A followup to the post on leaving graduate school.

February 20th, 2009

I wanted to do a quick follow-up on the post where I listed all the reasons that I was leaving graduate school. I think that a couple of clarifications and elaborations are necessary lest I leave readers with a wrong or incomplete impression.

In the spirit of list-making, here’s another.

1. My complaints about academic publishing are intended to address the structure and motivations generated by the enterprise as a whole.

In my prior post, I talked about the gold rush mentality, and the need to capture citations. This constraint has limited what I could publicly say about some projects I contributed to, but I can’t think of a single example where a member of my department pushed out any work before it was ready.

Playing devil’s advocate, I recognize that I prefer talking about my work in a very open and public way. While I believe that opening up the thought process leads me to do better work in the long run, there have certainly been situations where I shared something before it was ready and it has bitten me in the rump. (The recent 3.2.4 release of Books may soon become one such example.) I respect and admire those who can work privately and produce great work without public comment, but I am not one of those people. I need to solicit feedback from all kinds of people throughout the creative process.

That’s a long way of me saying that while I may work better using a public iterative process, that approach may not be best for everyone. We all have own processes, and it so happens that my approach does not gel with the constraints imposed by the publishing enterprise. I salute those who do not suffer from such a limitation.

2. My work tracking down the rights to the H.P. Lovecraft works has made me extremely sensitive to the issues surrounding copyright ownership. Furthermore, I believe that we wouldn’t see such a gulf between research and practice if we had more people who thought like those behind the Science Commons.

3. For some interests, an academic career remains the most rewarding and effective way of building a career and making discoveries. Unfortunately, my interests fall outside that umbrella.

4. I wrote that I felt more effective using an open source approach to develop software than one encumbered by an IRB. The open source approach does result in faster development cycles, but the current study that I have been working on has already generated some good feedback and results that I hope to bring into a more open-source process once the study is complete. In particular, the current project is producing some nifty results that will improve the state of home automation and task management software.

Finally, I want to close by saying that the last three years that I’ve spent as a graduate student have been the most productive years of my life. I’ve been very fortunate to work with some really intelligent and patient people and I will forever remain indebted to them and their contribution to my personal growth. I don’t plan on becoming an embittered ex-Ph.D. student and I will still certainly recommend the experience to others, when their motivation and goals are a good fit.

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