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3 qualities of successful Ph.D. students: Perseverance, tenacity and cogency

3 qualities of successful Ph.D. students: Perseverance, tenacity and cogency
What doesn't matter There's a ruinous misconception that a Ph.D. must be smart. This can't be true. A smart person would know better than to get a Ph.D. "Smart" qualities like brilliance and quick-thinking are irrelevant in Ph.D. school. Certainly, being smart helps. Moreover, as anyone going through Ph.D. school can tell you: people of less than first-class intelligence make it across the finish line and leave, Ph.D. in hand. As my advisor used to tell me, "Whenever I felt depressed in grad school--when I worried I wasn't going to finish my Ph.D. Since becoming a professor, I finding myself repeating a corollary of this observation, but I replace "getting a Ph.D." with "obtaining grant funding." Update: Within a month of writing that last line, I was awarded my first three grants. Perseverance To escape with a Ph.D., you must meaningfully extend the boundary of human knowledge. You can take classes and read papers to figure out where the boundary lies. That's easy. Tenacity Cogency Translations Related:  Dr. Matt Might help: Dissertation tips

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Books and papers every graduate student should read Jump to For grad students in any field Resources for writing Writing is the default activity in graduate school. A discovery isn't a discovery unless you can communicate that discovery. A lot of academic writing is horrible, and it tends to be horrible in multiple ways: presentation, ordering, clarity, style, and sometimes even grammar and punctuation. Better writing makes peer reviewers inclined to invest time in it. On writing style, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace simply nails it. The Chicago Manual of Style is an indispensable reference: I didn't find A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses and Dissertations until after my defense, but it is relevant to any kind of academic or technical writing. Like the Chicago book, it's a superb reference tome. Resources for presenting (yourself) Graduate students can't avoid giving presentations. Once again, most academics give awful presentations. will make every presentation you give better at the cost of just one afternoon's reading. Practice

Wrapper for AWK providing modules | Download Wrapper for AWK providing modules software for free What Causes Fear? A potential for pain, or an unrecognizable event, causes fear. The amygdalae, organs in the limbic system, detect such possibilities and send the signals which generate the fear emotion. Unlike the rational brain, emotions trigger a variety of instinctual attitudes and behaviors. Each such emotion is chosen by the limbic brain to meet a particularly demanding contingency in life. Fear acts instantly. Fear, triggered by the amygdala, is one of nature's earliest survival mechanisms. Later, when the sound alone is heard, its amygdalae will fire fear signals. What Causes Fear – Terror & HorrorFear is expressed at increasing levels as worry, anxiety, dread, terror and panic. What Causes Fear – Bodily ResponsesOn receiving fear signals from the amygdalae, the hypothalamus, acts reflexively to control the reproductive, vegetative, endocrine, hormonal, visceral and autonomic functions of the body. What Causes Fear – The Startle ResponseFear begins with the startle response. Back To Top

Asking for a letter of recommendation Aside: Professional correspondence Update: A few readers have asked if I have general recommendations on writing professional emails and correspondence. I do. I have an article on how to write an email. For professional correspondence, I keep a copy of Business Notes by Florence Isaacs on my desk: It's a valuable reference. Ask early Do not wait until right before the deadline. Don't be shy Do not be shy about asking for letters. Remember that everyone you ask for a letter once had to ask for letters themselves. I hated asking for letters because it seemed like such an imposition, and I hate to impose. Sitting on the other side of the desk, I realize that writing letters is something we sign up for with the job. Personally, I don't mind writing letters, and for good students, I enjoy it. Pick your letter-writers well If you're applying to grad school, you should seek letters from strong names in the field in which you wish to do research. Don't get n letters This will get a student an "nth" letter.

How to Write a Philosophy Paper, (c) 1993 by Peter Horban Good writing is the product of proper training, much practice, and hard work. The following remarks, though they will not guarantee a top quality paper, should help you determine where best to direct your efforts. I offer first some general comments on philosophical writing, and then some specific "do"s and "don't"s. One of the first points to be clear about is that a philosophical essay is quite different from an essay in most other subjects. Above all, it means that there must be a specific point that you are trying to establish - something that you are trying to convince the reader to accept - together with grounds or justification for its acceptance. Before you start to write your paper, you should be able to state exactly what it is that you are trying to show. The next task is to determine how to go about convincing the reader that your thesis is correct. Second, the ones that will stand out will be the very best ones and the very worst ones. Lengthy introductions.

Nintendo Gets Sued Over The Wii Ever heard of the Wavit remote? It’s totally okay if you haven’t; that’s not what this story is about. The Wavit Remote’s makers on the other hand… Well, they’ve decided to up and sue Nintendo over the Wii. Not only that, but they’ve included other retailers and manufacturers — including WalMart — in the complaint as well. Now, that’s not to say that Wavit makers ThinkOptical will get a win, but this particular court circuit tends to favor the patent holder over all else. The patent in question, U.S. “The rejection of [...] applications — assigned to Nintendo Co. ThinkOptic included two other patents in the case, as well — one called “Handheld Device for Handheld Vision Based Absolute Pointing System” (7,852,317) and the other titled “Handheld Vision Based Absolute Pointing System” (7,864,159). According to ThinkOptic, just about every part of the Wii infringes these patents in some capacity.

Free Online Course on Identifying Misinformation Is that photo of a shark swimming down a highway in Texas real? Is that story published on what looks like the website of a national broadcaster all as it seems? Is that Twitter account being quoted across the mass media legitimate – or is it a bot, troll or imposter? In the past three years, we’ve trained thousands of journalists to answer such questions – and many more. Similar skills and techniques allowed the Washington Post to scrutinize digital footprints and avoid falling victim to a hoax about Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore in November. Today, we’re releasing our short course on essential verification skills to train even more journalists, teachers and others dealing with online information on how to authenticate what they see online. Access the course by going to firstdraftnews.org/learn and clicking the ‘Get Free Access’ button. This one-hour course is free to use and requires just a one-step registration.

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