I was prompted to post this entry after I read this article on CNN.  This article coincides with a time when Congress is trying to decide what sort of health reform it’s going to institute to try and solve the failing and ailing health system in the U.S.  None of the ramblings in the article, or of those surrounding what’s going on in D.C. is really new news to me, but it made me reflect on why it is that we’re in this position to begin with and some of the problems that are correlated with what the article discusses.

The first thing that struck me is how misaligned the compensation in the US is with the occuptions that ultimately will drive its success.  The article talks about it, and it’s true.  The doctors I know all say the same thing.   Having a good primary care physician is sort of like having a good mechanic that you see regularly. They can point out things to do to help prevent you from having that costly major overhaul and let you know when that little kink you hear in your rear tire is something serious or not.  Unfortunately, as the article alludes to, it’s hard to get well compensated for advice and check-ups.  The real payday for doctors comes when you need surgery, a scan, or some procedure and consequently, many of the best medical students go into those fields because who wouldn’t want to get paid well (esp. after going $200K into debt for med. school)?  A compounding problem is that most people, like with their cars, aren’t good about “maintaining” their health and don’t see the doctor until something is seriously wrong - which for anyone who owns a car knows, is way more costly than the regular tune-ups.  Collectively, this drives up the total cost of health for the country.

But back to my original point… doesn’t re-balancing the compensation for primary care physicians to better reflect their importance in not only keeping health care costs down, but in keeping the country’s population healthy make sense?  This is the same impression I get when it comes to teachers.  Like the primary care physicians, it seems that most of the good ones do it because they care, not because they get paid well for it.  But shouldn’t they get paid well?  Shouldn’t the country care more that the kids get a good education?  This trend has turned a good education into a premium — one that you have to pay for either through private school, or via real estate tax.  Sound familiar?   In many other countries, a good education and health care are seen as rights & not privileges… that is becoming less true in the U.S. at a time when both are needed more.  One commenter referred to this YouTube clip as speaking volumes about the state of education in the U.S. (or is that South Africa?).  Maybe all of the TV cameras were distracting her so I’ll give her a mulligan on that… what’s equally distressing is this clip, where those people are actually getting paid (and probably paid better than your teachers).  It’s not just a mirage either.  The U.S. is beginning to trail more and more countries in education.  Pretty soon the deficit on imported goods will expand to include imported labor…

At least I can take comfort in knowing that Obama & co. recognize that these are problems… (that’s step 1. to recovery right?).  The question now is whether they can actually diagnose the causes of the problems & come up with some viable solutions.  Otherwise, before we know it this country will be broke, dumb, and dying.   I don’t have the solution, but like the civil rights movements and other broad changes before, I have the feeling that it will require a collective effort–a change of perspective and priorities starting with each individual–and not something that any one bill or policy can turn around immediately.  So what do you think it would take to fix these things?

110.1100101 (aka 6.101) - Stuff You’d Be Surprised That An (Engineering) Grad Student Could Do Well

and

110.1100110 (aka 6.102) - Stuff You Wouldn’t Be Surprised That An (Engineering) Grad Student Liked

As you may guess, 6.101 is for all the things typically not associated with being a EE Grad Student, while 6.102 is the opposite.  Enrollment for both classes is on a first come first serve basis and is subject to instructor approval.

** Lecture 1 - Food:  Cooking Your Own Part I**

As readers may or may not know, much of grad student life revolves around food.  If it’s free, it tastes better and if you have it at your event, attendance will be up 800%.  However, choosing to set your dietary habits by this fiscally frugal mantra is not necessarily conducive to establishing long-term hunger satisfying skills (i.e. choosing to take a fish rather than learn to fish).

An equally fiscally sound, and possibly healthier & more appetizing alternative to feeding yourself based on the infosession schedule is to actually cook your own food.  Apparently this gene must be lacking in most engineers such that an entire website is devoted to addressing the problem.  Apparently there needs to be a set recipes catered specifically to engineers such that neither allrecipes.com nor Epicurious would suffice.  I’m not really a foodie or a gourmet by any means but I usually don’t feel lost in a kitchen.  That said, this first ‘lecture’ will be devoted to the simplest of recipes:  the sandwich.

