LeAnn Lindsey
LeAnn Lindsey

U Live U Learn

U Live U Learn

One of the questions that I get asked most frequently when I tell people I am getting my PhD is, “Why did you choose University of Utah?” And I usually think, “If you have to ask me that, you must not know very much about the University of Utah!”

University of Utah has a long history of being a leader in Computer Science. In 1969, the University of Utah became the fourth node on the ARPANET (precursor to the internet). It was home to computer graphics pioneers like Ivan Sutherland, who received the Turing Award for his invention of the Sketchpad, Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation studios, Jim Clark, founder of Netscape and Silicon Graphics, Alan Kay, another Turing award winner who pioneered the windows GUI and developed Smalltalk, an early object oriented programming language, and John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe and the inventor of the postscript language. (Have you ever used a PDF? - you can thank John Warnock for that). Currently the U is ranked in the top five universities in the US in high-performance computing, which is the field that I chose to study, and while here I was able to learn from great computer scientists such as Hari Sundar, P. Sadayappan, Rajeev Balasubramonian, Mary Hall, Aditya Bhaskara, and Prashant Pandey. The beautiful mountains, hiking, and water sports were just a bonus.

When you look back, there are always things you can see that went well, and things that did not go as expected. When I was asked to write this blog post about my time at the U of U, I thought I would share three things I’m glad I did, and three things I wish I had done. Let’s start with the positive first.

  1. Do the extra things. Some of the very best learning experiences that I have had at the U have been in seminars. You know…those little one unit classes that are pretty much optional. I took a seminar called “High-Performance Computing in Machine Learning” where every week a student presented a current paper in the field. It was life changing. You will get emails from the grad office about speakers on campus. Go to the talks, even when they don’t directly relate to your work. I met a colleague from a different department at one, which led to an amazing collaboration. Get an internship. Two of my publications came directly from my work in my summer internships. Go to conferences. My current post-doc offer came from a researcher who visited my poster at a conference, saw my work and asked me to apply to an open position at the NIH. You might think that you don’t have time, but you do.

  2. Pace yourself. Getting a PhD is a long, hard road. It is an endurance sport, not a sprint. I found it easiest to treat it like a full time job, working a specific schedule, putting in my hours every week, and leaving time for family and other social events on the weekends. Of course, I also worked a lot of weekends, but if you put in the time during the week, you will be able to let yourself enjoy the journey a little more along the way.

  3. Begin with the end in mind. It may seem obvious, but keep looking at that grad tracker. Make a plan and stick to it. Make sure that every semester you are getting closer to your goal.

And now for the things that I wish I had known.

  1. Publish as early as you can. I was not aware of how long it can take to get through a publishing cycle from submission to publication. I thought I was on track, because I was technically on track on “grad tracker” but my journey would have been immeasurably easier if I had focused more on publishing early, rather than waiting until my classes were done before I focused on publishing.

  2. Be ready for rejection. Some of the best advice that I received from one of my labmates was, “Just submit the paper. Your first paper is always rejected and the reviewers will tell you what you need to fix, anyway.” I am a perfectionist and at the time, I thought this was terrible advice, but I wish I would have listened. Rejection is a part of the process, and through the reviewing process, you will learn what you need to change, and in the end the paper will be stronger for it.

  3. Start your thesis document early. I did not realize that the thesis office has a very long timeline, and that you need to start months before you expect to graduate. Find the thesis handbook online and make sure you are familiar with the timeline. Recognize that the thesis document will take a significant amount of time to prepare, outside of and above the time that you have already spent on your publications.

Even as I finish writing this, I am thinking of many more things I wish I could tell you….so make friends. You will learn a lot from each other, and that will make the journey even more rewarding. Good luck! I hope you have an amazing time!

LeAnn

And if you happen to want to watch some video of these computer graphics pioneers reflecting back on their time at the U, here is a link to the video of the IEEE Milestone Event, held in conjuction with the 50th Anniversary of the Computer Science Dept at the U of U. YouTube

This is another “extra” event that I am very glad I went to, to hear them speak in person.