Last year, a Postechian finished the entire master’s and doctorate program in only three and a half years. That famous person is Woosung Kwon (CE Postdocs). In his lecture, he introduces how to become successful in graduate school years.
He said it is not the effort, but the best output that is the most important thing. According to his lecture, he specified that those people, who do well, always study by themselves, find the problems, and immediately figure out the solutions. How good one is, equals to how fast one finds one’s subject, experiment, and make a conclusion by writing a thesis.
The first step is to find what to research on. Here are some tips. Generally speaking, the first research subject that the students encounter after getting into graduate school is usually decided by others, not by themselves. Either the professor or their seniors suggest and ask them what to do. However, as they spend more and more time in the lab, they are able to obtain more chances to decide what they will research on later. In order to seize those chances, they should read a lot of review papers as well as the latest theses, comprehending the current situation of study to start a new research. Also, using some computer software to manage a bibliography and arrange the theses is also desirable.
Two more important things are orders in problem solving and communication with other people in the lab. Since it is impossible to solve all the problems at once, people should make an order and finish the job in those orders one at a time. Also, they should learn from their professors. They might have some issues and discordance with their professors while they are doing researches. When that happens, they should rather try to persuade their professors than secretly research on what they prefer. Professors have more experiences than students do. Therefore, they should learn from professors’ knowledge and find some weaknesses of their research. The best thing is to draw professors or colleagues into their own works, and get some feedbacks from each of them, which would eventually save their times in the future.
Lastly, writing a great thesis is also a significant step to successfully finish one’s research subject, eventually finishing the graduate school because this is how people see, understand, and evaluate the results of works. The lecture also mentioned the importance of physics, which is a basis of all sciences. Moreover, one should not consider others’ thesis to be absolutely correct. They may be incorrect. Instead of comparing and caring too much about other papers, one should find one’s own root, which one is good at. Once one finds the root, the great results of research will naturally come to one. Woosung Kwon (Postdocs CE) said that the thesis and the research achievement are where people can find it rewarding to work in graduate school.
His lecture and PowerPoint slides can be found in website like YouTube, and it would be a great help for those who just jumped into the next step from college, or those who are now working as graduate students as he did.