I went through the exact same thing a year ago. I know exactly of what you speak. A couple things that helped me:
- Lower your expectations for daily output. The (seeming) enormity of the task paralized me. I told myself "today will be a success if I can get one page done before noon, even if it's crappy. Whatever else happens today doesn't matter". Getting myself rolling with an achievable goal in the morning led to more productive days, since the pressure would be off in the afternoon.
- Find a non-judgmental friend, and tell them you will be emailing them your daily output at 6pm (or whatever) every day. Tell them they don't have to read it but you would like some positive feedback please, even if you've just written a couple paragraphs.
- After getting deep in a hole, I went and talked to my supervisor. I said "I'm having trouble with this, but I really want to finish. Here's what I have done, now let's set achievable goals to get to the end". It was hard to admit how far behind on things I was, but that was really the first step towards actually finishing.
- Sometimes it was good to just worry about getting words on the page and not worry if they made sense or not. For me, editing was much easier than trying to write a sensible first draft.
- Set hard limits on how long you're going to write for each day and each week. I decided I was going to write 9-5, Monday to Friday and try to live like a normal person. If 5pm rolled around and I hadn't got much done? Doesn't matter, heading home. This ended up making me way more productive during my writing hours and stopped the thesis from consuming my life.
This is a really horrible open ended question, but I need help.
It is not a horrible question. Search "thesis" in AskMe, or "thesis procrastination" on google to see hundreds of other people asking the exact same question. Knowing I wasn't alone was I real help to me. Good luck!
Monday, April 8, 2013
How to manage your writing?
http://ask.metafilter.com/216737/I-simply-KANT-write-my-thesishelp-me
I went through this recently, even down to the point where I could talk about it but not write about it. Here's what helped:
-Talking it through with a friend. I talked about it with just about everyone, but especially with 2-3 other students in my program. We met every week for an informal thesis support program, and then helped each other through it the rest of the week as well. Literally talk both of you through your chapter, and record or write down the solutions you come up with. Even if you're not good friends with the others in your program, find someone who is also writing (or just finished writing), and offer to trade in-kind or buy someone dinner while you talk it out. Lots of fellow thesis-writers will be happier to help than you might think. (Even in the depths of my panic, I loved taking an an afternoon to talk through someone else's problem.)
-Write in a new medium. For whatever reason, my brain very easily flips into "this draft must be PERFECT the first time around" mode if a word document gets too big or if I just look at a computer funny. Don't be afraid to open a new document to work for a little while, and you should absolutely get yourself away from the computer. I have about 250 notecards that I made in the last month of my writing that outlined every part of my chapter. I intended it as a big outline but I ended up breaking each chapter down to an almost paragraph-by-paragraph outline with notecards as I worked. It took probably 3-4 days out of the month just to write the notecards out, but oh my goodness they were so helpful. There was just something soothing about firing off cards for an hour or so, spending three hours stretching them out across my living room floor, shuffling and reorganizing them to see if another idea worked better, and then during writing just picking up a card out of the pile, knowing I needed to write about the history of the germ theory for 1-3 paragraphs, throwing everything I knew at it, and then moving the card to the back of the stack when finished. It helped me visualize how much I had left to write, which was also a huge motivator. I also brainstormed on whiteboards, scrap paper, the notes feature on my phone, anything to get away from the computer.
-Consider the most productive ways to spend your time, and accept that sometimes means taking time off. If you spend 25 minutes staring at the screen and only 5 minutes working, consider how that's your brain telling you "I can't do this right now." So what can it do? Sleep? Go for a walk? Organize a bibliography? Notecards? Taking time away from the thesis to help your brain recharge isn't procrastination, but a really valuable activity. There's a difference between "I don't want to do it now; I work better under pressure anyway" and "I need an afternoon away or MY BRAIN IS GOING TO EXPLODE." Your mind is giving you legitimate signals right now, so don't ignore them.
