Jehan Yang

How to Adjust to College Life

2022-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

College is like nothing you have ever experienced. You are going to a new location, meeting all-new people, and paying from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars for this new experience right out of grade school.

One of the most difficult parts of college is adjusting to the new environment. Many new students get home sick, imposter syndrome, or feel that they don’t fit into the new environment. My own experience going to UC Berkeley from high school was an arduous one. Although it is a great school and I think it does many things right, it is also a large public school with highly intense classes. Especially challenging is a school like UC Berkeley for those that come from lower-income or first-generation backgrounds into STEM.

Undoubtedly, adjusting to life at university is difficult, but it is one of the most important ways to succeed in college–for your career, your enjoyment, and your mental health. Here are some aspects of adjusting to life in university I think is really important to know:

Small, Medium, and Big Schools

I’ve had the pleasant opportunity to attend school at a large school (UC Berkeley), a small school (Caltech), and a medium-sized school (Carnegie Mellon), and I think the size of a school really does change how your college experience will be.

From my experience and what I have heard, the social life at a small school can be kind of tricky. As a mentor of mine who went to Harvey Mudd College, a small renowned STEM college near Los Angeles, once put it,

everyone will know everything about everyone, and that can be too much information.

Dorms or (“Houses/Hovses” at Caltech) tend to be the places where you meet your first set of people you may want to hang out with. From what I have heard from a school like Caltech, a lot of the social life really does occur more within the dorm. At first, the school will tend to arrange some socials, and some students or clubs may soon take over arranging some fun adventures where you’ll be leaving from your common location—out to restaurants, karaoke bars, picnics, etc.

Related to that, as you begin adjusting to college, I think it’s a good idea to go to as many social opportunities as possible where you have a chance to see a lot of people. This will depend a lot on the person you are and the people you happen to meet, but it may be easier or harder for you to find people that you have things in common with, such as whether the people you have met so far like going to parties, like playing the video or board games you play, or were raised in a similar culture. As you might imagine, if you are a minority in some ways and especially at a small school, you might need more time to keep trying to find more people to find the ones you’ll click with, since you might not be as involved or comfortable with the culture of the majority.

A large school has the benefit of a much bigger pool of people you may click with and befriend, which can make the friend search a bit easier. However, there is the issue of “falling through the cracks” at a large school, since there are so many students. Due to the size of larger schools, people may move on quickly and “forget” about some of the people that they don’t see as often. At a small school, oftentimes you’ll see the same people over and over again in the same campus, dorms, and classes, which can make it easier to not be forgotten by some of your friend precursors/acquaintences.

One interesting paradox of social life is that on average, your friends are more social than you. This is due to those friends you know who are the “connectors”, who are more likely to make more friends than the average person they befriend, which may include you. Due to this reason, don’t fall into the trap of thinking you are really anti-social compared to some of your friends. In my opinion, I think having just 2-4 really good friends in a new environment is all you need to enjoy yourself, but feel free to be friendly and talk with a lot more people.

In any social situation, remember it is a two-way commitment (although it may settle to become one person arranging more of the tagups and hangouts), so you will have to put yourself out there to see whether other people would like to do activities with you.

College Clubs

Clubs are an underrated way to create a great social life in college. There tends to be two major types of clubs, social/cultural clubs and technical/professional clubs, and a spectrum of clubs in between. I will mention that at many smaller schools, club culture may be much less active, which is unfortunate, but there may be more social events in other places, such as dorms, majors, and even research groups. After all, if you are at a small school, there may be only so many students interested enough in a culture or idea to lead many social events, cultural shows, and build seasons. This can be especially the case if you are interested in niche topics, for example, Taiwanese-American social events, MMA, or FSAE racing.

Above a certain size of school, say 5,000 undergraduate students, there tends to be the critical mass necessary for quite a few social and cultural clubs, and clubs that may require more bring-up (martial arts clubs, race and rocket teams, entrepreneurship clubs, etc.). I would recommend all undergraduates to join some club that they like. It is especially nice to join at least one technical/professional club where your interests match that of the club, and you like the people there. It can help your career because you get practical experience early on, and you have plenty of connections with people that tend to be driven and interested in work that you want to do. Joining a social/cultural club is also a really nice experience since you tend to be able to find friendly folk that would like to do some fun activities together.