I recently rediscovered the deliciousness of a homemade sandwich.  For all of the incoming students (and even for those who are still around), I highly recommend investing in a toaster oven.  It can do wonders.  For me, the ingredients are simple:  hard salami, ham, hearts of romaine and a sundried tomato spread on sourdough.  You can get everything but the spread for about $12 and that’ll usually provide about a week’s worth of ’sammies’ (sandwiches).  Simply place the hard salami & ham (or your choice of meat/vegetable) on your slices of bread (open faced) and put them in the toaster oven to toast for a few minutes.  When it’s done toasting, add the spread (or whatever your condiment of choice is) and the hearts of romaine (lettuce) and voila, you’ve got something reminiscent of Adam Sandler’s sandwich in Spanglish… sans the cheese.

Ok, time to go eat now :D.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, though.  As much as I like firing off letters into cyberspace, it also feels good to go out & throw a frisbee, kick a ball around or even just talk to someone.  It seems everyone is tethered to their iPhone, Blackberry, or laptop these days.  Walking through the Stata Center during lunch I find it odd to see everyone sit shoulder to shoulder, eating their lunch, only to be silently staring into a computer screen, checking their Facebook account or Twittering. I’m about as guilty of this as the next person, but for all our sakes, I hope this is not a bottomless trend toward stupidity.

So in keeping with this theme… I’m gonna keep this post brief and just suggest that everyone give their fingers some rest and go outside and enjoy the summer!

Ok, well for those who only take classes, the semester is done.  For the rest of us, this merely means we should be making more progress on our research…which isn’t always such a bad thing.  Focus.  There, I said it.

Now where was I?… Oh yeah…actually, I love classes & lament the day when I won’t have time to take them (don’t worry, the mourning hasn’t begun just yet).  This includes all classes despite, as some fellow bloggers alluded to, once you’re in grad school, it’s the research that matters — which is true.  Grades for classes are more like a formality — no one wants to see you fail — so relax & learn.  Yes, research is key, as that’s what gets you out the door, BUT… like some 3rd grade soccer coach might say, “it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.”  You might like or even love your graduate research topic, but after 4+ years of working on it, my guess is you’ll be ready to move on… the question then, is to what?

My expectation is that regardless of what one might accomplish, the most rewarding aspect of the PhD process will be how you learn to think — for me this is about recognizing the big picture, pulling my head up out of a hole once in awhile, taking off the blinders & recognizing what interesting problems there are (and once in awhile, concocting ideas to solve them).  What I find useful in that regard and amazingly stimulating is… CLASSES… and maybe a pack of Sour Patch Kids.  That’s right, classes.  I said it.

I’m not talking about classes in your “curriculum”, I’m talking about classes in every other possible curriculum (last I checked, this was a university) that you might have some interest in or at the very least some curiosity.  It will get you to think about something else besides what you’re normally focused on & in some instances may even open up a new world.  At worst, you’ll get a well deserved break from dealing with random dopant fluctuations.. or.. whatever whoever knows stuff about that works on.

I’m always amazed at what students can do in a semester (or what usually amounts to a couple of weeks because of our superior planning skills).  I was actually reminded of this when I stopped by the final presentation of the Media Lab’s “How to Make (Almost) Anything” class (which I desperately want to take at some point).  Anyways, the name of the class speaks for itself… & I included pics of some of the interesting/fun projects that were Made:  A giant cardboard Millenium Falcon, a light sensitive shutter/iris, a skateboard segway.

In any case, there are plenty of classes/resources like this, especially at MIT, that are fun and facilitate creative thinking:  In addition to the Media Lab stuff, you can try your hand at photography, machining, toy design, etc via the Edgerton Center , hone your strategy skills in the CS Battlecode class/competition or participate in one of the many “Labs” that the Sloan Business School has to offer.

So come for the research & stay for the classes ;).

Happy Holidays to all!

