《Grad Skool Rulz》─ 研究所教战守则 http://chungenliu.blogspot.com/2011/10/grad-skool-rulz.html 印第安那大学社会系教授FabioRojas最近出版了一本叫做《Grad SkoolRulz》的研究所教 战守则，这本书原来是社会学部落格Orgtheory.net上面一系列的专栏，因为文章广受好 评，该教授将原来的章节重新编辑，又增加了大约50%的内容後，集结出版成电子书。 这本书主要写作对象是人文与社会科学的博士生，特别是志於从事学术研究工作的年轻学 者，虽说如此，很多学术生涯所面对点点滴滴是不分领域的，相信自然与工程科学领域的 同学还是能够从书中学到很多，至於MBA、医学、艺术以及种种非「研究」导向的学位， 则不在本书的讨论范围之中。 本书分成59个章节，内容包山包海，从申请研究所、找指导教授、考资格考、写论文、找 工作、投稿期刊、博士後、一路写到教授升等终身职(tenure)才结束，作者笔法直接了当 ，平实中肯地呈现出学术生活中的高低起伏，是我看过最受用的教战守则，很多时候都有 「啊，早点有人跟我说这些就好了…」的感觉。有心但还没开始念博士班的同学，可以从 本书一窥学术生涯的真实面目，已经身处在漫漫学术道路上的同学，也一定可以从文中找 到一些实用的建议。 电子书下载的网志：http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/93455 (只要2美金就可以下载全书，我个人觉得很划算啦， 也请尊重作者的智财权不要将全文档案任意转寄。) 不想花钱买电子书的同学，也可以上Orgtheory.net参考专栏，内容跟电子书不会差异太 大，网址在：http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/category/grad-school-rulz/ 我个人特别推荐的章节有开卷前三章 (1) Do not Go to Graduate School (2) Picking a Graduate Program (3) Don’t Pay for Grad School，这些内容特别适合还正在准备 申请的同学，第一章由一个中生代教授来劝退你读研究所，很有说服力吧！如果你看过内 容还觉得自己适合，那也许你有足够决心，各位要知道博士班是寂寞又辛苦漫漫长路，根 据粗略统计，所有进入博士班就读的学生当中，大约只有一半的人能够顺利毕业，有人资 格考没过，有人指导教授跑路，有人因为私人原因离开，有人念了几年因为志趣不合打退 堂鼓，早点看看过来人怎麽说，才不会过了几年再抱怨自己上了贼船。第二三章谈找学校 跟找奖学金，都是很中肯的建议。 第20章”What can you say to your advisor?”，谈如何拿捏跟指导教授相处的分际， 相信对很多人会有帮助。第23章”Words for Women”谈女博士生的甘苦和第25章讲” When to Quit”，都非常精彩，这些是很重要却很少人会对你说的实话。 以下我摘录一些我自己读完觉得特别精彩的段落供大家参考， 更多内容请自行参考电子书： ＊ In general, I recommend against graduate school. The Ph.D. is expensive in terms of money and time and many graduate programs are poorly run. The doctoral degree prepares you for academic research but rarely confers skills that would be useful in other jobs. Some non-academic employers even see the Ph.D. as a liability. Therefore, you should not go to graduate school unless you have an exceptionally strong belief that being a professor is the right career for you. Even in the sciences, there aren’t enough teaching positions and schools can’t absorb all recent Ph.D.’s. Many science Ph.D. holders will find jobs in industry. ＊ Graduate school is a huge investment of time and money. A graduate program is an apprenticeship that’s much longer than those found in most other jobs. For that reason, graduate education is not really school, it’s a job. ＊ Graduate school is only for people who have a strong internal drive and have the organizational skills necessary to function in an environment with little or no supervision. In medical school, you have to graduate in four years. They force you out. In graduate school, if you are too lazy or disorganized to write your dissertation, no one will care. Your school or department will let you hang for years. The result? About 90% of medical students become doctors, while only half of Ph.D. students finish their program. ＊ Graduate school is not to be taken lightly. Don’t start graduate school because you don’t know what else to do with your life or you have a tough time with a regular job. If you are thinking about graduate school because you can’t find a job or hold a job, stop. Learn how to find a job and hold a job. Become someone who can learn skills and who other people want to be around. There is no point in being a journeyman academic unless you are highly self-motivated. Outside of academia, you will make more money, you’ll have the same job stability, and you will have more time. ＊ Do not go to any graduate program that does not offer a tuition waver for first 4-5 years, especially if it’s a private school. If they don’t offer some sort of assistance, decline the offer. There are always other programs you can go to and you can re-apply until you get an offer of financial support. ...It’s a bad sign if a department is unable to support entering graduate students with fellowships, assistantships, or teaching. ...If you are in the position of having to pay tuition, complain a lot. Contact the graduate chair, the dean of graduate studies, or whoever is in charge of advising students. ＊ Research should be your main activity, and after you complete the required courses, courses should be your extra-curricular activity. Courses should help you develop your research ideas. To summarize, courses are important in short term, but irrelevant in the long term. Only take them if you must, but you can indulge in one or two fun courses. In the long term, courses are not as important as your research. ＊ By the second to third year of grad school, you should already have begun to develop a “taste.” You should know what appeals to you. These are the articles that I consider exemplars of good research and theory, while these are not. This requires you to be critical, but you must also go beyond that. A successful graduate student – a future scholar – will make the next step and figure out how to produce new research. Thus, taste is critical, but it is also productive. ＊ Make some graduate school friends. Your ultimate success in graduate school depends on the creativity and effort you invest in your work, but having a good set of friends is important. Do realize that having just a few good dependable friends can make a big difference in the quality of your graduate education – and beyond! Your graduate school friends will likely remain your tenure-track friends who will help you through the assistant professor years. ＊ Dissertations are not masterpieces! Sure, a few dissertations are masterpieces, but dissertations are, at best, rough drafts of promising work. Many are simply useless pedagogical exercises. Even Einstein’s first dissertation was not well received. Therefore, you should write a well-crafted and competent work. The goal is to show you can actually complete competent research within a reasonable time period. You can write a masterpiece later in your career. The only good dissertation is a complete dissertation. Seriously. The overwhelming majority of dissertations are not read, published, or cited. In fact, if you submit your unrevised dissertation for publication, the reviewers might reject it on the grounds that “it reads like a dissertation (= tendentious student work).” Therefore, once you have mastered the basics of research in your field, just get it done! ＊ However, it is also important to know that academia is not the right choice for everyone – even among those who possess the talent to complete the PhD degree. Let’s start this discussion with two obvious points. First, graduate education is the training school for a specific profession – being a professor. That means the program is set up to help you master an academic discipline, produce research in it, and teach it. This is job training. If you don’t want that job, then there is no point in continuing. Second, there is no moral obligation to get a doctoral degree. Switch to another career. Just as it’s acceptable for an accountant to switch to lawyering, or an actor may quit the theater to start their own business, it’s totally normal for a graduate student to switch to another career. Finding the right job is an important, and expected, feature of life. 最後，祝各位研究生求学愉快！加油！ --

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