-Freewrite. It was stupidly simple to trick my brain into thinking "oh, this part of writing isn't for real so you can go ahead and write now" when I opened up a new word document, closed my eyes, and just started thinking about what I wanted to say. Every paragraph inevitably began with "So... what do you want to accomplish? Well, I guess the first thing is that..." and the first paragraph was always more or less trash, but once I connected to that "I can talk it out" part of my brain I generally ended up producing a lot more quality work. The trick was to keep my eyes closed, or fixed on something besides the screen; watching what I wrote triggered my editing skills, which destroyed the content-generating momentum.
-Change location often. Do not sit in one place every day. I was dragging 20-25 books to the library every single day just so I would not be at home, because my patterns at home had fallen into a rut. You know that advice about how to keep your bed only for sleeping, so that when you lie down at night you can help trick yourself into thinking "oh it's time for sleep now"? Same idea. If I sat down at my desk at home I triggered the "waste time" part of my brain, and it was a lot easier to actively cut off that process at the library. I worked for 18 hours every day at one desk in the library for a couple days, and then when that stopped helping I packed up and moved to a different part of the library.
-Tackle the easiest part first. Don't work on what "should" come next, or the hardest task, or the most time-consuming task. Always start with the easiest task. The easiest task is the one your brain is ready to work on, and helps you generate momentum. There are no extra points for working on the harder components first, so don't do it. Even if it means skipping ahead 2 chapters to write an isolated paragraph about some completely minor detail, that's one thing off your list for later.
-Steal the structure of others' work. I had a hard time writing my introduction because I had no idea how to organize it, so I opened up the book that I thought had the clearest introduction and studied how the author organized it into sections. Then I checked another book, and a third -- they all had similar organizational structures, so I followed that. Sometimes when I was trying to use a more creative writing approach and wasn't quite sure how to do it successfully I picked up a book that did it well and pulled apart its paragraphs for the purpose and structure of every paragraph to help. (I did this when I wanted to use a personal anecdote to bookend the entire thesis because the books that did those were among my favorites, but I couldn't get over the weirdness of using "I" in an academic work so I pulled down a few books to use as a guide.)
-Finally, take advantage of all your school resources. Your school almost certainly has a counseling center, and do not be afraid to walk in and say you need to talk to someone. Stress from school is one of the reasons your counseling center exists, so it is a very legitimate problem for which to ask for help and one that your counselors are very experienced in handling. Even if they can't talk with you about your subject at all, don't underestimate the value of just having a place where you can go and vent and bawl and catastrophize in ways you can't with your friends or advisors. This type of stress is incredibly hard to deal with, and I wish I had been a lot better about pro-actively managing it.
Good luck. I rewrote 2/3rds of my thesis the month before my defense, so I know how hard your next 2 months are going to be, but I also know it's doable. It might involve being entirely miserable, not sleeping for days on end, and pulling all-nighters in the library, but there is an end in just 2 months. It feels never-ending now, but this feeling that you have right now is part of the writing process; it too will pass and be replaced with more confidence once you clear this hurdle. The next 2 months will not always feel as bad as this.
I went through this recently, even down to the point where I could talk about it but not write about it. Here's what helped:
-Talking it through with a friend. I talked about it with just about everyone, but especially with 2-3 other students in my program. We met every week for an informal thesis support program, and then helped each other through it the rest of the week as well. Literally talk both of you through your chapter, and record or write down the solutions you come up with. Even if you're not good friends with the others in your program, find someone who is also writing (or just finished writing), and offer to trade in-kind or buy someone dinner while you talk it out. Lots of fellow thesis-writers will be happier to help than you might think. (Even in the depths of my panic, I loved taking an an afternoon to talk through someone else's problem.)
