation should be 1.3 versus
1.37 and now my theory fits
my results.
c) I am having a once in a
lifetime interview with IBM
11
and the hiring manager wants to know
why I chose my topic and what contri-
butions I expect to make in my field—
that is, when did we get married and
how many children do we plan to
have.
Also, your new spouse can be very
temperamental at times. Often you will
find that no matter how hard you try to
join those two atoms, chemistry just
won’t let it happen the way you want it
to, or no matter how hard you try to
explain your reasoning to your adviser,
you just can’t present yourself in a
clear and concise way. It should be
much more apparent to you now just
how much you and your topic are like
a woman and her husband. Actually,
the relationship can be quite loving.
But here comes the part that
many of you will inevitably face.
Divorce from your new spouse
that, for the past five years, has
been with you through thick and
Mood (Happiness)
ed into the Ph.D program and cannot with and who is human. It can proba-
wait to start the research process. Also, bly be assumed that the law officer will
notice that once you get your divorce, be competent in his/her line of work
you are once again as happy as a bear and worthy enough to advise you. I
in a bee’s honeycomb. You see, as stat- admit that even though I get a little
ed above, this type of divorce isn’t all impatient with my adviser sometimes,
that bad and it would be a shame, in a he has always supported me. He allows
sense, if you didn’t get one. me to make mistakes, and then he dis-
Notice that the average mood is 0.6 cusses with me the way I should have
and that the peak-to-peak amplitude is handled the situation. Many of you
0.25. What does this tell us? Well, it brides and bridegrooms will read this
means that most of the time you are a suggestion, fail to take it seriously, and,
little more happy and making progress sadly, will have to divorce your spouse
than sad and stuck on a problem. While prematurely. The next most important
the exact numbers in this figure are suggestion is to choose a spouse that
arbitrary and the curve may actually be you can support and one that you love
a triangle wave, versus a sine wave, dearly. What I mean by support is that
one can’t deny the overall truthfulness you should, to the best of your knowl-
conveyed by the curve. Almost all Ph.D. edge, assess whether or not your insti-
tution has the resources you need
1 to pursue your Ph.D. If it doesn’t,
will you have access to the
resources to accomplish your task?
For Ph.D. work, you will be

thin is foreordained. Yes, eventu- expected to accomplish your task

ally you will have to graduate
and find a job, whether it is in
industry or academia. Most Ph.D.
graduates in the technical fields
don’t find positions doing the
exact same kind of work as was
done for their Ph.D. dissertation.
But, there are a lucky few who
manage to continue their Ph.D.
work. So, as in the United States,
the divorce rate is high, and the
only time you don’t get a Fig. 1 Mood versus time for an average Ph.D. student
divorce is when you are lucky
enough to continue your work. This
type of divorce, however, is not that
bad because you finally get a chance to
make the big bucks and become richer,
not poorer as the case in most
divorces. You have that three-letter suf-
fix at the end of your name with a
more normal husband or life (I meant
wife). The worst case occurs when you
have to get a divorce, and you don’t
get your legal divorce document—that
is, you don’t get your degree.
Figure 1 shows the mood versus time
for an average Ph.D. student for the typ-
ical five-year duration. The units for
mood was arbitrarily named happiness.
A mood of 0 happiness means that you
are stressed, depressed, unfocused, and
confused whereas a mood of 1 means
that you have made some Nobel-Prize
type of discovery, and you and your
spouse are hitting it off rather nicely.
Notice that the curve is a cosine func-
tion (versus sine) because almost always
the student is very excited to get accept-
0.5
0
0 1 2 3 4 5
Time (Years)
students with whom I have spoken
have had issues and tough times. On
the other hand, there have to be peri-
ods of happiness, satisfaction, good
results, and good times because if there even more critical when you transition
weren’t, you would never get a chance
to divorce your spouse. Ideally, you
want the average value to be 1 and the
amplitude to be 0, but this could only
happen in an ideal world. If anyone has
experienced this situation, please be
sure to send me your secret and we
may be able to make lots of money. On
a more serious note, it is extremely
important to find ways to persevere
though those valleys in the cosine
wave. Later, I will share with you a few
ideas that usually work for me.
Personal advice
Here are my suggestions for anyone
who is engaged or thinking about
becoming engaged. First of all, make
sure that you find a law officer (remem- tion are summed and weighted because
ber, your adviser) who you can work
regardless of your ability to access
resources at your own institution.
Based on the above information, it
should not be a great stretch of
your imagination to see why it is
so important to choose a spouse
who you think you can love until
death, or graduation, do you part.
For the moment, forget about any
humor you may have found in this
article and write down the next
statement somewhere in your lab
and at your desk. “Acquiring
effective and smooth communication
and presentation skills is essential and
is the secret to doing well while you
are getting your Ph.D.” These skills are
from school to your job becase we can
formulate a relationship between your
success, communication skills, presenta-
tion skills, technical ability, motivation,
persistence, and luck.
Success Probability =
0.65* (communication skills
+ presentation skills)
+ 0.15*technical ability
+ 0.15*(motivation
+ persistence)
+ 0.05*luck.
Communication and presentation skills
are summed and then weighted because
it’s often extremely difficult to distinguish
the two. Likewise, persistence and motiva-
they are closely coupled. Here, success is

