From A Post by Dr.Alessandro Mantovani
Recently, I came across a blog post by Dr. Alessandro Mantovani, titled "Getting a Ph.D. in System Security". Reading his post was truly inspiring to me. The article is not only well-written but also friendly and immensely helpful, making it a worthy piece to revisit.
Upon my initial reading, I've garnered some personal insights from this article, which I'd like to share.
- "Horizontal" learning. With reference to subject choice, it is good, at least for me, to move horizontally and keep 2 or 3 top-priority-related topics as the final goal. It probably is the best time to focus on something that you are passionate about for a certain of time.
- "Push" philosophy. Don't expect to have an office-like daily routine. Precious your time and be "goal-dependent". Gift yourself free days after work.
- Resiliency and delayed gratification. Don’t expect positive feedback, either from Reviewers or even your advisor, it may be a long journey before you reach the final satisfaction. "Try to abstract, synthesize and report the meaningful info if you want to hear feedback from him/her, unless you have a complicated problem with one of the edge cases. Only in that case it is worth to enter in details."
- Team working. One of the important soft skills is team working, with your co-authors/collaborators of the related research cases, with your peers in the same office/lab, etc..