In any case, if you’ve been paying any attention, there’s a bit of a financial crisis going on in the world (yes, the world… the US is probably just the first domino to fall, albeit a big domino).   This was reaffirmed today by a whopping 7% and 9% plunge in the DOW and NASDAQ indexes respectively.  Today’s collapse was largely fueled by the failure to pass the $700 billion bailout bill in congress - of which many politicians were against because of the perception it gives off (and the supposed political suicide that would ensue shortly afterward).  I’m not exactly sure how smart the politicians who are holding office are, but I’m pretty sure they’re smart enough to make sure they keep their job… even if their employers, their constituent voters, are dumb enough to want something that actually hurts themselves.  In other words, the bailout appears as if it’s only helping out the greedy money hungry wall street bankers and doing nothing for Average Joe America - so vote NO.

I have a slightly different view.

This is how I see it, most of us are not economists and have a scarce idea of how and why the economy does what it does.  So when people who are economists, such as the chairman of the freaking Fed, suggest that something is necessary or else the economy may collapse… you might want to weight their economic opinion slightly more than the steelworkers from your home county (no offense)… because after all, the ‘economy’ affects everyone, not just wall street bankers.

I’ll be the first to agree with people who are upset at CEO’s getting ridiculous severance packages when they FAIL?!   If that were true for all occupations, the prospective Ph.D. student population would have to be in the top 5 wealthiest category - especially all those device folks (I feel for you, really).  Of course, we can’t really pin all of the blame on the banks for their own failures.

The root cause of this collapse, as I understand it, is the default and collapse of the credit market.  For those that faintly remember their economic principles, credit creates wealth.  Rather than trading chickens for wheelbarrows, we trade IOU’s that we can turn in for that goat we’ve been aiming to get.  So in essence, this is largely founded on trust - trust that these IOU’s (money) are worth something and there’s something material (service or goods) that back it.

In the last3-4 years, the banks made it easier and more tempting to acquire credit, even for people who may not be that creditworthy (read: trustworthy).  Armed with all this buying power, everyone and their grandma’s pension fund, tried flipping houses in the real estate market expecting prices to continue to skyrocket (without ever considering that they might have to pay their mortgages for some time).  Much like many Ph.D. students, these people didn’t know what they were getting themselves into.

Pretty soon, this caught up to everyone, and people (read: Average Joe) started defaulting on their loans at breakneck paces such that banks started calling in other loans and writing down typically reliable and TRUSTworthy mortgage-backed assets.  This basically started breaking down the trust that is relied upon for credit to be available to fuel economic growth… depositers panicked and asked for their deposits when the banks most needed them not to (think ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’) … a few collapsed…and here we are today.

So after this longwinded brainfart, what we forget is that the consumers, Average Joe’s, had a big part in starting this whole debacle by getting greedy, taking on more credit than they could handle and walking away from their loans when their houses had no values to them.  Sure the banks made the credit available, and also wanted in on the action, but mortgages typically don’t default at the rate they did… the banks trusted us, and we let them and each other down.  So who is more at fault?  The banks that trusted us to fulfill payments on loans they probably shouldn’t have let us take out?… or ‘we the people’ who took on more than credit than we could chew and walked away from our mortages and left the banks holding a glut of devalued houses.

So vote YES you politicians, the taxpayers should pay because they’re the ones who started it… well, certain tax payers anyways… we should really be mad at each other…   Luckily for me, I don’t make enough to pay a whole lot of tax… but it sure would be nice to have good roads around here.

If you’re remotely affiliated with the world of EECS… check… and have ever wandered on to YouTube… check… you have probably seen Randy Pausch and his famous “Last Lecture”. If you haven’t seen it, you should take an hour+ of your time sometime and watch it here… believe me, it’ll be more worthwhile than a couple reruns of Seinfeld or Sex and the City.

Prof. Pausch passed away just over a week ago and I just saw ABC’s tribute show to his last months. It was inspiring and heartfelt, just like his lecture. I remember after I watched his lecture for the first time (somewhere in the 3 a.m. timeframe) thinking, ‘man, if this doesn’t make you want to be a teacher, I don’t know what would’. I, of course, have always vacillated between pursuing academia or industry if/when I finish here :).