12 IEEE POTENTIALS
a measure of a combination of things: my stress management. The article by remember that almost all Ph.D. students
how much compensation you are earning, Rob Candler and the one by Mirella have low times, and you are not the
satisfaction with your work or task, and Moro et al. do an excellent job of cov- only one living with the blues!
your contributions to your field. While the ering many practical aspects that Ph.D.
weightings in the formula above have students and students thinking about Read more about it
been arbitrarily assigned, the point is that getting a Ph.D. should consider. • R. Candler, “Stuff most students
your technical abilities will not influence never ask about grad school,” IEEE
Potentials, vol. 45, pp. 4–10,
your success nearly as much as your com- Summary
Aug./Sep. 2005.
munication and presentation skills. I admit One should seriously consider the
that this hurts even me because I consider quest for a Ph.D. as a marriage between • M. Moro, V. Braganholo, A. Nácul,
and M. Fornari, “The successful grad
myself a logical and technical person like student and topic and treat the topic student,” IEEE Potentials, vol. 45, pp.
Mr. Spock on Star Trek, but it is the truth. with all the respect and passion that 11–13, Aug./Sep. 2005.
This information is coming from the per- one would treat his or her living
spective of a Ph.D. candidate with over spouse. Three ways to get through
ten years of industry experience and some those tough times have been given. All About the author
college teaching experience. have been very effective for me and L.L. Fields (fieldle@eng.fsu.edu) is a
some of my friends. A visual aid has fourth-year Ph.D. student in the
Blues management tips been presented that shows how a typi- Electrical and Computer Engineering
For anyone who doesn’t know what cal Ph.D. student’s happiness varies. Department at the Florida Agricultural
the blues are, it refers to the low times Communication and presentation skills and Mechanical University/Florida State
in your life that are caused by an emo- have been elevated above technical University, Tallahassee. His research
tional letdown that could be the result ability in a formula that relates these interest is nanosensors and semicon-
of losing a friend, making a low test skills to the ability to succeed. The ducting devices. He worked for the
score, being broke, etc. Here are some Ph.D. is demanding and time consum- U.S. Navy full time from 1989–2000
ideas to help you get through those ing. It requires independent thinking and part time from 2000–2002. He
depressing troughs in the cosine wave skills and dedication, many sacrifices, attended the University of Florida in
that are caused by your spouse’s tem- vision and trust, and of course, a little Gainesville from 2000–2002 and
peramental mood swings: luck. One should think of the Ph.D. as received an M.S. degree in electrical
1) Exercise as often as your schedule an investment. Most important of all, and computer engineering.
allows. For me, exercising is one of the
few ways to divert my attention away
from my spouse. Jogging, aerobics, bik-
ing, and weightlifting works for me. It’s
extremely important to get your heart
rate up and sweat because this usually
leaves little room to think about your
spouse. You will have to experiment to
see what works best for you.
2) Eat a large, healthy breakfast,
consume healthy foods in general, and
take a multivitamin. You will be sur-
prised at how well you will feel after
you change your eating habits. This is
important because food isn’t the same
as it once was because of the way we
grow and process it. This has made a
difference for me and a couple friends
by allowing us to think more clearly
and focus better.
3) Talk to people. One of the worst
things you can do is to stay in the lab
and think that you are the world’s
brightest student. In case you haven’t
noticed, today’s successful people are
well rounded. Of course, there are
those few people who can make it by
being almost totally independent, but
let me tell you those people are in the
minority. Talking to people can help
relieve frustrations and give you new
perspectives.
The list above isn’t meant to be all
inclusive, but it has been the heart of

JULY/AUGUST 2006 13