Is research background necessary?

We come across tons of success stories every day. The old school ones were lucky enough just to graduate from bachelor's and land their dream jobs in which they spent decades. For younger ones, it is kind of struggle to find what to do for a lifetime career since there are too many things to choose from. I can see my classmates from university and grad school switching jobs very often.

All over the world, the age to start University or College is around 18-19. At that age, we all just want to have fun and don't really care about what real life will be. On one side, it is very cruelly to put so much responsibility on one's shoulder at a very young age, on the other side, after years of changes in education systems, apparently, this is the best way for higher education.

Most of the Universities don't require their Bachelor students to be involved in the research. Only the top students are given a chance to study further and go into good research institutes and learn how to research.

As an active student, being in only top 10 in class and having chance to do research at a very early age due to my language skills, I highly believe everyone should be given a chance to discover that special way of working. It is still not required in most fields to know how to research, however, a researchers way of thinking should be crucial for critical and creative thinking.

How I started my PhD at Hasselt University

After a very long day with administrative work, I received an e-mail on August 29, 2018, regarding a Skype interview for a PhD position which I applied only a few days ago and the deadline was just a day before. I was surprised by the speed of feedback and the welcoming e-mail. The interview was scheduled for a week later.

On September 4, 2018, I had an interview with 2 young professors. They both were super friendly and welcoming. We spoke about technical things as well some nontechnical things. My interview went very good, I was feeling very confident and relaxed. For once, I felt like I said everything I needed to and was myself. At that time, I already was confirmed to Celal Bayar University, where I pursued my bachelors. I also mentioned that during my interview and asked them when to expect to hear from them. They said I will hear from them on the coming Friday which was September 7, 2018.

Around 11 AM on September 7, 2018, I got the good news. I was in tears after the e-mail since I was waiting for such a position. Since then, I am very motivated to work on a PhD with my current colleagues and promoters at Hasselt University.

I will be sharing my previous interviews and details about how it went.

Hasselt University

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Hasselt

The University I am pursuing my PhD in, Hasselt University. It is located in Hasselt, Belgium which is a city in Eastern Belgium.

Even though I found Hasselt University in a common academic job web page, after searching about it, I found that it has some very strong research groups. The group I am a member of, call Construction Engineering Research Group is one of them.

Even though I am only enrolled for 6 months, I cannot imagine a better work and research environment. The structure of a PhD is very fulfilling. As part of the PhD program, as a student, you're involved in doctoral schools, which has certain requirements you need to fulfil within the time of PhD. Some of these requirements are non-technical skills such as ethics, communication etc, however, some are very useful practice requirements such as a min number of publication requirements, conference requirements, teaching assignments etc.

As the first female PhD student, I am working towards accomplishing my goals and providing service to the university.

Here is a link to the University vacancy page, if anyone is interested.

Volunteering in a conference in your undergrad

I remember my freshman (1st) year in bachelors. All we cared about was passing the classes and enjoying free lessons. None of us had what to do after school, and none of us cared either since we had more than 3 years.

On my sophomore (2nd) year, I was going through some family financial problems which lead me to take charge of my life and start earning. At that time, and after having a terrible site summer internship, I thought going into academia was easiest and best path for me.

My passion and hard work helped me get a position and research funding. Beside my research work my advisor encouraged me to volunteer in 1 national and 1 international conference. Here is how my experience went;

1. In the international conference, I met a professor who then became part of my MSc committee in Texas A&M.

2. All faculty from my school recognized me and I built my very first academic network. This network later helped me getting references and getting paper work done easily. Besides that, every time something national or international was going on, I was one of the first students they called to.

3. During the national conference I met many recognized researchers, and one ended up being coworker of my dad from the 90's. You can guess how it helped me stand out in crowd.

4. I learned the research technical slang before even getting bachelors degree.

5. The vision and mission of the conferences motivated me to move forward in hard time in academia.

6. Never paid to attend those conferences and during technical sessions, I could attend the ones I like.

7. Got the goodies bag along with published papers.

These being said, I highly recommend every undergraduate student to take part in such conferences. I believe all academics and graduate students should help young researchers get involved as soon as possible. I think this is the strongest way to get students get involved in research.

Why is good GPA way to PhD?

We all are trying to fit in the system by “trying” to get best ranking, best GPA in school. The second we walk out of University, all people care about is what kind of experience we have. I am in industry for a year and absolutely no one asked me what my GPA was.

