The Akashic Field Chronicle

Talk about taking a break from blogging . My last post (five months ago), optimistically entitled “Thesis Sprint”, turned out to be one of the longest, most drawn out sprints that was ever done in the history of “figurative” racing. Maybe marathon (kudos to Wil) would have been a better term. Nah. It was more like a walkathon, crawlathon, stop-to-catch-my-breathaton,(check-my-facebookathon!).

Anyway, it wasn’t until July 13th, that I actually successfully defended my MS thesis (Yey!). I still have a few document revisions before I can truly say that I’m finally done. Still, the hardest part’s over. Thank God. I learned a valuable lesson (I think):

Lesson 1: Don’t ever be too sure of yourself and your abilities.

You never know how things will actually turn out. In other words: “Huwag magsalita ng tapos”.

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In other news, I have been accepted to UCLA‘s PhD program in Electrical Engineering (Yey!). Which is actually not news anymore to almost anyone who knows me. Still, I haven’t mentioned it in this blog and I think it deserves at least a short announcement here, seeing as it will adversely affect my life from this point on. This would also hopefully lead to 1 less item on my top 10 list.

This truly was a fortunate blessing which even now, is still a pleasant surprise to me. After applying to 5 universities and being rejected from 4 of them, I really believe that there was someone/something greater than me at work here. Funny how I didn’t even have UCLA on my list of schools to apply to initially. It was a suggestion from my MS thesis adviser which I added to the list just because GeorgiaTech’s application asked way to many questions and I was lazy.

Lesson 2: Things always have a way of working out in the end, sometimes even better than what you planned for. The important thing is to never stop trying.

And with full financial support for the entire first year… God truly makes a way. If anyone reading this lives even remotely close to the Westwood area of LA, drop me a line so we can meet up once I’m there.

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In other other news, my TAship (teaching associate) at the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute (EEEI) of UP Diliman has also officially ended last May. So technically, I’m a bum right now. I do have some things lined up keeping me busy (and hopefully keep me earning) in the time remaining before Fall term starts on September.

This means my teaching career is temporary on hold right now. I do however still plan to teach once I get my Ph.D. or maybe even a little bit in UCLA as a TA. It’s hard to convince people that I plan to go back and teach (what with the high paying jobs abroad, especialy for those with advance degrees), but I will. My word on it.

My TA experience certainly deserves its very own blog post (or two), so I wont make this one longer than it already is. So here’s my third and last lesson:

Lesson 3: If you really love what you do, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.

And teaching certainly is what I love to do. That’s about all I can say about the past five months. There’s obviously a lot more to say but after that long an absence its hard to start writing again. Wish me luck and please pray for me on my biggest adventure yet.

I’ve always thought Jorge Cham’s PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) Comics are simply brilliant, ever since someone recommended it to me at the start of my career as a grad student. Here’s one that’s very close to my heart right now:

Okay, I haven’t been in grad school that long and I definitely don’t have a kid yet, but I don’t want it to come to that either. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about this recently and I’ve come to the conclusion that I should finish my Masters as soon as possible. This way I can move on with my career path as early as possible. Whether that is to teach, to work in the industry, or to go straight to a PhD (I’m kinda hoping for this last one).

Full-time Master students in our department are expected to finish in 2 years. However, the sad reality is that I don’t really know of anyone (especially not among those who also teach), who have actually managed this. The course work isn’t really a big issue, since they don’t really fail a lot of people in grad classes. It ultimately boils down to how long it takes for you to finish your thesis. From what I’ve observed, that can be really long time.

The Problem of Focus

Why do people take forever on their thesis? I’m not exactly sure. Since it’s my first semester working on mine, I can’t really be considered as an authority on the matter. It’s safe to say though, that a lot of it’s got to do with maintaining focus.

A graduate level thesis usually involves a lot of open-ended research work. This is in contrast with most undergraduate work which follows a very strict schedule, usually in the form of a syllabus which they give to you at the start of the semester, or maybe a course checklist. Point is, you know exactly what to expect, and if you work hard enough, there really shouldn’t be any reason to spend a long time in college (okay, maybe that’s not exactly true).

In actual research, you constantly find yourself stumped by some new problem, or maybe an unexpected result. There’s also usually so much happening that you find yourself distracted all the time.

My Plan

I want to finish my thesis this semester. I really do. So what am I gonna do about it? Remove all distractions and try to maintain focus. Of course, that’s not exactly a walk in the park. So, what I’ve done, is to lay out a plan which I’ll try to stick to as close as I possibly can until I manage my goal.

That’s actually the main reason I’m writing this post. I love writing down my plans. Plain and simple, clear and concise, listed down on paper (ok, on a blog). Most of it, I’ve actually managed to do in the past month or so. Others, I still have to work on. Some of them might seem really extreme to a lot of people, but then again, extreme cases call for extreme measures.

