add clarification

_posts/2016-09-07-phd.markdown

@@ -40,6 +40,8 @@ First, should you want to get a PhD? I was in a fortunate position of knowing si
 
 **The disclaimer**. I wanted to also add a few words on some of the potential downsides and failure modes. The PhD is a very specific kind of experience that deserves a large disclaimer. You will inevitably find yourself working very hard (especially before paper deadlines). You need to be okay with the suffering and have enough mental stamina and determination to deal with the pressure. At some points you will lose track of what day of the week it is and go on a diet of leftover food from the microkitchens. You'll sit exhausted and alone in the lab on a beautiful, sunny Saturday scrolling through Facebook pictures of your friends having fun on exotic trips, paid for by their 5-10x larger salaries. You will have to throw away 3 months of your work while somehow keeping your mental health intact. You'll struggle with the realization that months of your work were spent on a paper with a few citations while your friends do exciting startups with TechCrunch articles or push products to millions of people. You'll experience identity crises during which you'll question your life decisions and wonder what you're doing with some of the best years of your life. As a result, you should be quite certain that you can thrive in an unstructured environment in the pursuit research and discovery for science. If you're unsure you should lean slightly negative by default. Ideally you should consider getting a taste of research as an undergraduate on a summer research program before before you decide to commit. In fact, one of the primary reasons that research experience is so desirable during the PhD hiring process is not the research itself, but the fact that the student is more likely to know what they're getting themselves into.
 
+I should clarify explicitly that this post is not about convincing anyone to do a PhD, I've merely tried to enumerate some of the common considerations above. The majority of this post focuses on some tips/tricks for navigating the experience once if you decide to go for it (which we'll see shortly, below).
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 Lastly, as a random thought I heard it said that you should only do a PhD if you want to go into academia. In light of all of the above I'd argue that a PhD has strong intrinsic value - it's an end by itself, not just a means to some end (e.g. academic job).
 
 **Getting into a PhD program: references, references, references.** Great, you've decided to go for it. Now how do you get into a good PhD program? The first order approximation is quite simple - by far most important component are strong reference letters. The ideal scenario is that a well-known professor writes you a letter along the lines of: "Blah is in top 5 of students I've ever worked with. She takes initiative, comes up with her own ideas, and gets them to work." The worst letter is along the lines of: "Blah took my class. She did well." A research publication under your belt from a summer research program is a very strong bonus, but not absolutely required provided you have strong letters. In particular note: grades are quite irrelevant but you generally don't want them to be too low. This was not obvious to me as an undergrad and I spent a lot of energy on getting good grades. This time should have instead been directed towards research (or at the very least personal projects), as much and as early as possible, and if possible under supervision of multiple people (you'll need 3+ letters!). As a last point, what won't help you too much is pestering your potential advisers out of the blue. They are often incredibly busy people and if you try to approach them too aggressively in an effort to impress them somehow in conferences or over email this may agitate them.
@@ -202,3 +204,6 @@ On the subject of conferences:
 I can't find the quote anymore but I heard Sam Altman of YC say that there are no shortcuts or cheats when it comes to building a startup. You can't expect to win in the long run by somehow gaming the system or putting up false appearances. I think that the same applies in academia. Ultimately you're trying to do good research and push the field forward and if you try to game any of the proxy metrics you won't be successful in the long run. This is especially so because academia is in fact surprisingly small and highly interconnected, so anything shady you try to do to pad your academic resume (e.g. self-citing a lot, publishing the same idea multiple times with small remixes, resubmitting the same rejected paper over and over again with no changes, conveniently trying to leave out some baselines etc.) will eventually catch up with you and you will not be successful. 
 
 So at the end of the day it's quite simple. Do good work, communicate it properly, people will notice and good things will happen. Have a fun ride!
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+EDIT: [HN discussion link](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12447495).