Some background - my academic history
Mar. 10th, 2003 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
percivalSooo - finally a weekend update. I don't log on to LJ from home because our connection is quite wobbly. I just lost a huge entry on Thursday, and I don't want that to happen again.
Why am I focussing on my academic history? Well, first of all, it more or less encapsulates most of my life so far. As a lippy, precocious youngster with apraxia, who towered over her classmates from age 8 until age 13, when she stopped growing, adn very little innate emotional intelligence, I had a very hard time at school, socially. So I concentrated on excelling academically.
I skipped a year at school, and entered uni at 18 (this is Germany we're talking about here ...) As a kid, I always wanted to be a translator. But my teachers dissuaded me and suggested that I do computational linguistics (CL) instead - more of a perspective. Incidentally, the CL course I chose had a strong phonetics component. Phonetics is the science of how we produce and perceive speech. At first, I was terrified of phonetics, sure that I would fail. But lo and behold, my phonetics prof collared me at the end of my fourth semester and offered me a job as a student assistant. A phonetician was born. However, I still continued to study CL with an equal emphasis.
To supplement my CL studies, I chose computer science as a minor. Since I managed much better than I thought I would, I decided to make it my second major. I figured it would increase my employability. Now, even though I've learned a lot from CS, especially an appreciation of mathematics and stringent reasoning, and an understanding of machine learning and artificial intelligence, it's not my favourite subject. I much prefer wallowing in the Humanities. This shows: I don't dedicate any time to honing programming skills. Hence, the employability gamble has backfired: computer scientists are supposed to be good programmers as well. I am not, and I do not wish to invest two years of my life in honing these skills. I find debugging programs boring, and I'm not one of these persons who immerses herself so totally in a problem that she can't surface until she's found the solution. My husband is such a digger, and he's happily hacking away.
In November 1997, I majored in CS, barely getting an A. In September 2001, I handed in my Ph.D. thesis, in November 2001, I passed my oral exams. Finally, in June 2002, I was awarded my degree. During that time, I worked full-time as a lecturer at my institute, teaching 2-3 classes a week and shouldering a fair bit of admin work.
Whew, that's quick, you might think. Well, think again. During that time, I lost my best friend because I was too focussed on my work. (I have since lost another good friend due to my phone phobia. More about that in another self-flagellating entry soon.) I nearly had a nervous breakdown. My supervisor was pressing me to finish up in May 2001, half a year early, because otherwise, I might lose my job. That was impossible - I'd cast my net far too wide and was suffocating under the material I'd accumulated. My plans were grandiose. Luckily, an academic I'd met at a conference sat me down one day and gave me constructive help. The operative word is constructive: not admonishing me because I was too ambitious, but helping me to narrow it down to a manageable format. In the process, my thesis switched fields from phonetics to computational linguistics, and I changed supervisors. My original supervisor, who'd been a mentor to me, was fine with that. (Yes, he was a mentor who gave me enough rope to hang myself.)
With lots of help and support from my colleagues and not least the fantastic man who's now my husband and who's stood by me through all the stress and despair, I made the finishing line.
Am I satisfied with what I've achieved? No. The thesis is not nearly as good as I'd like it to be. I feel more like a survivor than anything else. But I'm still here, and still publishing, and clinging on to my foothold in academia in spite of a 8-5 job in a speech technology company. And the job? As you could have guessed, I said no, thanks. I found out that it's better for me to move about and spread my wings than to stay at one institute for my whole academic life.
(P.S.: If anybody wants to have a look at the d*** piece of s***, as I affectionately call my Ph.D., drop me a line at perceval@livejournal.com, and I'll mail you the web page.)
Why am I focussing on my academic history? Well, first of all, it more or less encapsulates most of my life so far. As a lippy, precocious youngster with apraxia, who towered over her classmates from age 8 until age 13, when she stopped growing, adn very little innate emotional intelligence, I had a very hard time at school, socially. So I concentrated on excelling academically.
I skipped a year at school, and entered uni at 18 (this is Germany we're talking about here ...) As a kid, I always wanted to be a translator. But my teachers dissuaded me and suggested that I do computational linguistics (CL) instead - more of a perspective. Incidentally, the CL course I chose had a strong phonetics component. Phonetics is the science of how we produce and perceive speech. At first, I was terrified of phonetics, sure that I would fail. But lo and behold, my phonetics prof collared me at the end of my fourth semester and offered me a job as a student assistant. A phonetician was born. However, I still continued to study CL with an equal emphasis.
To supplement my CL studies, I chose computer science as a minor. Since I managed much better than I thought I would, I decided to make it my second major. I figured it would increase my employability. Now, even though I've learned a lot from CS, especially an appreciation of mathematics and stringent reasoning, and an understanding of machine learning and artificial intelligence, it's not my favourite subject. I much prefer wallowing in the Humanities. This shows: I don't dedicate any time to honing programming skills. Hence, the employability gamble has backfired: computer scientists are supposed to be good programmers as well. I am not, and I do not wish to invest two years of my life in honing these skills. I find debugging programs boring, and I'm not one of these persons who immerses herself so totally in a problem that she can't surface until she's found the solution. My husband is such a digger, and he's happily hacking away.
In November 1997, I majored in CS, barely getting an A. In September 2001, I handed in my Ph.D. thesis, in November 2001, I passed my oral exams. Finally, in June 2002, I was awarded my degree. During that time, I worked full-time as a lecturer at my institute, teaching 2-3 classes a week and shouldering a fair bit of admin work.
Whew, that's quick, you might think. Well, think again. During that time, I lost my best friend because I was too focussed on my work. (I have since lost another good friend due to my phone phobia. More about that in another self-flagellating entry soon.) I nearly had a nervous breakdown. My supervisor was pressing me to finish up in May 2001, half a year early, because otherwise, I might lose my job. That was impossible - I'd cast my net far too wide and was suffocating under the material I'd accumulated. My plans were grandiose. Luckily, an academic I'd met at a conference sat me down one day and gave me constructive help. The operative word is constructive: not admonishing me because I was too ambitious, but helping me to narrow it down to a manageable format. In the process, my thesis switched fields from phonetics to computational linguistics, and I changed supervisors. My original supervisor, who'd been a mentor to me, was fine with that. (Yes, he was a mentor who gave me enough rope to hang myself.)
With lots of help and support from my colleagues and not least the fantastic man who's now my husband and who's stood by me through all the stress and despair, I made the finishing line.
Am I satisfied with what I've achieved? No. The thesis is not nearly as good as I'd like it to be. I feel more like a survivor than anything else. But I'm still here, and still publishing, and clinging on to my foothold in academia in spite of a 8-5 job in a speech technology company. And the job? As you could have guessed, I said no, thanks. I found out that it's better for me to move about and spread my wings than to stay at one institute for my whole academic life.
(P.S.: If anybody wants to have a look at the d*** piece of s***, as I affectionately call my Ph.D., drop me a line at perceval@livejournal.com, and I'll mail you the web page.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Oooh! A nice, long entry!
Date: 2003-03-09 08:58 am (UTC)Lost posts are the worst. I spent two hours on one yesterday and accidentally deleted it thinking I was deleting something else.
We're always hardest on ourselves but earning a PhD is a tremendous accomplishment. I'm sure it took a lot of hard work and you should be very proud of yourself for having the will and the tenacity to accomplish that milestone.
Oddly enough, I went to school for the humanities and ended up in as a manager of a financial office. Sometimes, I feel like I'm still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up.
~Piper