Instead of reading papers, last night, Murat and I engaged in an interesting discussion on skills, traits, and qualities needed for a PhD. This discussion came as a follow-up to Murat’s recent blog on “The Invisible Curriculum of Research.” In his blog, Murat discusses “Curiosity, Clarity, Craft, Community, and Courage” as skills/qualities of a good researcher.

We have covered several subtopics, including our background and our paths to graduate school and academia. We discussed the qualities required for success while pursuing a PhD. And mentioned a few bad traits as well. I won’t summarize the entire chat, but here are some themes from the “5 Cs.”

The Taste and Curiosity

The topic of research taste was one of the major talking points. It is easy to find a problem to work on and spend years working on it. But is this problem actually worth working on? The taste research plays a big role in successful projects/papers, as one needs to ask just the right questions at just the right level of abstraction for the research to be impactful. You make solutions too abstract, potentially missing significant real-world consequences. Going too deep and specific can bog you down with minutiae that may not matter to many, making research less applicable or transferable. But how does one develop taste? The closest we got to is that taste is a matter of experience, but it is also somewhat individualistic. Curiosity can enhance one’s taste — it prompts us to ask questions and probe our own thinking. But that curiosity can be broad or deep. Having “deep” curiosity may help one delve deeper into a problem without necessarily seeing the big picture. The broad curiosity is about asking questions before diving deep. For broad curiosity to work and develop, we need one more skill — the ability to stop. Knowing when to stop is a super useful skill. A good stopping point allows re-accessing the research problem to determine whether it needs a diversion and broadening, continuation and deepening, or even quitting on it. A bad stopping point (or no stopping points at all) can derail projects by over-focusing on less critical (to the community) aspects of the problem.

Community

Community plays a significant role in shaping research preferences. It rubs on you if you are “hanging out with the right gang of researchers.” Contributing to the community is also a way to impart your taste into the collective. Community is also a strange thing for academics, as we tend to be more territorial and competitive (h-scores, publications, grants, etc.), since that competition is a significant portion of what determines academics’ success in the eyes of other academics (and promotion committees).

Craft & Clarity

Writing is the skill to develop. Writing is not just a way to transmit knowledge; it is a thinking tool. Having clarity in writing translates to clarity in thinking. That in turn translates to better questions and builds “taste.” And of course, who does not like a well-written paper (except Reviewer 2, who may think that if they understood a paper, it may mean it is too simple and not “novel” enough)?

Reading is another obvious skill of the craft. And guess what, it is also about asking questions! Reading papers is not just information intake; it is a process of talking and debating the papers. When I read the paper, I often find myself thinking about doing the research the authors have done, and what I’d be doing if I were in their shoes.

Courage

Projects and papers will fail. Pursuing a PhD takes courage to face failures. Many times. Over and over again. A PhD breaks and then reshapes a person. We also need courage to undertake more ambitious projects, or those that lie outside our comfort zone (or that of our advisors).