I just had to blog about this guy - Hard-working and prolific scholar to head new center - Sanjay Subrahmanyam


Ph.D advice, I love

When he looks back on those years, dusting off the cover of his dot-matrix printed thesis, he marvels at how much and how many different things he was able to learn in such a short period of time. There was a steep learning curve, he says, and the time and intensity it takes to write a thesis is difficult to recapture.

"The truth is that every scholar worth their salt looks back on their Ph.D. as an important moment." Now, as a professor, he wrestles with how to give his own Ph.D. students that kind of experience. "For students who are good, you should just let them go -- you should even let them get lost for a bit," he says.

But Subrahmanyam says the best advice he has to offer Ph.D. candidates is that, while writing a thesis can be stressful and time-consuming, it is not the most difficult part of academic life. It is the second project, the post-thesis effort, which is most difficult. Recent graduates in the United States, he says, focus on too much on getting their first book out and getting tenure instead of channeling their energies into starting their second big project.