-Write in a new medium. For whatever reason, my brain very easily flips into "this draft must be PERFECT the first time around" mode if a word document gets too big or if I just look at a computer funny. Don't be afraid to open a new document to work for a little while, and you should absolutely get yourself away from the computer. I have about 250 notecards that I made in the last month of my writing that outlined every part of my chapter. I intended it as a big outline but I ended up breaking each chapter down to an almost paragraph-by-paragraph outline with notecards as I worked. It took probably 3-4 days out of the month just to write the notecards out, but oh my goodness they were so helpful. There was just something soothing about firing off cards for an hour or so, spending three hours stretching them out across my living room floor, shuffling and reorganizing them to see if another idea worked better, and then during writing just picking up a card out of the pile, knowing I needed to write about the history of the germ theory for 1-3 paragraphs, throwing everything I knew at it, and then moving the card to the back of the stack when finished. It helped me visualize how much I had left to write, which was also a huge motivator. I also brainstormed on whiteboards, scrap paper, the notes feature on my phone, anything to get away from the computer.
-Consider the most productive ways to spend your time, and accept that sometimes means taking time off. If you spend 25 minutes staring at the screen and only 5 minutes working, consider how that's your brain telling you "I can't do this right now." So what can it do? Sleep? Go for a walk? Organize a bibliography? Notecards? Taking time away from the thesis to help your brain recharge isn't procrastination, but a really valuable activity. There's a difference between "I don't want to do it now; I work better under pressure anyway" and "I need an afternoon away or MY BRAIN IS GOING TO EXPLODE." Your mind is giving you legitimate signals right now, so don't ignore them.
-Freewrite. It was stupidly simple to trick my brain into thinking "oh, this part of writing isn't for real so you can go ahead and write now" when I opened up a new word document, closed my eyes, and just started thinking about what I wanted to say. Every paragraph inevitably began with "So... what do you want to accomplish? Well, I guess the first thing is that..." and the first paragraph was always more or less trash, but once I connected to that "I can talk it out" part of my brain I generally ended up producing a lot more quality work. The trick was to keep my eyes closed, or fixed on something besides the screen; watching what I wrote triggered my editing skills, which destroyed the content-generating momentum.
-Change location often. Do not sit in one place every day. I was dragging 20-25 books to the library every single day just so I would not be at home, because my patterns at home had fallen into a rut. You know that advice about how to keep your bed only for sleeping, so that when you lie down at night you can help trick yourself into thinking "oh it's time for sleep now"? Same idea. If I sat down at my desk at home I triggered the "waste time" part of my brain, and it was a lot easier to actively cut off that process at the library. I worked for 18 hours every day at one desk in the library for a couple days, and then when that stopped helping I packed up and moved to a different part of the library.
-Tackle the easiest part first. Don't work on what "should" come next, or the hardest task, or the most time-consuming task. Always start with the easiest task. The easiest task is the one your brain is ready to work on, and helps you generate momentum. There are no extra points for working on the harder components first, so don't do it. Even if it means skipping ahead 2 chapters to write an isolated paragraph about some completely minor detail, that's one thing off your list for later.
-Steal the structure of others' work. I had a hard time writing my introduction because I had no idea how to organize it, so I opened up the book that I thought had the clearest introduction and studied how the author organized it into sections. Then I checked another book, and a third -- they all had similar organizational structures, so I followed that. Sometimes when I was trying to use a more creative writing approach and wasn't quite sure how to do it successfully I picked up a book that did it well and pulled apart its paragraphs for the purpose and structure of every paragraph to help. (I did this when I wanted to use a personal anecdote to bookend the entire thesis because the books that did those were among my favorites, but I couldn't get over the weirdness of using "I" in an academic work so I pulled down a few books to use as a guide.)
-Finally, take advantage of all your school resources. Your school almost certainly has a counseling center, and do not be afraid to walk in and say you need to talk to someone. Stress from school is one of the reasons your counseling center exists, so it is a very legitimate problem for which to ask for help and one that your counselors are very experienced in handling. Even if they can't talk with you about your subject at all, don't underestimate the value of just having a place where you can go and vent and bawl and catastrophize in ways you can't with your friends or advisors. This type of stress is incredibly hard to deal with, and I wish I had been a lot better about pro-actively managing it.
Good luck. I rewrote 2/3rds of my thesis the month before my defense, so I know how hard your next 2 months are going to be, but I also know it's doable. It might involve being entirely miserable, not sleeping for days on end, and pulling all-nighters in the library, but there is an end in just 2 months. It feels never-ending now, but this feeling that you have right now is part of the writing process; it too will pass and be replaced with more confidence once you clear this hurdle. The next 2 months will not always feel as bad as this.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Nozick
Against nozick
Proportionalality principle of distribution according to talents, and efforts.
