After a year of being in Chicago, I moved to a new apartment and started a new year. This should have been a happy event, but as I returned the key to the apartment front desk, a mix of complex emotions flooded my heart.
That key had cut off the part of me from the past year and locked it away in that small apartment. In that moment of returning the key, I could feel as though a part of me was saying goodbye, never to be seen again. I became the me from a year ago again, a stranger in a foreign land, alone and adrift.
Feeling a bit panicked, sad, and nostalgic, I decided to write something about the past year. That way, no matter where I end up in the future, I can follow the small tunnel of words and travel through the endless time to revisit that period and reflect on those questions. Although writing these words requires me to re-examine my inner self and even painfully expose myself, I believe it will give me an unbreakable strength.
AEPP
In the latter half of the summer vacation before the start of the school year, the school organized an English teaching activity called AEPP.
For me, this course was less of an English class and more of a small game to help me explore the communities around Chicago. During the summer, the school bus was not in service at noon, so in order to attend class, my project colleague Lin Liu and I walked from our apartment to the school, familiarizing ourselves with the surrounding area along the way. For me, who had just arrived, being able to use my body to feel the city where I would live for the next five years was a great gift. Everything was new and fresh. My senses became a bridge through which the city told me about itself.
During class, the teacher introduced us to a series of knowledge related to gentrification. Under the dual influence of housing policies and economic development, capital poured into Chicago, greatly increasing the prices of the surrounding areas, forcing poor people out of their familiar homes and communities, and forcing them to huddle together and move to the south side of Chicago. The wealth gap thus grew wider and wider. At the end of the course, my three partners and I went to the very remote neighborhood of Edge water/Andersonville in Chicago. It was different from the neighborhood where I lived (Hyde Park). It was very inclusive of LGBTQ and dogs, but the prices were slightly higher. The most impressive memory was when we went there, we happened to catch their annual yard sale. We randomly interviewed a gay couple, who met through a marathon and moved to Andersonville from downtown Chicago for each other. Based on the few times they mentioned, they may have met each other when they were in their forties or fifties. It was a kind of sentimental romance that happened after letting go of their obsession with finding love, and then meeting each other coincidentally. After the course ended, the teacher took us to downtown for the first time, where we enjoyed visiting museums, eating desserts, shopping, and having a great time.
Sadly, one often mistakes the commonplace for something extraordinary.
NSDI
After the start of the new school year, I officially began my doctoral career. Just after the start of the semester, my advisor mentioned that there was a project that had just produced some critical results during the summer and that they wanted to try to submit it to nsdi (a top computer networking conference), but they needed more manpower and hoped that I could join. With a desire to help others and a determination to prove myself, I joined the project. However, I did not anticipate that what began as daily updates gradually evolved into updates every two hours. On the final day, I fell asleep in the lab and woke up in a daze to finish the last few results. After submitting the paper, I was left completely exhausted, almost feeling drained. For me, this was the first warning sign in a somewhat harsh manner that computer networking, as a research direction, could provide. It was far from enough to have a beautiful idea and core results if you wanted to touch upon top conferences related to computer networking. People hope that the system presented in this paper can be used in various ways and can withstand various shocks in the real world (this is what is called system benchmarking). In order to meet these expectations, we need to conduct various experiments. The complexity and tediousness behind these experiments far exceeded my initial expectations.
On the other hand, I didn’t like this research project as much. I prefer natural research. By natural, I mean that the proposed solution cannot be guessed out of the blue, but is induced naturally from the problem itself (here I cannot find a more appropriate word than “induced,” which has some mathematical background, please forgive me). If the problem can be formalized and the proposed solution has some elegant, dualistic form, it can even make people smile, and that would be the icing on the cake, and even something I’ve been dreaming of.
Looking back now, perhaps I already had a strong inclination towards valuing the process and aesthetics of research more than the research problem itself.
Starting my own research
Due to the fact that the previous paper needed to wait for the review results to decide whether to further improve and enrich or make final modifications, I was able to start my own research. This time point is a perfect balance for me. The previous project helped me to explore this field, vaguely nurturing my own ideas, but at the same time, it did not bind me. There was a kind of bold but confident spirit, like that of a newborn calf not afraid of tigers.