Sport clubs can also be fun, good for your body, and be very social. Since you will be a visible part of the game, you won’t possibly be left in the corner. Whovever you are at whatever level you are, people will tend to root for your improvement (unless the club is toxic, which may happen occasionally). For those that want to try some beginner-friendly clubs that involve exercise, joining dance teams and ultimate frisbee tends to be quite accessible, fun, and social experiences.

Dorm Life

Dorm life can be pretty hit or miss. Although there is the benefit of proximity, the people the school chooses for you to be close to can be random, and that may make it hard for you to find the people in the set that you click with. However, having a good set of friends near where you live can be really beneficial. Having casual encounters will be much easier, which is one of the fastest ways for people to build rapport. You can also help each other out much more easily, for example, when you forget your keys, or want to help each other work on homework. It is also easier to be invited to events, since you’ll be seeing people casually enough and be on people’s minds or be seen as they head out to grab food or go to a party.

Research Life and Graduate Students

At research universities, there is a hidden but bustling world where people are producing knowledge and conclusions for all the world to know. This is the research world.

The research world tends to be where graduate students spend most of their time since many of them are hired to produce more papers for the general benefit of humankind. Therefore, it may be intimidating for undergraduates to access working in a lab, since they are often part-time workers in a full-time world. However, many graduate students used to be undergraduates working in a lab, therefore it is essential that as an undergraduate you find a research lab working on an interesting topic and where you like working with the people in the lab.

The biggest tip I can give about undergraduates in the lab is that they should come into lab often. The more visible you are, the more casual interactions you can have with those in the lab, and the harder working you will seem (which graduate students tend to respect a lot from an undergraduate).

Graduate students may seem intimidating, however, many of them are there to help you. Sometimes, graduate students can be intense and busy, but in a good lab environment, the graduate students should respect their undergraduate colleagues a lot and be friendly to them. It’s a good idea before you join a lab that you figure out how the social life is in the lab and whether you feel able to connect with a number of graduate students—they are very valuable resources to you since they have solved some very similar problems to the ones you are figuring out.

New Standards

For everyone coming to a new university, you may be placed somewhere else than what you were used to on the grading curve. More likely than not if you are going to a “target” or “reach” school, you will be placed on a lower percentile than you were used to in high school. For a number of people, this is devestating, since the grades you are getting now are lower.

I would recommend being aware of the way the university admissions system works, which means that many elite schools scrape off a bit of the top percentile of students from high schools all around the world, and that although it might be hard to recognize, even if you are not making grades that are as good as you were used to, you are still a very strong student. Many times, students that end up still being on the top of the curve come from some of the most elite high schools in the US or have quite privileged backgrounds.

Although it’s not quite fair that you are now being compared to these students, especially if you come from a lower-income background, this is unfortunately the way the university system is arranged. It is important to be able to make connections with everyone, including these very strong students, and to do your best to adjust to the higher standards that classes will hold you to. See my blog post “Surviving at UC Berkeley and Elsewhere” for some tips on how to become a stronger student in your university.

Surviving Classes at UC Berkeley and Elsewhere

2022-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

Dealing with Common Pitfalls of University Education 🎓

Inevitably, to earn a university degree, you’ll have to take university classes. Some university classes can be incredibly tough—the material can be conceptually arcane, the labwork so time-intensive that you spend several weekends and evenings working, and the exams difficult and extensive enough to throw the whole class for a loop.

However, there are also some common pitfalls with the way university classes are taught that come from systematic roots at R1 research institutions. R1s are those universities classified as having “Very High Research Activity”, and that also tends to be their specialization and focus. Therefore (to be more blunt) many classes become a sidenote for professors and graduate students to teach, whereas their research is their main locus of focus.

The bulk of the classes I’ve taken are in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science at UC Berkeley, Caltech, and Carnegie Mellon University. Although most of my college education comes from R1 research institutions (and some from community college), I still appreciate the R1 system for what it is. Incredible research is done by the very same professors teaching your classes, and they are often expert scientists in the very fields that they’re teaching. The way these professors teach can tend to be more research focused—meaning more theoretical and more mathematical than most students will use on a day-to-day basis in their careers—however, having the ability to think and solve problems the way research professors and grad students do can be a valuable skillset.