1. Zero Distractions – The amount of distractions you run into in a single day is staggering. I think, the best way not to be distracted is to not allow for the possibility at all.
   • Email – I only check my email once a day (in the evening).
   • IMs – I have actually turned off my instant messenger by removing it at start-up. If you want to reach me, use email (which again, I only check once a day).
   • Feeds – Same as email. I might not even read them at all in a day.
   • Blogging – Ummm… I’m blogging right now. Haha. Just on the weekends I guess.
   • Stocks – I initially planned to stay “in-cash” (i.e. no stock) and have managed to sell everything at a decent price. However, now that the market seems to be swinging up again, a friend suggested that it might be a better idea to pick some “blue-chips” and then just check on them once in a while. (I chose, ABS-CBN, Metrobank, and First Gen)
   • Web in general – I try to avoid the web if possible since I consider it the #1 reason for being distracted
2. Forming a habit - Plans like these are easier to implement if you make them part of your routine.
   • Office Time – I arrive at school at exactly the same time (8:00 am) every single day. That’s a feat, considering I have almost 2 hours of travel time
   • Break Time – Strictly 1 hour for lunch. That’s it.
   • Work Time – I do teach, so I can’t really neglect my duties. However, I try not to be distracted too much by it. I can always devote more time on this after I graduate if I decide that this is what I really want.
3. Thesis Work – The key part of this plan is really the schedule. I have outlined everything that I have to do in order to finish my thesis and I regularly check if I’m still on schedule.
   • Adviser Updates – Every week, I will email an update to my adviser. No matter how little work I actually managed to do. This way, someone can track my progress, besides me.
   • Publication – I try to motivate myself to work by aiming for a conference. My adviser suggested submitting to this conference in Hungary. This way I have a deadline which is beyond my control.

That’s it. That’s my plan to finish my thesis either this sem or the next. Hopefully, this will allow me to graduate by April 2009. I’ll bookmark this entry so that I’m constantly reminded that I made this plan. If you know me, and you find me slacking about, just tell me that you read this post so I will remember my plan.

Please pray for me. See you in April!

If you’re doing research work (in school or otherwise), or if you’re seriously considering a career in the field of research or maybe the academe, then you probably know by now how important it is to publish your work. As they say, in the academic world, it’s “Publish or Perish”. Basically, you’re only as good a researcher as the output you produce and the papers you publish. That isn’t entirely true of course, but it definitely helps if you publish frequently.

I’ve recently been working on a paper about my preliminary thesis results and plan to submit it in an IEEE Conference. There is a certain pride in publishing one’s work to an international conference. Especially if you get to travel and present it. Even though I’ve only done it once before, I can definitely say that it’s one of the highlights of my career so far.

ICIAS 2007 – KL, Malaysia

LaTeX

If you plan to write a technical paper for a conference or even better, for a journal, then I definitely recommend that you invest some of your time to learn LaTeX. It’s the best way to create great looking papers that conform to all formatting standards, without having to worry about every single detail. LaTeX allows you to instead focus on the content of your paper. Similar to how Content Management Systems (CMS) allow you to produce great looking websites without having to deal with the nitty-gritty of web design.

The basic concept is to let the computer handle the formatting of your paper through a set of typesetting algorithms. As the writer, all you have to do is to tell the LaTeX system which parts of your paper are to be formatted with which styles. Be it a figure, a table, a title page or actual content. Almost all major journals and conferences have what we call LaTeX classes or templates. Just download the particular template you need, and it will have all the formatting instructions to give you a perfect paper (at least as far as looks are concerned, the content is still up to you of course). For those in the Electronics field, you’ll probably be interested with the IEEEtran LaTeX Class.

What about MS Word?

Ok, so you’re more familiar with word processing in MS Word. Or maybe the LaTeX code you’ve seen so far seems to be a bit scary. That’s why I say learning LaTeX is an investment. The learning curve is a little steep, but that’s only at the start. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll discover that a lot of you’re time in MS Word is spent moving stuff around and trying to fit figures and text where they’re supposed to go. Instead of worrying about what to write, you’re wasting you’re time changing font sizes, alignment, pagination, and other stuff that the computer is supposed to handle for you.

Even though the code maybe a bit daunting, after trying it out for a few days, you’ll learn that the syntax is actually quite simple. Plus, most of the code is provided for and can be downloaded straight from the net.

Still not convinced?

Here are just some of the features I love about LaTeX:

• You worry about content, not formatting. That way you end up with good content with perfect formatting that’s going to adhere to standards.
• Rendered formulas and equations just look stunning (see image below).
• BibTeX (part of LaTeX) allows you to manage all you’re references in a database and not have to worry about creating your bibliography.
• Citations in BibTeX format are available in CiteSeer databases and even in IEEE Xplore. So you don’t even have to type them.
• Figures are arranged by the computer. No more worrying about moving stuff around only to find that a single paragraph you inserted made everything move around again. (Waaaah! Don’t you just hate that?!)
• It’s open source and it runs on virtually all platforms. No need to “borrow” a copy of M$ Word from a friend.

Samples!

Here are a few snippets of actual LaTeX documents:

The Fast-Fourier Transform in all its pristine LaTeX beauty

Look Ma! No typing required. Thanks to BibTeX.

To see more examples, I suggest you look at the official IEEETran Documentation, since it was created entirely with LaTeX.

LyX

If you want to try LaTeX right now but don’t want to learn all the commands. You can install LyX, which is a graphical front-end to LaTeX. It runs on Linux, Windows and a lot of other platforms and it’s very easy to learn. Just run through the tutorial that’s included with the program. I do have some issues with it, and I tend to get better looking results, especially with IEEE papers, when I hardcode in LaTeX. But it’s definitely a great way to start learning about LaTeX and start producing some good looking documents.

Once you’re comfortable with LyX, you can start playing around with the code. It’s a very easy transition since LyX has the ability to export directly to LaTeX code. If you don’t know how to do something in LaTeX, just use LyX and then export the code. That way you learn even more and eventually you don’t even have to go back to LyX anymore.

Hopefully I’ve convinced you by now why you should be learning LaTeX and throwing away MS Word. Watch out for my next post, where I’ll be showing you the programs I use to write IEEE papers as well as provide you with a few insights on how to get LaTeX up and running on your system.

Click here to read Part II of this post