Academic chat: On PhD

This week, Aleksey and I met not to dissect a research paper, but to chat about "the process of PhD". I had recently wrote a post titled "The Invisible Curriculum of Research", where I framed research as an iceberg, with the small visible parts (papers, conferences) resting on the hidden 5 Cs:

• Curiosity/Taste: what problems are worth solving.
• Clarity: how to ask precise and abstracting questions.
• Craft: writing, experimentation, presentation.
• Community: collaboration and contribution.
• Courage: resilience through setbacks.

Above is the video of our chat, with a lot of personal anecdotes and a few rants. But if you want to cut to the chase, the highlight reel is below.

What a PhD Really Produces

The real product of a PhD is not the thesis, but you, the researcher! The thesis is just the residue of this long internal transformation. Like martial arts, the training breaks you and rebuilds you into someone who sees and thinks differently. This transformation cannot be faked and you should take your time to grow your wings. But you can be effective about it.

Curiosity and taste

Taste blends curiosity, creativity, and judgment of what's important. Curiosity alone can lure you into many bottomless technical rabbit holes. Taste filters what matters and channels curiosity into focus. And you definitely need passion to sustain yourself through the ups and downs of the arduous PhD journey.

The serendipitous path to research

Many researchers stumble into research through chance encounters, unexpected opportunities, and detours. So it is worth keeping an open mind, noticing what sparks your curiosity and suits you best, and following it. Aleksey shares his own unlikely path to a PhD, which is well worth watching. I have written before about how I started, but here I go deeper into where those interests first took root.

Growing through friction and mentorship

Taste, curiosity, and confidence grow through friction. The best labs are loud where debates spill into hallways. When Aleksey, Aili, and I worked together, neighboring faculty sometimes complained about the noise, wondering why we were always arguing. But intellectual sparring sharpens your ideas. Research maturity comes from questioning, defending, refining. In this type of hands-on, messy mentorship, taste, passion, craft all rub off.

Asking good questions and abstracting well

Abstraction is the art of asking the right questions. The best questions cut away accidental complexity and get to the essence of the problem. Leslie Lamport's genius was exactly knowing what to ignore/abstract-away. "Craft is knowing how to work, and art is knowing when to stop."

By finding the right question/framing/abstraction, you can pivot a project that is not getting any lift into an impactful hit! (This I believe.)

The Craft of Research

Most research is unglamorous: debugging, writing, revising, rejections. But you gotta  do the craft, and do it well, for your ideas to lift off. You need routines and ritual to keep you steady and improving. Aleksey's productivity routine involves daily 90-minute walks as his "thinking time". Thinking, for him, is a physical process. We used to walk a lot when we worked together, but somehow I have fallen off that wagon. My thinking time now comes through freewriting on Emacs or on my tablet, and arguing with myself on the page. We both agree, though, that talking/arguing with collaborators forces clarity and generates ideas.

On Courage and Resilience

Every researcher fails as much as (if not more than) they succeed. The researcher needs to endure through failures and rejections. You need to keep showing up to write the next draft, rerun the next experiment, submit again. Passion helps, without it, survival in research is unlikely. But you also need to make a habit of endurance. Courage also means questioning norms and pursuing ideas that may not yet be fashionable but feel true.

But, sometimes (ah Retroscope) you have to take the loss, cut your losses, and move on.  Maybe you can return later at a more opportune time.

Top skills/qualities for a PhD

We discussed our picks for top three skills needed for a successful Phd. For me, it is writing/communication, asking the right questions, and metacognition (knowing when to stop, reframe, or abstract; seeing the essence rather than surface detail). Reading skills came up very high in our discussion too. You can't outsource that to ChatGPT. People skills also matter: work well with your collaborators. Conferences and brutal rankings in academia can feel like SquidGames at times, but what truly matters is people, mentorship, and the craft itself.

What makes a bad researcher

Bad research habits are easy to spot: over-competition, turf-guarding, incremental work, rigidity, and a lack of intellectual flexibility. Bad science follows bad incentives such as benchmarks over ideas, and performance over understanding. These days the pressure to run endless evaluations has distorted the research and publishing process. Too many papers now stage elaborate experiments to impress reviewers instead of illuminating them with insights. Historically, the best work always stood on its own, by its simplicity and clarity. 

Onboarding and Departmental Support

Advisor fit is crucial, and students should be free to explore before committing. Early rotations and cohort boot camps, which Aleksey mentioned is common in biomedical programs, help build both skills and faculty connections. Unfortunately, computer science still lacks this scaffolding. Industry treats onboarding as an investment, with structured mentorship, regular check-ins, and clear expectations. Academia, by contrast, seems to treat the absence of onboarding as a filtering mechanism. New PhD students are frequently left on their own for months, without direction, feedback, or a sense of belonging. Even small rituals (weekly meetings, mentorship pairings, consistent feedback) could change and catch struggling/blocked students early rather than years later.