https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ziyangx/graduate-advice/ 作者信息： 转载自北大本科生 Ziyang Xu，本科在梁云那里实习，现在是 princeton 4th year phd，导师是 Greg Chan
1. 5 Topics
1.1 Research > Course
Young Ph.D. students tend to spend too much time on courses. However, research outweighs courses.
Take courses with a grain of salt
Courses are not as important as they seem to be. The priority of a Ph.D. student is to do research – the earlier you start your research, the better off you’ll be in the long run.
However, don’t go to extremes! A poor grade can also be a huge problem. You should always be familiar with the requirement of qualification exams or generals and meet all the standards about the courses.
Remember the main ideas of courses
Trapping ourselves in trivial details of a course is easy. However, most of the specifics are not important to our research even if the topic is related to our area.
A good approach is to use what you’ve learned from one course and apply it to a different field (e.g., taking an analysis tool from a compiler course and applying it in computer networks).
低年级的 phd 容易迷失在课程中，但是这也完全可以理解。我自己研一的时候由于不适应节奏，感觉几乎所有时间都是花在课程上的。科研比课程重要，我相信大多数人都知道，只是去调整，去适应还需要花费一点时间。
1.2 Be professional
Treat your Ph.D. as a job. You get paid (albeit not much) for being a Ph.D. candidate, so make your work worth the money. This professional mindset should also be apparent to your advisor. Some advisors take on a more hands-off approach, for instance letting you work from home, but this is no reason for slacking; you should be responsible for your research schedule, such as reminding your advisor of plans from previous group meetings. Your status is not that of a student but rather that of a peer in the research community.
个人理解举几个具体一点的例子吧，比如 meeting 之类的做好 PPT，有什么事情快速回复和确认，不要看到了之后想着做完了再回复；做不出来的东西也要及时反馈；有时间观念
1.3 Read a lot and read broadly
Though it can be very daunting starting out, reading papers is an essential part of the Ph.D. life. Previously, you may have read papers when it was necessary for a class or a project. However, you should put reading papers in your daily routine. Doing so allows you to draw inspiration from a sea of knowledge and prevents yourself from reinventing the wheel. Besides, it’s a great way to be productive on a slow day.
Make a plan to read
When scheduling your day, assign one period just for reading papers. You can read one paper in depth or compare several papers; regardless of your choice, allotting time to this task is the key.
Read broadly
Reading papers from different subfields of computer science is a great way to learn the jargon, the method, and the mindset of researchers in each field. This can be the first step towards discovering opportunities for collaboration.
很惭愧还没有养成每天固定阅读的习惯，我觉得这个必须在入学前做好。
1.4 Fail fast
It is not uncommon for a Ph.D. student to spend several years building a system that turns out to be fundamentally flawed or not as applicable as expected. Don’t worry! There is nothing wrong with failing, and perhaps we should even expect failure to be part of the journey. But we should aim to fail early in order to have time to work on another project (and graduate!).
Perform a limit study
Perform a quick limit study before sticking with a project. A limit study includes in-depth analyses of implicit assumptions we make when coming up with an idea, a related works search, and the potential of the work if everything goes well. A great limit study can itself be a publishable paper. An example can be found here.
Hacky implementation can be useful
Being a researcher, your work is to develop proof-of-concepts. Nevertheless, you need to demonstrate that your concept is sound for the simplest of cases before continuing to the full-blown system. Hack in the minimum set to show that your idea is possible while resisting the temptation to build a robust infrastructure – if your idea fails, you will know to stop earlier.
1.5 Impact humankind
Impacting humankind may sound too ambitious, but it should be the ultimate reason why we embark on this journey.
Choose an impactful research topic
In terms of how our Ph.D. research could impact human knowledge, I would like to refer to The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D. by Matt Might. All we will do in five years is pushing the boundary of human knowledge by a minute margin. Choose a topic that you are able to contribute to, feel passionate about, and can explain the importance of to a layman in a 3-min talk.
Check out why Matt Might changed his research focus from programming languages to precise medicine.
How can our research actually impact people from other fields?
A survey paper by the Liberty Research Group sheds light on how the improvement of programming tools impacts (computational scientists) all scientists. Thinking about how your research affects people from other fields can help you define the scope of your contribution.
做有影响力的课题
2. 5 Tips
2.1 Don’t give up on your research topic easily
At some point, we will get bored with our research topic and find something else interesting. Think twice before switching topics. You must differentiate between your project heading nowhere and you getting tired of being stuck.
这是显然的，不过如何选课题也要慎重。目前自己还暂时没有去自主选择一个课题，但是毫无疑问，当你真正开始做这个事的时候，可能是需要投入时间最多的时候。这极大可能决定了之后6-9个月的努力是否有效。
2.2 Aim for top-tier conferences
You should focus on publishing at only top-tier conferences. Don’t consider second-tier venues unless the work has been rejected several times by top-tier conferences. This can prevent you from doing incremental work to make your publication list look better.
当你做好准备，并且有合适的老师指导的时候，确实可以把这个当做研究的动机，只瞄准顶级会议，加油。
2.3 Use existing resources in your group
For many fields in computer science, a mature infrastructure requires several years of development by multiple graduate students. Think about how to make use of the infrastructure and resources in the group to boost your research progress.
这个其实就很好理解，组里面做硬件很强的学长，以及发过顶会的学长，各个方向的，都是非常宝贵资源。
2.4 You are powerful
Even though we are just junior graduate students, we can have a massive impact on ourselves, our group, and even our department. For example, if there is no reading group for your field in your department, start one!
心态调整好
2.5 Focus on publishing
Needless to say, publications are essential since those are what people look at once we graduate.
pub 是一名 phd 唯一要做的事情