What it Means to Get a PhD

Marc Snir

Department of Computer Science

http://www.uiuc.edu/

More Never took sabbatical

Co-director UPCRC– Make parallel programming synonymous with

programming

Co-PI Blue Waters– Largest academic supercomputer (in 2011)

What Getting a PhD Does Not Mean Going to an academic career

Choosing a career

Choosing a lifetime research field

Not having a life

What It Can Mean Opportunity for five years of unimpeded creativity

– "CREATIVITY is thinking up new things. INNOVATION is doing new things." -- Theodore Levitt

Opportunity for five years of unopposed perfectionism – "In art as in science these is no delight without the

detail." – Nabokov Unrivaled opportunity for soaking knowledge

broad and deep An opportunity to reach to your limits and learn

what you can and can’t do

But Disciplines, Departments and Advisors are not all Equal

Freedom to roam vs. “early binding” of advisor

More or less constrained academic program

Big projects vs. individual projects

Face time

Quality

Bad Reasons not to Get a PhD I am not really sure I can do research

I can do it later

I really do not like my School

I can never see my professors

I am frightened to death whenever I have to give a presentation

Ways to Choose Research Fields Are you a hedgehog or a fox?

– "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing“ – Archilochus

Do you want to do, or do you want to know?

Do you want to change the world?