Nozick argues that people have absolute self ownership. And further he argues that all products from ones labor also belong to the person. And further any voluntary transfer of these money or estates are just as well. Now let's see where we may criticise his theory.
Firstly, we may examine wether the absolute self ownership stands. It is in fact relies on a natural right theory which is a old one. It is rhetoric expression of the intuitive belief about self ownership. It does not offer any substantive or justifictary support as our common intuition about self ownership. It is an assumption. I admit it's validity even without the theory of natural right. I also admit it as a fact that the content of people's self ownership vary from one to another. I see them as natural lucks. So far so good. As the premise of justification or as the starting point for hypothetical parties, these assumption and fact do not show its moral significance. But when we see them by looking at their actual or potential effect on people's cooperation and thereby individual fates within society, we will see something significantly different.
The point is our understanding of the society. Here I understand the society as a cooperative system through which people aim to obtain higher gain than they would on his own. It means the society should be at least proportionally beneficial to all of them according to their talents and distribution. Cohen and Otsuka have criticised Nozick on self ownership and distribution of world ownership. Here I would not discuss much about a fairer original distribution of world ownership. I would focus on the transfer part, where the improper differentiating effect of luck is exposed.
According to the idea of a cooperative society, no matter what talent people have originally, they all want to benefit from the cooperation. The market is the considered best
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Schedule
I am going to finish the first draft of my PhD thesis by the end of May, 2012. I still have 4.5 months to do that. I need to complete one chapter in each 20 days. Can I ? I would do my best to achieve that even though the draft is not good enough. Then I would have two month to revise the draft to submit a better and united draft to my supervisor by the end of August, 2012. Once I got the complete first draft I would be able to refine these chapters in details and present them in various occasions and consider to publish some of them before I graduate. I hope the final draft could be done by March, 2014 and then I may graduate in July, 2014. Before I graduate I hope I have find the job in China or other places. This is the master plan for the following 1.5 years. I must do my best to achieve it. Life is tough and I have to work hard. To complete a PhD thesis is not easy but since others have done it I can do it as well. I make myself in the state of thinking and writing. Be hard working and productive.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Xiao-Li Meng was chair of Department of Statistics
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Xiao-Li Meng, Ph.D. ’90, the Whipple V.N. Jones Professor of Statistics and chair of the Department of Statistics, has been named the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. As Statistics Department chair since 2004, Meng has overseen a dramatic expansion of the department, as the number of undergraduate concentrators has grown from a single digit to more than 70.
Xiao-Li Meng, Ph.D. ’90, the Whipple V.N. Jones Professor of Statistics and chair of the Department of Statistics, has been named dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) at Harvard University, effective Aug. 15.
Meng succeeds Allan M. Brandt, the Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine and professor of the history of science, as permanent dean. Brandt stepped down in February to begin treatment for an illness.Richard J. Tarrant, Pope Professor of the Latin Language and Literature, served as interim dean of GSAS following Brandt’s departure.
As Statistics Department chair since 2004, Meng has overseen a dramatic expansion of the department, as the number of undergraduate concentrators has grown from a single digit to more than 70, and the department’s core undergraduate courses have surged in popularity. He also has worked closely with alumni and alumnae to raise funds to establish the first endowed biennial distinguished teaching lecture series, junior faculty/teaching fellow awards (David Pickard Memorial Fund), and graduate student research awards (Art Dempster Fund) in statistics.
Meng has been a leader in encouraging connections between disciplines at a time when the importance of statistical analysis has been broadly recognized, and as breakthroughs in fields ranging from genetics to astronomy have demanded more-sophisticated data crunching. He and his colleagues have conducted projects with faculty and students in biology, medicine, chemistry, engineering, economic and health policy — and even history and language, making statistics one of Harvard’s most interdisciplinary departments.
