Now, don’t get me wrong – I know that I have a long way left to go until people start calling me Dr. Kairam. At least for piano players, Ericsson theorized that 10,000 hours was the required amount of time to gain expertise, and I had always figured that PhD programs were around 5 years long for that very reason (40 hours/week * 50 weeks/year * 5 years = 10,000 hours, though it seems that some of us may become ‘double-experts’ by the time we’re done!). However, we’re also expected to complete some great research before we’ve finished the program; while I’ve done some research so far that I think is pretty good, I don’t think I’ve had any insights yet that I would consider ‘great’. As a result, it’s become difficult to shake the nagging doubt that perhaps I won’t get there.

Just as I was beginning to hit a low point, however, I came across this great video of radio host Ira Glass:

In case you don’t want to watch, he starts off by saying:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really wish someone had told me…All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste…But there’s a gap – that for the first couple years you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good…it’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game…is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you…A lot of people never get past this phase…they quit.”

Inspired by this quote, I’ve decided to try and implement two policies to help foster my own creativity in research (as well as some other areas where I’m often creatively blocked, including songwriting and posting on this blog).

1. Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

Glass continues later in the video with the advice:

“The most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story…because it’s only by going through a volume of work that you’re actually going to catch up and close that gap and the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.”

Fostering creativity through repetition is evident in the insights gained from psychologist Keith Sawyer‘s interviews of winners of the New Yorker cartoon caption contest. According to his research, “the ‘sudden flash of insight’ is largely a myth”; instead, creative ideas ‘emerge over time’ through ‘hard work and constant revision’. Specifically, he says:

“Cartoon contest winners usually generate lots of captions. Studies have shown that quantity breeds quality – what I call the productivity theory, because high productivity corresponds to high creativity. When the famous physicist Freeman Dyson was asked how to generate good ideas, he said, ‘Have a lot of ideas, then throw out the bad ones.’ “

An important element in following this advice is reminding myself that I don’t have to publish everything I produce. If a project fails but spurs new ideas and helps me gain necessary skills, then I should view it as a success. If a song or blog post never quite comes together, it may inspire something better down the line. The important thing is to rehearse the process of crafting an idea, executing it, and committing it to paper so that I get practice with the creative part of the process. Regarding the process itself, this brings me to my second point:

2. Honor My Ideas

I draw my inspiration for this second policy from Lady Gaga, an artist who I view to be consistently creative. Near the end of GagaVision, episode 43, she describes her creative process:

Transcribed:

The creative process is approximately 15 minutes of vomiting my creative ideas…And then I spend days, weeks, months, years fine-tuning, but the idea is that you honor your vomit. You have to honor your vomit – you have to honor those 15 minutes.

While it sounds silly (and a little gross), I found these thoughts to be very instructive. I think that while I often have ideas that are creative or ‘out-there’, my internal filter shuts them down before I ever get a chance to examine whether or not they are viable. By committing your ideas to paper as soon as you have them, you can circumvent this filtering process so that those ideas don’t get lost. As Dyson said above, having a lot of ideas is a first step towards having good ideas.

As I’ve been taking the Caltrain to Stanford more often these days (in no way motivated by my spotting a sign for $4.99/gallon gas last week), I’ve decided to implement a policy of spending each morning train ride just throwing ideas on paper. Whether it’s lyrics to a song, thoughts for a blog post, or ideas for research, by forcing myself to just ‘vomit up’ whatever’s in my head, I am hoping that this deliberate practice at creativity will result in more ideas, and thus more good ideas, getting past my filter. In fact, that is actually how I put this blog post together, so let’s see if it keeps working.

If you try these or discover other methods for fostering your own creativity, share your experience in the comments!

Poisson distribution. Poisson process. Poisson equation. Poisson kernel. Poisson regression. Poisson summation formula. Poisson’s spot. Poisson’s ratio. Poisson bracket. Euler-Poisson-Darboux equation. This is only a partial list, and yet it shows the degree to which Siméon-Denis Poisson’s work has impacted just about all branches of science. But what is so impressive is not the volume of his contributions but rather their depth, raising a puzzling question: How did Poisson manage to work simultaneously on so many quite different problems and yet stay sufficiently focused to offer deep and lasting contributions?