Still, this does not mean that professors and grad students can’t improve the way they teach, and I would argue there are very common pitfalls in the ways that professors and graduate students teach. The following are some ways to help deal with these common issues:

🔬 Pitfall 1: Professors and Grad Students have Expert Amnesia

Expert amnesia is the concept that experts in any subject have difficulty remembering how they learned the subject for the first time, and especially how difficult it was to do so. This common pitfall means professors and grad students who are not careful will introduce ideas in a way that is not optimized for a beginner, but optimized for someone with a lot of experience in the field. This means that university educators tend to have a big blind spot in properly introducing ideas. These experts may also use field conventions that are common in their fields, such as variable names without a proper introduction to the notation that may help make it more intuitive for the student.

Solution: As soon as you can for a new concept, read the Wikipedia page or other basic external source. It will most often help to read the definition carefully, remember it, and see some examples.

When professors are aware of this pitfall, they will be careful about introducing a concept. They will make sure the definition is clearly stated. They will also ensure the new concept is illustrated by good examples, especially when there are clarifying differences between each case. It also helps when they take their time with these introductions. You’ll often see professors thoughtfully reintroduce concepts and even notation, at least a couple of times, especially throughout multiple lectures. Something like:

As a reminder, F_x means df/dx in optimization/differential equations as a shorthand,

would help make a lecture more clear for more students. It’s common for students to not hear an introduction the first time since it really is hard to focus well for an hour or more. I have noticed that some professors get so used to reintroducing ideas, that they start doing so in conversation.

🚀 Pitfall 2: Professors Tend to Teach Fast

This is a consequence of expert amnesia, and the professor’s interests in the more advanced/non-trivial parts of the lecture. The parts professors are more interested in teaching tends to be the parts that are non-trivial to them, so classes can tend to be more difficult as a result. Professors also like to fit more material into their lectures. They seem to want you to know as much as they do, although they have several years more experience. Feeling that a class’s pace is fast is a common cause of imposter syndrome, and you really shouldn’t feel bad since it’s often an error by the ones who designed the curriculum or those who didn’t define the prerequisites well.

Solution: Same as above. You’ll have to be introduced to the idea well, and you can often do this well through Wikipedia, or a good Youtube video. It also doesn’t hurt to tell the professor that they are going a bit too fast. This can be done naturally by asking questions during class, although you shouldn’t ask too many as too bring the lecture to a standstill.

✏️ Pitfall 3: Mistakes on the Whiteboard or Unclear Handwriting

Anyone will make mistakes when teaching, especially when writing in real time. These inevitable typos are something to be aware of. They can be really confusing to a student.

In a related matter, many educators that teach math at the university level have pretty unclear handwriting that can make it easier to make mistakes. It likely comes from writing quickly as a habit in order to solve their problems very quickly. Conversely, from my experience, a professor with good handwriting is a breath of fresh air since there is less cognitive load in deciphering the handwriting.

Solution: The solution here is to look up a different source as soon as you can about something you found ambiguous, or see as a mistake. It will also often help everyone if you can point out a typo in real-time in class (you’ll also be paying more attention, which is a time-effective habit in lecture). If you are not able to do so in real time, you can ask the professor after class too. Asking for this clarification will inevitably be helpful for your understanding while you have the professor’s time.

🖇️ Pitfall 4: Vague Problem Sets

Oftentimes, problem sets are vague in the way that they are written. This occurs because the professor is used to their field to the degree that they know what the standard assumptions are when they write questions. From my experience, this is a common problem in some electrical engineering classes, although it certainly occurs in other classes.

You don’t want your grade to be based off of chance, so you should try to resolve such ambiguities.

Solution: Ask the TA or professor exactly what they mean in the question. Use office hours, Piazza, or email to do so. This can often mean starting your problem sets early enough to know what looks ambiguous, since figuring out the ambiguity from a TA or professor may take more than a day and office hour times can be limited. You may also ask your peers how they interpret the question, since some of your peers may have more experience in the field and are more likely to make the correct assumptions.

📚 Pitfall 5: Assumption of Student Background

Oftentimes, professors assume the background of most of their students are much stronger than they are, even in introductory classes. However, students in any class always come from all sorts of backgrounds. Professors tend to be some of the stronger students when they were at university, so they may be biased toward tailoring the way to teach to stronger students.

Solution: Oftentimes, it will help to build up your background as much as you can, and to do some scouting in advance on how difficult the class will be for someone of your background (e.g., if you don’t have a strong background in linear algebra, will you be fine in this class?). You can also talk to the professor in advance about your concerns based on your background, and they may be more than willing to help out in that case.