Besides my job I am conducting research and decided to start PhD. When it is about school admission, one very important thing is GPA. I have been working on trying to understand this requirement. Just because I can remember bunch of things when my book is closed makes me a great candidate to carry on a 3-4 years of an intense project? My ability to memorize pages of information will help me publish in top journals? My control over 1,5 hours of a well went exam will help me manage my research project time? And last but not least, just because I have or had good GPA will keep me away from PhD depression? Yes, I am asking this questions because I do not have a “good” GPA from my master’s degree and even if I get to a great research university or just a regular one, I will be a researcher for the rest of my life.

There are many successful academics who earned their PhD degrees from “average” universities but had great ideas to change literature in their field. I totally understand that university name is just a title. All you need is a “good” advisor (everyone’s good definition is different) and a “good” project.

With one blog post I can’t change the system, but if I am ever at a position to decide for this, I will only request transcripts to see if they have taken relevant courses to the research project. From my experience in research and industry, I can confidently say that all that matters in you can find a way out from a problem when all the information is open to your access. Only this way intelligence and problem solving skills will grow.

Practise makes it better

As you know, I am a relatively new blogger. I've been writing here since last October and I am posting 2-3 weeks. I always preferred writing over reading and eventually it also changed my reading habits. Besides blogging, I am working on technical papers and descriptions to add calculation reports for my full time job.

A few days ago, a friend ask me to support him with writing. He told me everything he wanted to explain but wasn't sure about how to write all those. The writing he needed to complete had 6 essay question and each question needed to be answer by max 1000 words. With his guidance, it took me 30 minutes to complete the 6 essay questions. Once we were done, he was very satisfied with the piece of work we had.

I also noticed one thing, my writing speed and quality really improved. My favorite time of the day is when I can find time to write. I don't force myself to write certain number of words or anything. We're humans and sometimes it is a great day to write and sometimes not. Whatever is the biggest goal you have, practise always make it better.

Publishing a Paper from your Master's Thesis Part:1

This was an unsolved question on my mind since graduation (Dec 2016). I had few weeks after my defense where I could just write it and get over with it. Instead I chose to party because those were my last days in College Station, Texas and I may not see my friends soon. I do not regret not writing my paper that time, most probably I was not ready to go under another big responsibility such soon and I was dealing with moving, changing continents, culture shock etc.

Months started passing by and my main motivation of not finishing my paper was my advisor was switching jobs and he would never have time to review it. Once you are at an industry job, time passes very fast and you barely know where life is taking you until you came to a point that you are no longer happy where you are. I am not sure if or when I am going back to school, but one thing I know for sure is I am a better person at research than an industry job. I prefer to just stay at a corner and get my work done with less interaction as possible.

Now when I look at my resume/CV I see that gap of not having such a unique line on it. I love the saying "better late than never" so I am back at it. The main question on my mind was, is it really possible to publish from master's thesis. Will I be repeating myself? What are the limitations? I am currently working on these questions and as soon as I find the answers I will share them here along with challanges I faced. 

Why would be industry be VS academia

Even though I have been using the term industry vs academia in my daily life before blogging, lately I started thinking that I may be overlooking at something. Seriously, why would be industry be against academia? If there was no success in academia once upon a time (maybe it wasn't called academia or research and it was just essential for life) there would be no technology. Even today, almost every single successful research invention is converted into an industry business.

I graduated from my masters degree exactly a year ago and because of unexpected situations I went to an industry job. Not only I got the job because I had research experience, also the skills from academia helped me successfully complete my day to day tasks which most of the time included finding 1 sentence of information in a 500+ page codes.

For sometime now I am looking how the PhD hiring process is going in Europe. Speaking for civil engineering, I am very disappointed to see there are almost no fully-paid positions. This makes me think of 3 things:

1. Do we know everything we need to know?

I am not a professor or an expert but I can speak about a few very important gaps in civil engineering. In 21st century we should be putting more effort into development of technology than being satisfied with what we have.

2. Do we have too many PhDs that are unemployed?

PhDs who graduated sometime between 2000-2006 have good academic positions. Assuming someone gets their PhD at 30, this scholar might work in same institute for almost 30 years until retirement. So what is seriously happening to all PhDs that are graduating now?