Well, we had a secret: a notebook and a tiny habit.

Each time Poisson encountered a problem he though fascinating, he would resist the temptation to savor it. He pulled out his notebook instead and made a note of it and promptly returned to the problem that had absorbed him before the interruption. Once he solved the problem at hand, he mulled over the list of problems scribbled in his notebook, then picking as his next challenge the one he found the most interesting.

Poisson’s little secret was lifelong, careful prioritizing.

So, this essentially describes the polar opposite of my work habits, which currently consist of frenetically switching from task to task to ensure that I complete none of them. I’m thinking of giving the priority list a try – has anybody tried a scheme like this and had success with it? Would be curious to hear your story!

The National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) helps ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States and reinforces its diversity.  The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees in the U.S. and abroad.  The NSF welcomes applications from all qualified students and strongly encourages under-represented populations, including women, under-represented racial and ethnic minorities, and persons with disabilities, to apply for this fellowship.

In addition to the prestige accompanying the receipt of this fellowship, winners also receive the following:

• Three Years of Support
• $30K Annual Stipend
• $10.5K Cost-of-Education Allowance
• $1K One-Time International Travel Allowance
• TeraGrid Supercomputer Access

The applications first become available in August and are eventually due in early November (at least this was the schedule they followed in 2009-2010). The results were set to be announced in mid-March, though this year they were actually announced in mid-April (I heard that decisions were delayed due to the weather complications in D.C. this winter). According to the site, it looks as if they announced 2000 awardees and 2025 honorable mentions, which seems to be up a great deal from past years.

Why am I writing this post?

For a comprehensive look at applying for NSF (and other similar fellowships), you should check out Philip Guo’s Fellowships Tips page, which is really good and very comprehensive. I personally learn best by example, so my goal in this post is to provide a personal example of the application and review process; hopefully, this will prove helpful to some of you applying in the coming fall.  While I did not win this year, I think it’s helpful to see the essays of others with reviews to get a real sense of what the reviewers are looking for.

If you take one thing away from this post: BE SPECIFIC!

The number one lesson that I gleaned from various sources while applying was “Whatever you write about, BE SPECIFIC”. From my understanding, what you write about and whether or not you actually follow the proposal if you win are both secondary to how specific you can be in your proposal. I wish I could re-find this link now, but when I was applying, I remember reading the application of another student who had posted their application materials and reviews. This student wrote an incredibly detailed proposal for studying land use in Africa; they included specific information about the plots of land they were going to study, the local contacts that they had assembled, even information about satellites from which they were going to pull aerial photos. One of the reviews had a comment along the lines of “Would have appreciated more detail about the study – for instance, what type of analysis are you planning to do on the satellite imagery?” It seems that it is impossible for you to cram too many details into the space provided.

Brief Overview of Written Application Materials:

Essentially, aside from other (important) components such as recommendations, test scores, and the like, the application is comprised of three major written components (see the full list here). The Personal Statement is where you get to talk about your background, your strengths, why you are interested in your research areas, and how winning a fellowship will contribute to your long-term career goals. In the Research Experience Statement, your goal is to essentially discuss why you are qualified to do the work that you are proposing to do. Finally, in the Proposed Plan of Research Statement, you lay out the research question you intend to address, how you are going to answer it, and how that answer will contribute to science and society as a whole.

Throughout these three essays, there are basically two major principles you want to keep in mind:

• Intellectual Merit: How important and original is this research, and how qualified is the applicant to conduct it?
• Broader Impacts: How will this research contribute to science, society, education, underprivileged groups, etc.?

Anyways, with that in mind, here are links to PDF’s of my three statements: Personal Statement, Research Experience, and Proposed Research Plan. Below, I am posting the reviews that I received from my 2 reviewers:

Reviewer 1:

Overall Assessment of Intellectual Merit: Good

The application has a good personal statement and the applicant has a convincing motivation and past research experience background. Nevertheless, I found this application not as competitive because the proposed research application was not specific enough about what exactly it is all about. By the same token it was not stated where the research is. A stronger motivational statement for the proposed research could also strengthen the application.