💬 Pitfall 6: How Academia Communicates

Unique to any new environment is the way people communicate, which includes etiquette and a number of unspoken rules. Professors and teaching assistants tend to be pretty busy. They schedule many a meeting in order to meet with collaborators to design new research projects, progress on research tasks, and just talk literature with their peers. At many R1 universities, research really does tend to be the priority, and that can be the priority with a lot of those paid by the university. Due to busyness, many professors I know tend to not be very responsive by email. Even many graduate students are not. Communication channels that people use does differ from person to person, and even the days or weeks when they are responsive can differ (due to paper deadlines).

Solution: Do your best to be persistent about emailing professors or TAs when you need help. They understand that they need to be responsive to students, however there are certainly times in which many miss emails due to the high rate of emails many professors or TAs can receive. Alternatively, if you have difficulty accessing a professor, finding a graduate student that they work closely with (someone in their lab) may be the better route. The professor tends to talk to the graduate students in their lab a lot, especially through channels that are less saturated for the professor, such as Slack. Meeting students or professors through office hours are a good route, since these are times they dedicated to be open to anyone that goes to their office hours. There are many times where even graduate students try to find their professors during office hours since they know it’s a good time they can get undivided attention for at least 15 minutes when a discussion of length is useful for you.

I added this section in response to a suggestion by someone pursuing a Masters in Education. Thanks for the suggestion!

First Things To Do As A PhD Student

2022-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

I recently moved from Pasadena in California to Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. As you can imagine, it was a big move! 🚙 I drove across several thousand miles of deserts and forests to arrive in the old, mid-sized city surrounded by mountains and rivers–the renowned city of steel on the east coast.

As I settled in to my move, I realized there were a number of things that I could do to start again more strongly as a student. After all, everyone starts as a new kind of student over and over again, so everyone gets some practice. But as a PhD student who recently started as an MS student, I had a good idea of what I could do better starting as a graduate student again. And as any good student should do, I decided to take notes of those things I thought most important. It’s not every year you can start as a PhD student starting in these challenging, post-global-pandemic times. Maybe it’s a history worth recording?

In no particular order, here are my list of a couple great things to do a couple weeks after you arrive in your new city and new lab as a PhD student:

Meet your labmates

Throughout your PhD, your labmates are some of the people you will interact with the most. It’s important to build those connections early on so they know who you are, and you know who they are. Lab mates are valuable to know since they are subject matter experts in very related fields, and they are super accessible to you. You can see them in the lab or office space and pick their minds to get a good idea of some issues and solutions you’ll be facing very soon in research and in courses.

Labmates are also connections who you’ll know professionally for a long time even after graduation as they all go their separate paths as researchers, policymakers, managers, etc. It’s a great idea to build a strong connection to them as you’ll have a relationship that is valuable for many years to come.

The golden time to meet them is the first couple weeks, or ideally even a couple weeks before school since the stress of classes won’t be bothering anyone at this point when you grab lunch or get a tour of the lab with your experienced colleagues.

Meet other people in your program

Similar to the above section, people in your program are subject matter experts in very related subfields. Although they won’t be as accessible as your own labmates, they are usually more than happy to help you out with a couple of days notice. Again, these connections will be very valuable to you for many years to come. It’s also nice to have a bigger group of people since you’ll know a more diverse group of people. For many people, having a diverse group of people you can potentially connect to can also be very benefical socially, as you’ll be more likely to find people that you have more in common with.

Again, you should try to meet other people within the first couple of weeks. It is not the worst if you don’t however, as there will potentially be more times in the future to meet the plenty of people in your program or even department (if you want to expand your scope).

Allocate extra time for trainings, literature review, initial meetings, etc.

Note that when you first start graduate school, you’ll be doing some things that take some extra time. At the same time, classes will usually be a bit easier at the beginning. Use this time to knock out your trainings (safety, diversity, research ethics, etc.) and to do plenty of literature review. One thing I learned as a PhD student is that any good PhD student knows the literature in their field very well, so they can propose new ideas that can potentially be published, and discuss new ideas with other students or faculty.

My professor said recently:

the first couple of weeks are for you to read 100 papers

which scared me at first. However, reading papers doesn’t necessarily mean reading every word. Oftentimes, by reading the abstract, the pictures, and the conclusion, you can get a ton of applicable information out of the paper. Reading the introduction can help you find other papers or understand the state of the field at the time of the paper, and reading parts of the methods can get you an idea of what similar techniques can be used for you–but it’s definitely optional and a case-by-case basis when you need to read those.