“I am delighted to welcome Xiao-Li Meng as the new dean of the Graduate School,” said Michael D. Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). “His passion for teaching and learning, his interdisciplinary application of the tools of statistical analysis to topics as varied as climate change, medicine, and astrophysics, and his innovative, entrepreneurial approach as a scholar and an educator — all of this gives him a uniquely creative vision for what graduate education ought to accomplish today and in the future. I expect that he will lead our graduate programs with the same dynamic curiosity that defined his tenure as Statistics chair, and that he’ll continue building on the excellent work of his predecessors, particularly Allan Brandt.”
“In his scholarship, his pedagogy, and his mentorship of graduate students and undergraduates alike, Xiao-Li Meng is a true innovator,” said PresidentDrew Faust. “He has brought a remarkable energy and enthusiasm to his role as a leader in an increasingly critical field, one that helps shape new knowledge across Harvard’s diverse intellectual landscape. He will make an outstanding steward for our Graduate School and advocate for its students.”
“Harvard has been a dream school for generations of students around the world. GSAS made my dream come true by providing me with full financial support when I was literally a village boy on the other side of the globe,” said Meng. “I am therefore deeply grateful to Dean Smith for providing me with this tremendous opportunity to work directly with him and the many other Harvard leaders, especially President Faust and Provost [Alan] Garber, and with our incomparable faculty, dedicated staff, exceptional students, and accomplished alumni to continue and enhance the Harvard legacy, including making the possibility of the Harvard dream realizable by many diverse students from every corner of the globe.”
“I also look forward to continuing Allan Brandt’s legacy, of which I am a direct beneficiary,” said Meng, who recently returned to campus after co-teaching a study-abroad course in Shanghai this summer.
“Like Allan, Xiao-Li recognizes and celebrates the ways in which graduate and undergraduate education work in tandem, with graduate students and undergraduates directly benefiting each other,” Smith said. “This is best exemplified in the Gen Ed course he developed with his graduate students.”
The course Meng just co-taught in Shanghai was a summer-school variation of the Gen Ed course EMR 16, “Real-Life Statistics: Your Chance for Happiness (or Misery),” a course designed by him and a dozen graduate students (known as the “happy team”), partially via the Graduate Seminars in General Education program that Brandt established. The pioneering project of directly involving graduate students in designing undergraduate courses, and hence providing them with hands-on pedagogical training — together with Meng’s other innovations such as a yearlong required course on teaching and communication skills for all first-year Ph.D. students (STAT 303, “The Art and Practice of Teaching Statistics”) — contributed substantially to his department’s winning, in 2008, a $25,000 GSAS Dean’s Prize for Innovations in Graduate Education at Harvard.
Meng is one of Harvard’s leading voices on pedagogical innovation, working to make the Department of Statistics a laboratory for educational experiments whose common theme involves the vital connections and mutually rewarding pathways between research and teaching. Ph.D. students in statistics have been among the winners of the Derek C. Bok Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching in each year since the award was created in 2007.
As part of his efforts to promote exceptional teaching and learning on campus, Meng has also served on the FAS Committee on Pedagogical Improvement (2004-10) and the FAS Task Force on Teaching and Career Development (2006-07). He is a recipient of numerous research and teaching awards, including the 2001 COPSS (Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies) Award for being “the outstanding statistician under the age of forty” and the 1997-1998 University of Chicago Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching.
Born in Shanghai, Meng received a B.S. in mathematics (1982) and a diploma in graduate study of mathematical statistics (1986), both from Fudan University in Shanghai. He received his Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard in 1990. From 1991 to 2001, when he came to Harvard, Meng was assistant, associate, and then full professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Chicago. He remains affiliated with the University of Chicago as a faculty member of its Center for Health Statistics.
Monday, August 6, 2012
the relevance between private concerns and public concerns
generally we think that individuals are inevitably related with the society or others but this general remark simply ignores the private domain of individuals where individuals have their ultimate sovereignity. individuals have absolute freedom to decide how to live their own private life with any social inteference. they are related to the society and obligated to comply with social rules only when their actions are related with interests of others.
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