Overall Assessment of Broader Impacts: Good

The proposed research has an obvious broader impact and benefit to society. Nevertheless, the broader impact statement of this application could be stronger by addressing it specifically and in more detail . Broader impact criteria can be impact on society, integration of research on education, the potential to reach diverse audiences and outreach.

Reviewer 2:

Overall Assessment of Intellectual Merit: Good

Sanjay Kairam has a strong academic record and good research experience. To his credit, he has published several articles in some top-rated conferences. His description of the proposed research is reasonable but I expect a better and more specific explanations of the research plan and methodology.

Overall Assessment of Broader Impacts: Very Good

His interest in social computing stem from his personal experience working in hospital in low income neighborhood. He participated in several activities to promote social computing. The proposed research will have a positive impact on better understanding of social issues.

Conclusions:

In summary, my major takeaway was that while the personal statement and research experience were good, they wanted more details in a few different aspects of my proposed research plan (motivation, methodology, impact).  I was a little puzzled by the phrase “it was not stated where the research is” because I, as is the case with many students, was applying concurrently to graduate schools, so I did not yet know where I would be.

If you are applying for graduate schools, I would advise applying for NSF or another similar fellowship for a number of reasons.  First off, you might get it.  Second, even if you don’t, putting together the application was an incredibly useful exercise towards getting my school applications together – a great portion of my personal and research experience statements found their way into my school application materials.

I hope that getting to see my application statements and the reviews that they earned will help you when you are applying.  If you’d like to know more about my experience applying, talk about your experience, or even have thoughts on what I wrote (hey, I am applying again this year), hit up the comments section. If you are reading this while putting together your application – good luck!

I technically graduated with my B.S. in Mathematics and an M.A. in Philosophy in 2006 (so I’m sort of an impostor in the Class of 2005 tent). In some ways the shift to Philosophy reflected my interests in logic and the principles of rational thought — much of my scientific interest at the time related to the differences between how people should think and how people really do think.  In other ways, the choice to do a Masters was motivated by my desire to hang around on campus for another year (though the prospect of another 5 years does seem a tad daunting right now!)

After realizing that degrees in Mathematics and Philosophy didn’t really qualify me to do anything other than win arguments, I started something of a first-world spirit quest; I wandered for a few years, working at a couple of big companies (fighting click-fraud at Google, learning about frequent-flier programs at Deloitte), and then freelancing with some smaller companies (writing, marketing, data analysis, and anything I could get my hands on). Along the way, I got to travel to some interesting places, as well.  This included partying under the full moon in Thailand, learning how to kite-surf in the Dominican Republic, zip-lining in Costa Rica, and trekking through one of the highest mountain passes in the world (Thorong-La) in Nepal.

Despite all of these great experiences, it took a bit of serendipity for me to finally end up on my current path. At a wedding for a former roommate in the Summer of 2008, I happened to sit next to the wife of someone I knew during my time at Stanford. We talked a bit about my interests, and she suggested that I talk with her sister, who turned out to be Brynn Evans. Despite my usual social anxiety, I got in touch with Brynn, and after talking about her research in social search, we hit it off. It was through Brynn that I joined the Augmented Social Cognition group at PARC; working with her and Peter Pirolli, we undertook a project looking at changes in question/problem formulation and domain understanding as a result of social interaction during search (PDF here). After finishing this project, I was lucky enough to get invited to stay on as a research assistant at PARC, where I got to work on a number of social computing research projects with the group and to develop my research interests and expertise.

It was this chance encounter at a wedding, a fortuitous seating arrangement, that led me on my current research path in 2 ways.  First, in bringing me to PARC, it gave me the opportunity to learn about and pursue research in social computing.  Also, by demonstrating to me first-hand the power of weak ties, it motivated me to study in depth how information/expertise/social captial are exchanged in social networks.

As I contemplate (re)-starting Stanford in the fall, I think back to the people who made this possible.  Obviously, I am appreciative of family and friends for their support, especially during the times when I was pretty lost.  I am especially thankful to Peter Pirolli, Ed Chi, Brynn, and all of the members of ASC for taking a big chance on an intern with little research experience in social computing but a great deal of interest. Thanks also to Michael Bernstein, who as one of my few close friends to bridge both my personal and academic life, has provided more than his fair share of advice.

I’m excited to start this new chapter in my life, and I’m just as curious as anyone to see where it will lead!