5.6 KiB
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The dog stays blissfully asleep. :)
This time, I'm actually going to begin writing a journal. I feel like I have a lot of thoughts that I let swim around, without doing much about them. To quote the Happiness Lab episode that I listened to today:
"Good intentions mean nothing if they don't translate into actions."
So I'll take Dan's advice, and use writing to do thinking. I also think that writing this journal can improve my writing skills.
So what's going on today?
Well as I'm writing this, I'm on the 61D on my way into school listening to Spanish Pipedream by John Prine. But what I really want to tell you about is the decision I'm trying to make about whether or not to finish my PhD here at Pitt with Dan. Last Friday, I had a meeting with Dan about an idea I was interested in pursuing that at the core involved working with a real, tangible system. That idea was politely dismissed, and I was 'nudged' back towards formal methods for critical infrastructure. My immediate impression is that formal methods for our lab is a crock of shit.
Dan means well and is genuinely looking out for my best interest, but that doesn't translate into belief into his mission. Formal methods are an intense mathematical pursuit in order to prove 'correctness' of something to something else. Formal methods experts may disagree with that characterization, but ultimately that second 'something' can be a lot of things, such as a model of a plant, a written specification, or anything that can be logically defined. Dan wants to use formal methods to prove things about physical systems. His idea is aligned with what Manyu just finished up: can we use formal methods to prove that certain systems adhere to requirements using formal methods? This is connected in part to the HARDENS report, which tried to use formal methods tools at several layers of abstraction to prove that a written requirement can be translated into a proof for a determined plant design. There is certainly work to be done there.
But is that work that I want to do? My brain says I could do it, but my gut screams out a vehement no. This is the core issue--I know I could do it, but once I would finish, where does that leave me? The answer: a formal methods expert. Formal methods experts are highly sought after, but it is an intensely theoretical oriented field. When I think about what I want to do in my career and what my values are, they are not only working through a computer (despite my aptitude for such). I want to build real things, works you can touch, and that interact with the world. A formal methods proof about a reactor that might get built is not in that alignment.
So what the hell do I do? As I write this, it seems pretty clear the relationship between myself and the Cole Lab's work is fractured. Going forward, I see three main options:
- Find another PhD advisor at Pitt. Bajaj is an obvious choice.
- Master out and go find a job.
- Go find another PhD opportunity somewhere else. Yichen did this.
Pros and cons of each situation:
-
Find another PhD advisor at Pitt
- I would be able to keep my NRC Fellowship
- I know people here already
- I've already passed the qualifying exam
- Money is garbage
- I don't think anyone is actually doing work that I really want to do
- Have to stay in Pittsburgh
- NRC debt keeps growing
-
Master out and go find a job
- I would immediately make much more money
- Can move somewhere else (Boston?)
- NRC commitment is only a year
- Could find an interesting R&D job?
- Could get a second publication out for Bajaj's project
- Could pick up PhD again in a year or so. Work on projects to make myself super competitive
- Dr. Sabo is on hold
- No thesis!
-
Master out and start a PhD at another school
- Dr. Sabo is slightly delayed
- Could go work in Boston
- Could go work on something I feel passionate about
- Better degree diversity
- Teaching plan could still work out
- Slightly longer timeline
- Have to take another qualifying exam
- Still have the NRC commitment likely
- Would not make much money
I think the smartest thing is to master out, find a job for a year that will satisfy the NRC requirement, and then if I want to, restart the PhD somewhere else. This would put me finishing sometime in 2030 or so. That's certainly a lot. If I went to find a PhD now, I would finish somewhere in 2029 or so, then have the 1-year NRC commitment. Hmmm.
I checked my current progress in my degree, and learned that I satisfy the controls track masters degree after this semester. I would need to negotiate two things: either ME 2046 or ME 2150 would need to count as a DSC elective, and NUCE 2100 would have to be accepted as a ME elective (it is cross listed as ME 2100, so shouldn't be impossible to argue for). The next thing I need to do for this would to be to talk to Dan about it.
Thinking about stopping with the Master's feels good. I think I should seriously pursue this, and maybe talk to Rachel and my family about it.
Chat w/ Pat
Patrick and I got lunch today. He was generally pretty supportive and gave me some sound advice that I can use. He asked me "have you read some literature reviews?" And the answer to that is no, not really. He also advised to "just do something", which perhaps will help me feel like I'm actually getting something built. I think that is helpful. Going forward, I'm going to really try and do two things:
- Read at least 3 literature reviews by Friday
- Get ARCADE and I2C working by next Monday Could be interesting