DISSERTATION DIVA.COM

Stanford PhD Tells All

Q & A With Recent PhDs #2
Holmes Hummel, PhD, 2007, Stanford University
Exploring Global Energy Scenarios

Holmes Hummel recently completed the Interdisciplinary PhD Program  in Environment and Resources at Stanford University. I interviewed Holmes by telephone in San Francisco. This is the second in our series of interviews with recent PhDs.

<Photo caption: Holmes Hummel presenting at the BP Clean Energy Center in Bejing, 2006

Liena Vayzman:  Hi, Holmes. Congratulations! What was the title of your dissertation?

Holmes Hummel: Wait a second...the title page of my dissertation is in my recycle bin. OK, here it is: "Interpreting Global Energy and Emission Scenarios: Methods for Understanding and Communicating Policy Insights." That's the official name... but all of the talks I'm giving based on it are called "Technology and Policy Implications of Global Energy Scenarios on Stabilizing Climate Change." The reason for the difference is that my dissertation is focused on techniques but that would put an audience to sleep unless they do that for a living. In other words, I was investigating specific analytical tools for my research but what people want to know about is what I found using these tools.

LV: In layperson's terms, what did you find?

HH: I found that the potential for energy efficiency improvements is typically underestimated.  What that means is that the statements about how much energy humans will need in the future can be overstated  and leads us to believe that we need many more high-stakes power plants even before we have taken advantage of all the existing efficiency opportunities.

LV: Where does this insight fall, for example, in relation to Al Gore's film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth?

HH: It is literally at the very end of the film, where he uses a type of global energy scenario to show how emissions can be contained in the future. There are hundreds of scenarios out there.  My dissertation was about using two techniques to put those results into a common framework for initial comarison and interpretation. This is big problem for policy analysts. Investigating global energy scenarios from a wide range sources, I find that the potential for energy efficiency is greater than Gore suggest, which challenges the resigned attitude towards high-stakes technologies like nuclear power and carbon sequestration.

LV: How much time exactly did you spend on your PhD?   

HH: My PhD start to finish was 4.25 years. My writing was 18 months.

LV: That’s relatively quick, even for the sciences. What helped you stay motivated and focused?

HH: I had a goal of being eligible for a congressional science fellowship awarded by AAAS, the leading science organization in the country. I had to finish by Dec the 20th.  So I finished by Dec. 17th. 

LV: How did you put the pedal to the metal?

HH: Actually, I went to China, through a National Science Foundation study program for East Asia (EAPSI). I worked at the Institute for Energy, Environment and Economy in Bejing, which gave me an incredible level of focus on my task. I was in the company of some very talented researchers who are motivated to address energy issues in China. It gave me motivation to be surrounded by their work ethic.

LV: What helped you complete the writing process when you got back to the States?

HH: I unplugged my laptop from the Internet! That was the most important thing. It prevented anyone form reaching me and gave me more control for when I responded to emails. I needed the duration of attention and level of focus.

LV: Can you talk about how you dealt a major challenge in your dissertation process?

HH: I can tell you about something that happened in September,  3 months before I was scheduled to defend my dissertation.  I took my work to the research institution that leads my field and I begged my toughest critics to help me understand the weaknesses in my analysis and the extra areas I needed to cover. After that, I needed every minute from leaving their shop to my submission date to write.

LV: I like that strategy. That is an amazingly direct way to anticipate criticism and to deal with it head on. I often suggest dissertation writers in any field anticipate their critics' responses and address them in the dissertation.

HH: It was daunting. Preparing for that presentation was an incredibly intense task. After my visit, the writing rolled. I knew which questions I was trying to answer and in what order.

LV: What are you doing now in your career?

HH: I have received the one of the two congressional science fellowships from AAAS in Washington DC, the goal that motivated my dissertation completion process.

LV: Excellent! Good luck on Capitol Hill! Thank you for sharing your experience and insights.

HH: I'm glad it's over... and I'm glad for all the people who have the benefit of your insights!

Inner Voice: Q&A with Julia Mossbridge

First in our series of interviews with recent PhDs. Julia Mossbridge is a neuroscientist and author of Unfolding: The Perpetual Science of Your Soul's Work.

Liena Vayzman: You just finished your PhD in Neuroscience at Northwestern. What kinds of things helped you get through the process when it was most challenging?

Julia Mossbridge: Number one: Friends. And family and anyone that's close enough to talk to about this stuff. My advisor and the rest of the lab were very helpful, too. Plus, I was seeing a therapist and that was really helpful. I'd been seeing him for other things but having that weekly appointment was helpful.

LV: I see the dissertation experience as a spiritual challenge, a vision quest, a journey. Do you share this view, and if so, what did you learn on this quest in terms of personal transformation?