In any case, whenever I hear lectures such as this one (although not always as good), it always inspires the ‘what if I were to do this’ question that Kurt Vonnegut.. err… Mary Schmich once offered her answer to. While I haven’t accumulated enough wisdom to compose my own version yet (perhaps I’ll offer one someday), there are a few points that I know I’d include which I’ll share here.

1. Don’t stress out… or worry. Neither really accomplish anything.

And by this I mean, ’stressing’ or ‘worrying’ for the sake of stressing and worrying. Worry without action is fruitless. I believe there are two things you can worry or stress out about: things you can control & things you can’t. If you can do something about it… then do it and stop worrying. If you can’t do anything about it…well, worrying sure won’t change that so stop worrying. I don’t know about you, but when I look back at the times in my life when I was most worried or stressed, the thing usually turned out to be no big deal. This was pretty much true at most every stage in my life to the point I inductively reasoned this must always be the case… and I have still yet to get a white hair :).

2. Don’t be afraid to fail.

I think I learned this sometime early in high school… if you’re at MIT and reading this, perhaps some of you have never experienced this… but I remember getting my first C (one of many) as a freshman in high school in a writing class. I remember being devastated at first but having ’survived’ the moment, I realized that failing at something is not the end of the world, so I just tried to learn and I really ended up getting a lot out of that class (as I’m sure you can tell here :)). You’ll learn that trying and failing is never quite as devastating as you imagine… so if you want to try something, go for it.

3. Do what makes you happy… so long as it doesn’t come at the expense of other’s happiness.

I try to follow this mantra as much as possible. It just makes so much sense. If given the choice, why would I ever choose the option that doesn’t lead to happiness. Of course, I’d like to do this without trampling on someone else’s path to happiness if possible.

That’s pretty much it for now… since the school year is starting again in a month, hopefully everyone will keep Prof. Pausch’s attitude in mind and be inspired. Hindsight is 20/20, so let’s take advantage of his.

Actually, I really am going to try to make this quick, because I REALLY should be doing research. That said it was good to step out for an hour and get a “survivor’s” point of view. Dr. Cham (yeah, surprising, he graduated) littered his talk with references to his comics in an effort to promote procrastination as a good thing. Personally, this is one grad student who he doesn’t have to convince. I wouldn’t be surprised if students go on to use what they learned while procrastinating more than what they learned from their research… But, for those who do need convincing, one part of the talk stood out to me…so much so that I wrote it down. (Btw, all grammatical correctness left my fingers the moment IM and text messaging became commonplace… but that’s for another post).

The part of the talk that stood out for me was when Jorge posted the results of a UC-Berkeley conducted study on the pressures of grad student lives. The results of the study showed that:

- 95% of grad students feel overwhelmed

- 67% feel depressed

- 10% had thoughts of suicide

- 1 out of 200 students actually attempted suicide at one point

Pretty sobering stats. I’m pretty terrible at stuff like this, like when they ask you to estimate the number of jelly beans in a jar; you know there are a lot, but you never thought there were THAT many. Same thing here for me, I never would’ve guessed a number so high. It’s surprising.

It’s surprising to me because I think of grad student life as a vacation from real life. Yes we get paid next to nothing. Yes we have to do some research that may never work. Yes we have no windows in our lab, but… that part of it really isn’t much different than the real working world… with the exception of the salary of course. What IS different, rare and what you’ll hopefully appreciate at some point is TIME. Let me say it again. TIME. You are the owner of your own TIME.

Until you retire, or are wealthy enough to choose to, you probably won’t have the luxury of setting your own schedule and doing the spontaneous. They say time is money, I happen to agree. I think we’re pretty lucky and wealthy as grad students… we just need to learn how to spend our ‘wealth’ on enough of the things we enjoy to realize it. I sometimes forget this too… until I get that call from a friend who’s already been working for 5 hours asking: “Did you just wake up?”

In any case… to the grad student community at large… enjoy yourself!! I think even your advisor would say the same.

So much for quick… I guess if I didn’t write this, someone else would’ve… but they’re probably just putting it off right now ;).