Find or make a study group

For any tough class, it’s a great idea to form a study group. Two life hacks for getting good grades in classes is 1) to work together and check your work with other students, and 2) ask your TAs questions during office hours and check your answers. All of these are constrained by what is allowed in the collaboration policy of course, but there is a reason those rules exist—it can sometimes be too easy to pull answers from some of your study friends, which often means you don’t learn as much. But they do constrain some of the most efficient ways to study and get good grades in your classes. Of course, you should try to get some work done yourself, however, when you get stuck, it is often a great idea to reach out for help so you don’t get trapped in an unnecessary time sink where you are throwing ideas at a brick wall, when you might have just missed one negative sign or just don’t know of a well-known method that some other people have found somewhere.

Study groups are also great ways to build rapport with people in your program as you will be struggling through problem sets together for many hours. It also makes for a good excuse to socialize a bit, especially when you have fellow PhD students who are hard at work for many hours of the day.

Get your things

Two great ways to get things as a poor PhD student is 1) to use Buy Nothing groups, which as of 2022, are popular local Facebook groups that have many locals giving away things that they may not need anymore and 2) buy a 3D printer to print odds and ends in case you need them. Buy Nothing groups are super useful, and I think the only reason they aren’t used more is because they are not well known and it sounds too good to be true. I have received plenty of great furniture on Buy Nothing for free within a 0.5 mile radius, and it is often from other students who are moving out, or families who live nearby giving away their extra goods. As a PhD student, your stipend won’t be very high. Therefore, saving hundreds of dollars on furniture will be very useful for you to be able to buy some extra niceties for yourself when you can.

A 3D printer is also a nice way to save some money, or at least potentially be environmentally friendly. Functional 3D prints are able to get you what you need pretty quickly. For example, I have printed out command hooks, coasters, hair catchers, and soap holders—all in nice designs that I can customize. I would recommend if you have some CAD knowledge to buy a 3D printer, although it will take some setup and trial and error to get a good workflow.

Set up a nice office space

One thing a lot of people learned from COVID is that setting up a good workspace for yourself can mean the difference between being efficient and comfortable, or being inefficient and miserable when working. It’s a good idea to treat yourself to some productivity goods when you can, such as a big desk, a nice keyboard and mouse, as many monitors as you can, a fast computer, etc. Although I’m not the best at this, it’s also a great idea to decorate your space. Make it a nice space with some succulents, posters, and sticky notes so that your space is personal and makes you happy to go and get started working.

Find a good advisor

If you haven’t found your advisor yet, it’s critical that you find a good one for yourself. Your advisor determines when you graduate, how often you need to publish, and oftentimes how many hours you’ll be working. They also determine the types of projects you’ll be working on. Make the time to find your best advisor fit by talking to plenty of other graduate students on the style of the advisor, doing your research on the field of research the advisor studies (maybe their research is more suited to industry, or maybe to academia), and talking to a variety of advisors themselves.

Because your advisor is such an important aspect to figure out as a PhD student, it’s really ideal to figure out your advisor before school starts, or at least have a shortlist in mind. In my opinion, rotation programs are not the best, especially when you are already coming in with an MS. Use your connections with other students to figure out how the advisor is, and whether there are any red flags you can deal with before you make the fateful decision of matching with your new long-term boss. As intense of a relationship as a PhD advisor is, it can also be a great celebration of who you are as a researcher since you’ll be starting anew with research, new labmates, and a new relationship to research.

Find a sport (healthy body, healthy mind)

It’s a great idea to find a sport you like. For graduate students, going to the gym is a good idea for training your strength through weight training or your cardio through machines. There will also be group classes, such as yoga or kickboxing for you to learn some skills to help improve your flexibility and your explosiveness.

To connect with other graduate students, joining a sport club is a great idea. Some clubs that make it easy to meet new people are volleyball, tennis, soccer, basketball, or even rugby. CMU happens to have a great number of martial arts clubs, like MMA, grappling, karate, and others. There is also a good number of dance teams, which is usually a great social experience.

Get to know your city

Many people I talk to outside of Pittsburgh don’t know Pittsburgh very well, but it’s a great city to be a student. It is very walkable, dense enough to be bikeable, and has good public transport. There are also a good number of great nearby restaurants and bars.

The city you live in will be a very important part of your life, so make sure you know it well so you know where to relax, where to propose socials, and what you can do when you’re not just doing research!