phase transitions

sudden realizations and other things that have been on my mind

Happy fall to everyone whose semester is in full swing right now… I’m currently trying to enjoy what I have left of summer while I brace myself for the upcoming term, lol. in true summer-anime-childhood-friends fashion, this post is on some recent thoughts and reflections on sharp changes (i.e. metaphorical phase transitions) in my life (mainly PhD-related since I’ve been a grad student for almost a year now, which feels crazy to say out loud…)¹

a liquid-vapor phase boundary or something, idk

work and life

A friend recently sent me this tweet on grad school, which I think is a pretty good distillation of everything else I’ve seen on the topic:

if I had to describe the first year in one word, it would be “confusing” (source)

Even though I spent every summer in undergrad on physics research, jumping into full-time research as a PhD student still felt like a leap of faith. although I was still taking classes, it was clear that they were no longer my main focus, and I definitely like I had left the structure of school behind. but this is probably to some extent unavoidable, because training to become an independent researcher requires training to learn and work independently, and to evaluate your own learning and working, and so on. and despite constantly feeling like I was fumbling around, looking back on the past year I can now appreciate how much I’ve learned since starting grad school.

More notes from the first year: I’ve become a lot more comfortable with self-directed learning. (I used to be terrified of learning math on my own, and now I’m slightly less terrified.) I realized that my ability to get research tasks done is highly correlated with how much sleep I got and whether I’ve had caffeine that day. I’ve been practicing the art of deciding which talks to attend, and which to skip to grab food with other grad students.

research taste and chemistry (the novel)

If you’ve known me for a while, you might know that in high school, I was obsessed with Weike Wang’s debut novel centered around an unnamed narrator who drops out of a PhD in organic chemistry. there are a lot of narrative innovations and messages that I appreciated here which are tangential to doing a PhD, and my main takeaway from this book was on the importance of knowing what you want out of life. but the book also frequently references struggles unique to the process of learning about research, like the “jump” from student to independent scientist and the difficulties that the student faces in defining their own career path, which hits a bit closer to home now.

Relatedly, I recently came upon this blog post that I wish I had read much earlier (i.e. before I applied for PhD programs) and which aligns pretty closely with what I’ve been thinking about in this area. developing “taste” is highly personal and one of the central goals of a PhD, and committing to a certain research program and immersing yourself in its specific philosophy can feel weirdly existential.²

An anecdote: I originally decided to study physics in college after learning about the position-momentum space duality and its connection to Fourier transforms, and I still like to study topics related to underlying mathematical structures that describe connections between different concepts in computational theory and physics. this is convenient because there are lots of opportunities in quantum info theory at the moment, but when it came time to apply for PhD programs, I started to question how I knew I really wanted to be a physicist, as opposed to a computer scientist? had I really seen enough of quantum research to know that I preferred physically motivated problems? I decided fairly last-minute to accept an offer from Caltech Physics, and in the past year I’ve leaned into quantum dynamics. I talked to a friend in a similar field who also applied to a mix of physics and computer science programs, but who had studied computer science in undergrad and ultimately committed to a group in a computer science department.

other thoughts and reflections

I never applied to be a blogger for MIT admissions, but I did manage to get a guest post last year, which happens to be one that I’m still pretty proud of. upon rereading, I realize that the beginning of the post might sound a bit odd because I reference the admissions blogs as if the reader doesn’t know what site they’re on, but that’s because I originally posted this on my old Wordpress site. and of course because like many other applicants, I religiously followed those blogs in high school.³ while I don’t exactly look up to the undergrads as wise seniors anymore, I still really appreciate blogs as a means to take in different perspectives, and to me they’re a pretty special type of online space. I’m always looking for new things to read, so feel free to send recs!

One longer-timeline observation I made recently: among the people in my high school circle from both my year and the year above, I can count at least 10/18 of the guys who are now in a PhD program, but I think I’m the only one out of 15 girls.⁴ if you count med school programs which might include clinical research, the number is closer to 5/15. this might not seem surprising or statistically anomalous to an outside observer who’s familiar with conversations around DEI in STEM, but it’s worth noting that I was enrolled in a high school program that encouraged everyone to apply for summer research internships and actively tried to recruit girls who were interested in a variety of STEM subjects.

I remember that in my “exit interview” with the high school administrator, he asked me whether I felt like I had experienced any gender-related adversity, and I told him that I genuinely didn’t believe I had.⁵ and even if I were asked now whether the girls at my school had a different experience socially, or faced different expectations from their family, I might say that they probably did, but I wouldn’t be able to tell how exactly that translated into these different outcomes. besides, I also wouldn’t be able to give any kind of general explanation as to why the women I know who are currently in PhD programs chose to enroll in one.

1. I don’t watch a lot of anime series anymore, so the “anime aesthetic” is itself a source of nostalgia, but I also used to like a lot of media that centered around coming of age stories and childhood nostalgia (e.g. Anohana and Kagerou Project)

2. Obviously deciding to pursue a PhD itself opens up a lot of questions about what kind of life you envision for yourself… see also this MIT admissions blog post by a friend

3. Incidentally, my favorite post was this comic that echoes the existential crisis resulting from choosing very early on what path to pursue in life, and becoming a different person as a result of those choices

4. Based on the totally rigorous method of looking at prom and senior trip photos… also disclaimer that girls here refers to femme-presenting individuals or people who wore a dress to prom

5. There’s a lot to unpack here, and I’m cautious of drawing anything conclusive from a small collection of anecdotes. however, I know the administrator probably asked because he was aware of these kinds of outcomes, and it is an important issue, so I’ll try to summarize some more thoughts on his question while looking back on the past five years. as always, let me know if you have anything to add!

Pursuing a PhD in the U.S. requires a student to commit five years of their life to try to produce original research. it’s reasonable to assume that as a baseline, the student should be reasonably confident in their background knowledge of a field as well as in their ability to learn and apply new concepts to a project. it’s also reasonable to think that students of minority backgrounds can feel discouraged about their abilities from the accumulation of microaggressions or generally feeling unwelcome in an environment, which might turn them away from pursuing further studies in STEM. this was definitely present to some extent in school (e.g. discussions criticizing how female students participating in math contests were given “unfair advantages”, as per this previous post), and is probably a large factor in the gender gap in non-biological sciences. however I want to also note that a lot of my friends in my year and the year above did pretty successful summer research projects in different fields (computer science, engineering, etc.), and many people continued to pursue undergrad research on similar topics, so I’m not sure if this is the main reason for this specific group.

From what I know of individuals in this group, the two major deterrents from pursuing a PhD have been a) burnout from school, and b) financial pressure to pursue a career in industry right out of college. the latter might not be surprising, since financial stability has also been identified as a factor in the persistent underrepresentation of other demographic groups in physics. on the other hand, the association with burnout is less obvious to me, though it’s difficult to separate from factors like self-esteem, family expectations, and ingrained misogyny, which can all affect mental health. ultimately, many of my friends chose not to apply to grad programs because they didn’t see themselves as the type of person who would enjoy or grow from the experience in the ways that they cared about. it’s impossible to know exactly how big of an impact the high school and college environment had on that decision, as opposed to individual differences in personality and upbringing.