I tend to go out of my way in this mailing list and other public forums to highlight positive accomplishments and interesting ideas, but indeed not everything is successful and positive in life.
What you'll find below is a blog enry from a current or former UMD student that appeared June 5, 2005. I am re-broadcasting this post here because I think it's important to raise negative issues as well. All students are certainly entitled to express their opinions about their experiences here and at other places, and I hope that this student's views might prompt you to express any of your own concerns about life at UMD now or in the future. In addition, I'm posting this on the mailing list so that future or prospective students might see this as well. We make our software and publications very public, so why not make the criticisms public too? Regarding the student who posted this blog entry originally, we had in fact discussed many of these issues, so this was *not* a case of the student raising concerns in public without first discussing them with me. In fact, the student did discuss the issues with me at various times in the past, and I don't think we ever reached a resolution. Here then is the blog entry. The student is not identified, nor am I, but I will take the liberty of identifying myself as the subject of these comments. ----------------------------------------- Sunday, June 05, 2005 being a student researcher... Is indeed very frustrating, challenging and discouraging at times... Here are few facts/lessons I learned from my 3 years old research life... 1. Research is not about finishing given tasks in or before time... Its about exploring and trying as much as possible in the available time. No matter how much you do, its never complete... Don't just act like a programmer, and implement your advisor's ideas... Be creative, inventive and imaginative... 2. Sometimes you come across people who are really obsessive about publishing papers. They make a target of writing X papers every year, and sometimes they even go to the extent of re-submitting their previous papers with some trivial changes or submitting same paper to multiple events, and unfortunately they are lucky enough to get away with such things... Make sure you are not one of them! 3. There are other people who care more about the actual work than creating a documentary evidence of everything they did... Sometimes you leave one place, and join a new job/school, and you leave behind various un-published ideas/experiments, un-released or un-documented code, hoping that you will later have time to finish it off... But, someone else takes your place, takes charge of everything, and creates an appearance as if they are the original creators, alone take credits for all your work, w/o even bothering to give you simple acknowledgements. 4. Some people first make it really impossible for you to work/deal with them, and then make that as an excuse to kick you off from "their team". While you work for them, they treat you as if you own your research, and as soon as you leave, you are suddenly no-one. Its all theirs, because according to them "you took the money, and you are just a student who implemented all *their ideas*..." All those weekends, holidays you spent working in their absence, all those bitter winters when you walked to the university when buses weren't running, or starved on campus without food, is all worthless... And you feel rather foolish for doing all such compromises and sacrifices for them, for separating yourself from the rest of the world and devoting to their research... You feel very helpless, you are too small to challenge them, and don't have much voice... If you dare to disagree or complain, they will call you an arrogant, disrespectful and attacking person, and will punish/hurt you even more... If you are supported by them, they will threaten you by saying "you are taking my money, don't work with me if you don't like the ways I handle things..." And moreover, they will constantly blame you and make you feel guilty as if its all your fault. Unfortunately, you can't do much about it, you are not revengeful like them... At times, you will wish to just quit and go far far away from all of this... But don't quit! Don't let them defeat you. Your interests in research are genuine, and you certainly deserve something much better in life. And trust me, you will soon find yourself at a better place, among better people, on a better project... 5. At various times, you will find yourself very dependent... Your desires, ideas, enthusiasm, motivation, energies are nothing without their support and encouragements... you get easily discouraged if they don't want you to pursue something. You feel like your energies/brain is just not being utilised properly, when you end up spending most of your time on some laborious mechanical task... Don't worry, hopefully the results will be all worth the pains. 6. Leaving your advisor and research could sometimes be as bad as separating from your husband or giving away your child to someone, and not even be able to see them at all for years (no kidding)... It will make you sad, upset, angry, you will feel hurt, and regret for being so much attached to them. But the best thing for everyone is to just move on with life, and not look back too much... ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Give the gift of life to a sick child. Support St. Jude Children's Research Hospital's 'Thanks & Giving.' http://us.click.yahoo.com/h8TXDC/6WnJAA/HwKMAA/x3XolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! 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