a journal of a researcher

Thursday, August 27, 2009

To my new graduate students

I want to see my graduate students fulfill the requirements of a degree in Canadian standard. My goal of training graduate students is to give them a successful career in Canada. This career standard implies knowledge and skills which may not be obvious to my international students. I will train my students to be excellent in both development and research. A research career is not for everyone. But you won’t know until you try it out by yourself. If you won’t become a full time researcher in your career, I will assure you to have updated IT skills to find an industrial job. However, you need to be smart and diligent enough to endure my training in the coming years. If you are not ready, you have other ways to go.

For my international students, you need to adapt to a new culture and a set of new assumptions. This means you need to publish in the ranked international conferences and journals. Not every publication is counted in this list. This means you need to be autonomous and independent. You are responsible for yourself. Instead of asking me what to do, you consult me what can be done and how to do it. This means you need to do research alone. This can be difficult to students who do not know what research is. However, if you have no motivation to do research, nobody can force you. In this culture, if you do not succeed in your study, it is your problem, not mine. I will tell you how to do it, but I won’t do it instead of you.

Now let me tell you what are the first things to do:
1) read "tips" on my Web site http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~yuhong/researchtips.htm.
2) read references on this page.
3) think what you are going to do in your graduate program
4) learn how to write scientific papers
5) think how to do research
6) learn latex, if you do not know
7) learn my course SOEN691A in the fall term
8) read in English, writing in English and speak in English. Please use less your mother tongue if it is not English.

Your graduate program is very short, if you want to do good research. You need to work very much from day 1.