I spent the past few weekends at weddings or wedding related events and well… I’m tanner and possibly fatter because of it J.  Nonetheless, every time I hear the word I immediately think of the half-lispy priest from “The Princess Bride” who, now that I think of it, must be the ancestor of some Bostonian.  But I think he might have been on to something… after all, a lot of the success in science lies in asking the right questions… and since the movie had some success, he must have asked the right question (perfectly sound logic if you ask me).

So in the world of EECS, what is marriage? 

According to Wikipedia, it’s a personal union between individuals.  For grad students, I get the impression that the other half of the union is just research… but it doesn’t have to be.

The day you got accepted into grad school was probably like an engagement party; your family and friends got the call and everyone went out to celebrate.  When the wedding day finally came, you met all the in-laws (your lab mates), had a party and all was well.   A year or two into the marriage, you start to focus on paying the bills (research), raising kids (publishing) and trying to make ends meet (free food).  There’s an expression that says marriage is an expensive way of getting your laundry done for free.  Well, a Ph.D. is a pretty expensive way of getting your food for free.  I digress.  

I think a lot of students are initially attracted to their “partner’s” good looks (high rankings, etc…).  What they typically don’t appreciate is that their “partner” is also pretty smart, diverse and has a lot to offer in areas outside of their work (research).  Not to mention, not many arrangements allow you to stay up late and sleep in when you want to. 

So don’t forget that while you’re in grad school, you’re not married to your research, but rather to your school, to your lifestyle and everything the two have to offer.  So go learn some Spanish, play some ultimate, take in a baseball game, and by all means, get some fun…err… sun.

Ok, maybe I just made up the word geekophilia, but it can’t be far away from inclusion by Merriam-Webster. After all, nerdophile has already made it on to Urban Dictionary which is, by the way, a fun if not accurate collection of colloquial terminology.

So to get back on track, this weekend was what I consider a culmination of subtle hints to post something. In particular, hundreds upon hundreds of kids and adults walking around Boston dressed up as… Anime characters. Apparently it was Anime Boston 2008, and I only knew this because, well… I was walking around town too (but not in a costume). It took me awhile to really notice though, because once upon a time I lived in Berkeley (yes, that’s with a ‘y’) and first saw the sword wielding live caricatures near Berklee (yes, that’s with an ‘e’). Oddly enough, Berkeley and Berklee probably share more similarities than they know. Of course, what I love most about what I saw on Saturday is that even our cartoon heroes need to go about their business—like scoping out the menu at CPK (pictured below). Psst…get the Thai Chicken.

Later that evening, I was flipping through the latest issue of WIRED magazine (yes, the paper copy even though I could just read it online for free) and came across WIRED’s Nerd/Geek classification handbook which, again reminded me of the Anime display I saw during the day.

While they might not have totally hit the nail on the head (I’m probably only 2 of the 6 with mild interest in 2 others :-p), it did remind me how just days earlier I wondered why EECS grad students at each one of my institutional stops share such strikingly similar lifestyles. So much so that if I were writing for the Letterman show, it might read something like so:
Top 10 Signs You’re an EECS Grad Student

(drum roll)

10. You prefer writing C, Perl, and Matlab over writing English

9. You prefer reading C, Perl and Matlab over reading English, especially when it’s TFM of RTFM fame.

8. There are no windows in your lab…and you like it.

7. You are currently reading this across your dual monitor setup (even though all you use one monitor for is e-mail and web surfing and those pixels are dying faster than on the other monitor… so I suggest swapping the two occasionally)

6. You understand most of the jokes on xkcd.

5. You understand all of the jokes and are a contributing source to PhD Comics.

4. There are longer lines for the Men’s bathrooms at every conference you attend, even though all but one of the Women’s bathrooms has been converted to Men’s.

3. You plan your weekly dinner schedule around on-campus recruiting events, even though you know you’re nowhere close to graduating.

2. You can’t explain what you do to anyone outside of EECS (homage to N. Dilello)

1. You find yourself constantly reading the EECS-perimental Blogs despite being in your seventh year of grad school with no thesis topic.

Seriously though, all of this stereotypical quirkiness that I’ve described above is part of what makes EECS students so genuinely friendly and yes, lovable; of all the ‘types’ of people I’ve had the opportunity to interact with, engineers have come across as the most unpretentious, down to earth of the bunch—so my geekophilia goes out to them. Besides, who wouldn’t want a little more geek loving?

