As a Ph.D. student, one of the questions I hear most is: academia or industry? Every time I meet someone new and they realize that I’m close to graduating, that’s the question I hear. Every time I meet an old friend at a conference, that’s the question I hear. Even when I meet people in […]
Author: sauvik
Live Success Spiral Walkthrough for 30 days
When I started this blog, I posted a tutorial on how to set up and use success spirals to live your day-to-day ideals. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to do a live walkthrough to share exactly how I use these spirals in practice: From the inception of the success spiral through to its review phase. […]
A Guide to Fellowships for Computer Science Ph.D. Students, Part 2
Applying for graduate fellowships is a great use of your time as a computer science Ph.D. student, even if you do not have a strict financial need. Here are a few reasons why. Note that this post is the second of a two-part guide on graduate fellowships for computer science Ph.D. students. In a previous […]
A Guide to Fellowships for Computer Science Ph.D. Students, pt. 1
As a Ph.D. student, your job is multi-faceted. At any given time, your time is divided between: classroom study, Research [1], writing, “networking”, teaching, applying for fellowships, curating your online identity / promoting your online presence, reviewing papers, serving on committees, and wondering why you can’t do any Research. There are probably a few other […]
Two Months of Blogging: Front Page of Hacker News and Money In The Bank
I’ve been blogging for about 2 months now. In that time, I have written 13 publicly accessible posts and have grown a success spiral from writing for 1 minute a day to writing for 15 minutes a day [1]. In practice, I actually wrote between 20-30 minutes per day, on average. Overall, running Make Write Learn has been a positive […]
NSA’s Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition, Part 2
One of my papers was recently recognized as an honorable mention for the NSA’s Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Award. As an honorable mention author, I was given the opportunity to present my work to an audience of NSA security researchers. In a previous post, I briefly described the award and my paper that got the […]
A Letter to My Younger Self About Dealing with Rejection in Academia
Hi, younger me. You don’t know this yet, but the path you’ve chosen is one of brutal, unrelenting rejection. You’ve coasted through everything you’ve done in life so far. But you’ve met your match in academia. Everyone here is just as smart, if not smarter. They’re just as hard working, if not more so. Hence […]
NSA’s Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition, pt. 1
I just returned from the NSA, where I gave an invited talk and received an honorable mention for their annual Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper competition. If I had to summarize: it was a humbling and educational experience. I’m happy to have participated, and am smarter for it. I thought I’d recap my experience for those […]
A Tutorial on Goal Selection: Focus on Effort, not Results
It’s easy to set yourself up for failure with poor goal-selection strategies. In this post, I hope to provide some specific actionable insights to help avoid that. I previously wrote a tutorial for creating effective success spirals. One core component of that tutorial is creating a spiral structure: A comically low starting goal that is impossible […]
One Month of Blogging: Writing, Passive Income, and Audience Building
I’ve been blogging for about a month now, and if I had to summarize: It’s been great. In my original post, I mentioned a few reasons why I started this blog. For those not inclined to read that post, here’s a summary: I want to write more, and not necessarily for any specific goal. I want to explore passive […]