JM: Absolutely!  I learned way more than just writing my dissertation. The biggest lesson that tranformed me that I learned was: Always listen to your inner voice because it never steers you wrong. This applies to pretty much everything. When there was ambiguity -- for example, "Should I talk to my advisor about this issue now or later?" -- I'd tune into my inner voice.   

LV: How did you tune in to your inner voice during times of stress?

JM: Sometimes I couldn't hear it. I developed a routine of working out 6 days a week and after I worked out I calmed down a bit and that allowed me to hear it. Also, writing. I journaled all the time. Writing articles calmed me down. I'd say having any mode of creative expression; for me it was writing. I knew the PhD would take a long time, and I know my personality.  I have to change activities all the time. I can't do the same thing for 8 years! I need intense hobbies, so one of my hobbies was writing a book, Unfolding. I was really trying to integrate my interest in spiritual / personal growth stuff with science. I feel like there's a lack of integration between the two things.

LV: How long did your PhD process take?

JM: Eight years, but I took one year off to care for my son full time, and a couple of the years were part time, so probably it condensed down to five years.  I'd been in grad school before. I'd droppped out after my qualifying exams. When I left I said I'd never do science again, but then I missed it. I realized I needed to integrate my interest in spirituality and personal growth with science.

LV: Your dissertation was about listening. It's interesting to me that your advice to listen to your inner voice seems to relate to your topic of auditory perception. 

JM: I can see how you're making that link. But my dissertation was about people listening to buzzers and clicks. The title is "Perceptual Learning of Auditory Relative-Timing Tasks." 

LV: I'm fascinated by how people's dissertation topics relate to other parts of their lives, and how the process is one of learning about one's self on deeper levels. I love that that the "work" of your dissertation was about listening, literally and metaphorically.

JM: There's a whole other piece on how to manage motherhood with dissertation that I can tell you about next time. I had a kid in my second year in grad school. Single Mom Gets Her PhD -- that's my little story.

Julia Mossbridge is the author of Unfolding: The Perpetual Science of Your Soul's Work (New World Library, 2002), which she wrote as a "serious hobby" while completing her PhD in Neuroscience at Northwestern University (2006). Mossbridge's dissertation examined the relationships between the neural circuitry underlying four auditory relative-timing tasks. A relative-timing task is one in which the position in time of one perceptual event (sound A) is judged relative to another perceptual event (sound B). For example, sounds A and B can be simultaneous or non-simultaneous. If they are not simultaneous, then the order of the sounds can be determined. The results showed that the neural circuitry affected by training on auditory relative-timing tasks is, for the most part, highly specialized, even to the extent that learning to judge the order of sounds does not help you learn to determine whether or not the same sounds were simultaneous. One implication of these results is that there does not appear to be a single psychological "clock" that counts perceptual events and tracks them over time.

"There is no perfect time to write. There is only now."

This past week, the Dissertation Diva helped two people to the finish line. (Congratulations to them!) October 1 -- this year, Monday October 2 -- marks an official deadline at some graduate schools for submission of the dissertation for a December PhD degree. Experiencing the final week of the process always strengthens my belief that regular, consistent, focused writing over a long period of time is what leads to a finished book-length project. Procrastination never pays. Eventually, the sand falls through the hourglass and the real due date is upon you.  Dissertation writers who have written regularly, consistently, who fought procrastination tooth and claw on a daily basis, get to that last week with only minor edits to do. Proofreading. Pagination. Formatting. But no writing that needs to be done the week before the entire dissertation is due.

I wanted to impress upon those of you in the writing stage the importance of consistent, regular writing sessions (versus the 11th hour kind of writing). I know that writers come up with all sorts of excuses why NOW is not the best time to write.  Perhaps you think you need to have more research done. Or you want more direction from your advisor. Or you're not inspired. The chair isn't comfortable. The weather is too gloomy. Too sunny. It's too loud. Too quiet. Too much data. Too little. Boring. Stalled. Tired. Overwhelmed. Overdue. All those reasons for not writing something today, right now, may be true. These reasons pull on you and convince you to wait for some future moment, when the weather is ideal, your ideas magically align in your brain into preformed complete paragraphs, and your advisor provides you with perfect, timely feedback. You are living in the future imaginary, instead of the real, difficult present.

To return you to the present, I want to share this quote by author Barbara Kingsolver:

"There is no perfect time to write. There is only now."   

Succint inspiration. There is only now. As in today, right after you finish reading this post for inspiration.  Write what you know about your topic, and what you don't know. Write about what you've read, and what you want to read. Write about how hard it is to write. Write your thoughts, questions, doubts, fears, and inklings about your topic. Seize the present. Write. Daily. Write. Now.