3. Why does industry companies think PhDs are expensive?

This also includes the idea that PhDs are overqualified for industry jobs. Ofcourse someone straight out from bachelors will be a lot cheaper to hire if you are only looking into industry experience. However, a candidate with masters and PhD has developed many skills overtime that most of the industry worker will not be able to develop in 5-6 years.

So I am sitting here, having an industry job with the dream of getting into a PhD and applying all I know into civil industry.

Let me know what you think of such situation? Is it worth going to research based degrees? Or shall we just be satisfied with what we have?

10 Things to Avoid at Your Very First Job

10 THINGS TO AVOID AT YOUR VERY FIRST JOB

I manage to stay in my first industry job only 8 months. Don't get me wrong, I didn't get fired or had a very bad experience, instead I made all the mistakes below and my colleagues with no self-respect used each one of those against me. I quit my job for good, I learned very valuable practice lessons as well. I promised myself not to make the below mistakes. If you're getting ready for your first job, here are a few advise learned the hard way.

1. Don't be afraid to ask

The question can be as simple as "can you help me connect to the printer" or as something more complicated as "how can I access previous reports for such client". It doesn't feel good when you have to ask 10 questions a day to one specific person because you might feel like you're interrupting them, however, that is the only way you'll overcome those problems.

2. There is no such thing as it is a "false" because you are not experienced. Everyone was at that point once in time

I mentioned "I have no experience" every time I didn't know an answer to a specific question. A few months later when I was able to give right answers, colleagues working under my authority questioned it. The right answer for something you don't know could be "let me look it up to be sure" and if you need go speak about it with someone who can potentially answer or guide you to find an answer.

3. Feel free to speak with your manager / boss on positive and negative things

I was pretty unlucky on this one because my boss was my manager and my senior engineer. I had to be very careful what I tell him because I wasn't sure if the answer would come from my boss, manager or senior engineer. However, I do regret not letting him know how I feel.

4. If you're assigned a work that you cannot over come, try to take it as far as possible and let your senior know what knowledge you need to move forward

When I look back now, I know they were not expecting my to do everything that I eventually figured out how to do. I would stress myself over something that sometimes I didn't even think if I had all the data necessary to move forward. Best way to overcome this is by using previous projects, it can at least give you an idea of where to loop up.

5. Reflect your personality - directly

You're older than 21 years old by the time graduate from basic university degree. We all have positive and negative properties and no one will and no right to judge you over it. If you have that one skill that will move the project forward, don't wait and just take action. It might feel like it will look bad since you are there for a limited time but at the end of the day what matters is if the work is done.

6. Know exactly what they are expecting from you

Yes, you'll read the job description and have an overall idea of what they can expect from you. On the other side you might have to do things that are not directly related to your qualifications. This can be as simple as putting files from all departments together. Make sure to know as much as details as possible.

7. There will be longer days, don't let stress take over your life quality and your health

I am a daughter of a workaholic - who would work 24 hours straight if needed. One piece of advise from him was to work until your job for the day is done. One thing he never told me, maybe he doesn't know, was to know your limits. If you need to work late, of course do. But if you are working late because someone cannot do their job right make it very clear that it is not your job scope.

8. If you really need to take a few days off, don't wait until you are sick. Speak with whoever is in charge, there should be ways around it

This is not something I can do until I feel comfortable with the company and people around. However there are days you just don't want to leave the bed. Sometimes even a couple of hours off on a work day can help you re-fuel and feel a lot better. Make sure to let someone know.

9. Don't get into any agreement that will limit your freedom to leave the company

I always prefer unlimited time agreements. You never know what will bring. You may not like the company, job or simply the people around you. Or all of a sudden something great happens in your personal life and you have to leave the city or country for something better for you. It is also very common for a company to ask you to sign a contract because they paid for you business trip or funded your certification. At this point it is up to you to decide. Even though I didn't have to make a decision on such a topic I would probably prefer "to pay back for X work Y years or pay Z amount". It still limits the freedom up to some extend but still gives you a chance in case things don't work out.

10. Don't take it emotional - Almost no one retires from the company they first worked for

It is your very first job. I was so damn excited because this company invested time and money into me. My first few months I couldn't even think about I can quit this company because I believed they put so much faith me. Yes, they hired you because they thought your skills would help however, every single person in industry can be replaced. Don't think about this the bad way. If you're not happy or satisfied with the conditions you have the right to move on. Like you can find a new job, they can find a new employer.

