Do you have it in you?

I receive a lot of emails these days from people, asking me to evaluate their University lists, statements of purpose, whether their GRE scores are good or not, etc. While some of them I answer personally, others are redirected to better places like edulix, or suitably to ask better people: I have no idea in blazes how good the University of Toronto is, for example, in civil engineering. But there is a common thing that I need to tell these people: involving the application process and the statement of purpose, in general what it means to become a graduate student as I perceive it now.

The basic point about an SoP is its purpose: what is your purpose in getting an MS or a PhD degree? How much value and priority do you assign to research, to learning, just because it quenches some thirst within you? If you love to do research, to explore and tweak around, it will show through in your daily day-to-day actions. As for example, how dedicatedly can you browse through the archives of endless Yahoo groups before you shoot off a question? Do you love to be down in your college library, oblivious of the time passing by? Do you lose yourself in those books... pick up interesting volumes because you'd just like to see what new is written there? Are you interested in the footnotes, the exceptions... do you love the trivia? Chances are, if the answers to most of the above is yes, you know what I mean. It comes from within: when you follow links, bookmark favourite sites, organise and network like crazy.

Even if you look around yourself in your undergrad college or if you are working, in some colleagues, you'll find the quirky variety who seem to know every little interesting detail: they know, for example, if your graph is looking crooked, what parameter you specified incorrectly. They will not know the details of obscure formulae, but they will know the tricks of using them. How do they do that? I believe these are the potential researchers at work: who explore, tweak around, and don't accept things at face value. They will put in integer values more than +65536 just for the fun of it and see what happens to the C program. They will put in little pieces of funny code in a networking socket program so that the other terminal starts printing just your name and 'messages' for you, and stand aside and watch the fun :) These sparks, these experimenters: they are the true potential researchers. If it was you who was being described just now: just let your heart flow in the SoP.

A final word, for the people who are not sure if they want a PhD: uptil now, you might have been doing your BE or your MSc as a side task. Believe me when I say that at least 50% of the junta who come to an engineering college are there just for the job they'll get afterwards rather than interest in what they'll learn in 4 years. It is not good or bad: it is just not suited to a PhD. I don't say that the priorities will be the exact opposite to a potential PhD person, but knowing stuff will be important. And if you want to sign up for a PhD, you need to understand that the studies will have to be the first priority of your life. Every new concept you learn must be a door that opens in the mind: to areas known and unknown. It must be a sudden whiff of fresh air: a concept that is suddenly cleared, a jumbled jigsaw that suddenly snaps into place. Forget about Orkut, about blogs, about emails and about your love/girlfriend/boyfriend: let your career, your studies be the first love and let the rest be there to help you reach it. Can you bear to live like that: investing 5-6 prime years of your life in pursuit of a happiness that only you will enjoy, a life of a penurious* hermit who only occasionally steps out of the forest to sharpen his axe while he spends the rest of his time chopping wood? Can you do it? You will get to (and need to) sharpen your axe, yes, but you will have to spend most of your time just endlessly chopping wood trying to get that perfect log with the perfect stroke. Do you have it in you?

*A quick update: we don't lose all social and other life because of a PhD: look below for my senior's comment. Also, by penurious, I meant penurious compared to your friends who will be working in companies and earning a lot. Life is not so penurious: you live quite well. :)