As some of you may know or may remember, a March madness of a different sort is going on right now too. Prospective students are sorting through piles of envelopes (hopefully thick ones) to determine where they’ll end up next. Some students are like the basketball junkies; they have probably been scouting their potential schools for years and know exactly what they want and exactly what each school has to offer. Other students (and you know who you are) probably went strictly by the numbers and have followed US News & World Report’s rankings and have no idea how to distinguish all those top tier schools that are vying for them.

Having attended three of the universities (Illinois, Berkeley, MIT) that fall under the usual suspects list (for EECS anyways) and worked for a company near and founded by a fourth (Stanford), I feel like I have a unique perspective that I’ll try to share here. So for those of you who fall into the latter category mentioned above, I’ll try to be your bracketologist and give you a brief rundown of some of the top schools by category.

COACHING: Faculty & Curriculum

Ok, you really can’t go wrong here. All of these schools know their ‘X’s and ‘O’s. Honestly, there really is very little separating the quality of education or the quality of the faculty that is at each of the schools. I think the most important factor that you should take into consideration heading into grad school is finding an advisor that you feel you can work well with in the area(s) that you are interested in.

OFFENSE: Resources

Like the coaching, these schools all know how to light it up. Again, I think most of these schools have comparable resources in terms of equipment and funding (and by that I mean a LOT of it). Off campus, Stanford and Berkeley have the advantage of being located so close to Silicon Valley so the opportunities to work directly with industry are significant. At MIT, there are fewer traditional tech firms in the area, but there are a lot of hospitals (and thus biotech firms) so the opportunity to work directly in the medical area is probably greater than at any of the other schools. At Illinois, there are definitely very few companies in the immediate area, but as is the case for all of these schools… they are all very well plugged into the industry and most major players will look to recruit and collaborate with all of these schools.

DEFENSE: as in Thesis Defense

They say defense wins championships… in this case it will earn you your degree. The road to graduation will probably be long, winding, and have lots of ups and downs regardless of where you go. Nonetheless, you should probably be aware of what lies in your path in each case. Of all the schools, MIT definitely requires the least amount of coursework (by a significant margin) and probably has the easiest Ph.D. qualification process, but I’ll let you decide:

MIT: 2 Grad classes, 2 undergrad written exams – 3 ‘A’s and a ‘B’ or better pass (see comments for clarification)

Stanford: 10 professors in 3 fields of EE, 10 minutes oral exam with each, top 50% of students taking exam pass

Berkeley: 3 professors, 1 field of specialty, 1 question each, 1 hour oral exam

Illinois: 3 professors, 1 field of specialty, oral exam

INTANGIBLES: Weather, location, lifestyle

I’ll be upfront about this; I’m definitely biased to the California lifestyle, but that said, I’m writing this from Boston. If you are deciding strictly based on weather, then Stanford would win hands down since it’s pretty much sunny and 70 year round (unless of course you don’t like that sort of thing). For me, 70 and sunny wasn’t everything, especially if you’re living in the ‘burbs and 40 minutes (without traffic) away from San Francisco. MIT is the closest in proximity to a ‘big’ city as Boston is just a half-mile across the Charles River while Illinois might have the best on campus support for student life in terms of food and things to do. Berkeley is a good combination of all three in terms of having good weather, being pretty close (20-25 min. by BART) to San Francisco, and having a good amount of ‘entertainment’ near campus.

As far as stuff to do within driving distance of each region, the two California schools have the best locale – Tahoe for snowboarding, Yosemite for hiking, Napa Valley, Santa Cruz to surf, Monterey/Carmel, I could go on… The Boston area isn’t bad either having most of the above, but on a smaller scale: Vermont/Maine skiing, New Hampshire hiking, and Cape Cod. For Illinois, well… at least Chicago’s only 2.5 hours away, and it is my favorite city – think of a cleaner New York.

AND THE WINNER…

Well, I’m not going to make all of your decisions for you… but I definitely like one of UNC, UCLA, Memphis and Tennessee to take it all ;).