Why you should have a Researchgate profile

www.researchgate.net

I joined Researchgate only few weeks ago and I really regret not joining earlier. It is a platform where each researcher represents their research work including articles, current and completed research projects, peer reviews, books and conference papers. The most important factor for us, new researchers, is that it gives you very important information for someone you are interested in working with.

I am sure almost everyone had the struggle of finding the best possible advisor to conduct their research degrees. Below are a few factors you should consider, which Researchgate made easier;

1. How active is that person - By this I mean if that person attends one conference a year, or just publishes 1 article in every 2 years and if he/she carries research with international researchers. This clearly shows that how many and which conferences they'll potentially take you to, how much time they put to distribute their research and during your studies or after the doors they can potentially open you.
2. Continuity in one research field - This can be very important for a new researcher. If a person you are looking at has many articles and conference papers on future dates, it clearly shows that there is funding in that part of field. You can take it further and improve the literature.
3. Quality of their research - Even though I didn't like use the word quality for such a unique piece of work, depending on the field and timing some research is out date or has been done so many times that no one wants to cite. This could be an interesting point to keep on mind. 
4. Easy access to research - Sometimes it is hard to find one specific paper or to find previous research of someone that wrote a very interesting paper once upon a time. If you're lucky enough that such person has a profile, you can access (sometimes you have to ask for it) such information and other papers supporting it very easily.

Researchgate has been a very useful database for me and I highly recommend anyone to have it.

Annotated Bibliography

Since I wrote about importance of reading in research on my last article, I believe this is the right time to write about annotated bibliography. For those of you who are in research many years this is not something new. I am writing this specially to those who are new in research. Even if you want to end up in academia or become an industry engineer following latest technology you should be reading constantly. Best way to keep track of what you read and what is going on is to keep annotated bibliography.

My annotated bibliography is on a google word document. It has the author, year, subject and paper name or conference name respectively, my advisor wanted me to follow Chicago style. Once I read a paper, I write a paragraph summary of the paper, as the word describes it self, annotate. I use my words as much as possible to avoid plagiarism in case I will need to add it to my paper. After the summary, I try to write a few sentences of how the paper/ research could be improved. This helps me get a better idea of what I could potentially add to my research. Sometimes it is a great point to start. In research what has been done before seems very important but what is missing is way more important for us, young researchers.

Another benefit i found of an annotated bibliography is you can keep track of what each researcher did. Sometimes you will see same authors publish very similar information in few articles within the same years with some improved comments. Even though I believe each paper published must have something unique, this shows a way to get most out of one project.

I hope this will help some of you have better way to organize your research library. Good luck!

Importance of Reading in Research

This is one of my favorite topics to speak about also in my personal life. I was raised by parents who were reading on daily basis. One thing they couldn't get me to do as a hobby was reading. Yes, I hated reading when I was a child. When I look back now, I am guessing it could be hidden dyslexia I have (not proved). Both of my parents were really worried and hardly believed that I wouldn't be successful at school. After completing 5th grade in Turkey and moving to Abu Dhabi (because of my dads work), and staring at The Cambridge High School I had better answers for myself. I didn't speak much English when I first started grade 6 and I could barely communicate with anyone or catch up with classes. One day one of our teachers were absent and the history teacher covered up for the math class. He was asking random math questions and even with my limited English, I was the only one who answered all of the questions. That day I realized that numbers were international and you could communicate with anyone using numbers. After that day I was so sure it wasn't the letters that was going to save my life. I only read when I really had to and if there was a very interesting reading book my best friends would recommend a couple of times.

Due to my interest in math and science I never had too much reading. It was manageable until I started my masters and decided to go for the thesis option. First thing my advisor wanted was start looking for papers that had the key words of my interest. The second step was to find lack of information in such topic. This exactly meant read anything you find and process the information and decide if it would be useful for my research. I spent 12-15 months of my masters period just reading and trying to sort out the right information. For me that was the most painful part of research until I came to a point where I sat down and wrote my 150 pages of thesis in less than a month with very minor corrections.

Now I am 25 with masters degree and guess what, if it is not interesting (research related or a reading book) I would just read 10 pages and never touch that book again. Using fast reading techniques and skipping unrelated part of papers (to my research), I am trying to keep the habit of reading as much as possible. Another very important point is, to be a good research writer, knowledge on such topic is very important and only way to get there is to know every tiny bit of research and to site the right information at the right point.