It was also at this time that my advisor and I began to frequently collide on topics related to research. Two discussions impressed me the most. The first discussion was about the methodology of research. At that time, I always thought that I should clarify the problem itself before conducting experiments. Therefore, the discussion with my advisor stayed on the discussion of the problem itself. After a few weeks, my advisor talked to me about this issue. He said that the research approach of first theory and then practice is not suitable in the field of computer systems (of course, the approach of first practice and then theory is also not suitable). Because in computer systems, many problems cannot be thought clearly without experiments. Many solutions to problems are hidden in subtle details. Many seemingly good methods may actually make the entire system worse, and many excellent discoveries are unexpected surprises. Therefore, conducting experiments and thinking about the problem itself are mutually beneficial and iterative processes, just like a person’s two legs, one cannot be missing. (My advisor also told me that there is no Li Bai in computer systems, which may also mean this.) The second discussion was about what kind of ideas are appreciated in the field of computer systems. There is a tendency in the field of computer systems that is neither good nor bad, which is to hope that papers will have so-called fundamental contributions. Fundamental means that each paper not only proposes new methods but also completely denies some assumption made by predecessors. In other words, the paper must point out the mistake of the predecessors. For example, suppose someone finds that changing a certain step of a known method from linear regression to SVM will double the performance of the entire system. This kind of work is not fundamental and is unlikely to be published. But if someone finds that a problem has a completely new property that previous researchers have completely overlooked, this work can be considered fundamental. Of course, this tendency naturally has its advantages: fundamental papers can be refreshing and can greatly influence the work of later researchers. However, the problem is that this orientation to some extent hinders people from further improving and refining an existing work. However, this improvement is crucial for the research to truly land.
Through repeated discussions with my advisor, I finally established a new idea. This idea eventually became the project I am working on now.
Interestingly, this idea is inseparable from the research I did when I first started school, which did not satisfy me. For me, this idea is a process of constantly wiping away the dust from the previous research and truly seeing the treasure hidden inside; it is also a process of further understanding what kind of research I want. In other words, it is just a byproduct of my repositioning and establishing my own research. After finding the path I like, everything else falls into place…
Recycling to SIGCOMM
It’s kind of funny to say, but our paper was rejected partially because we didn’t reference a workshop paper that was not closely related. However, as a characteristic of system conferences, different conferences may have the same reviewers. So if the paper is rejected and resubmitted, new content must be added. Otherwise, the chances of continued failure are very high. At the same time, the original first author of our paper changed direction and could not continue to work on this paper. After discussing with my advisor, I took on the responsibility of the entire paper. This was my first experience of the pressure of being a first author in the systems field. Previously, as a non-first author, no matter how much work I did, I always had the idea that the paper’s success or failure was not a big deal, as long as I did my part. However, when I became the first author, the success or failure of the paper became my responsibility. I suddenly realized that, on the one hand, no matter how much effort is put in, the paper cannot be guaranteed to be accepted, only the likelihood of acceptance can be increased. On the other hand, any small effort could become the last straw that tipped the balance in the reviewer’s mind. Writing the paper became a heroic struggle, like a moth flying towards the flame. I used all my strength to get closer to the fire. Closer, closer, regardless of day or night, weekday or weekend, regardless of how the world outside was changing, only the hard work mattered, and the harvest was not to be questioned.
This journey was definitely not enjoyable, but it was a unique and indispensable experience in doing research, especially in computer systems research.
COVID
On a normal day after submitting my paper, my advisor said I could work from home. I happily went back to my apartment after packing up my things.
But little did I know, this would be a “farewell”. After that day, my only way of connecting with the outside world was through the internet. My life became a circle, a loop. I kept spinning inside, only finding the entrance but not the exit.
My mom told me that the vaccine could make a way out of this circle. So, with this hope, I started the long wait.
I really want to talk more about COVID, but for me, it has been a depriving experience. So, I don’t want to talk about it too much, and there’s nothing much to say. As the saying goes, “He who drinks the water knows best whether it is cold or warm.”
Prepare for the camera-ready version
On the day I learned that our paper was accepted to SIGCOMM, I couldn’t contain my excitement and joy and posted on my social media after a long time of not doing so.
Before my research career, everything was indifferent to me. There were projects that fell apart before they even had the chance to turn into a paper and projects that I gave up on after several rounds of revision, gradually losing my passion. It seemed like all my efforts were just going around in circles outside the realm of research.
However, difficulties did not defeat me. I still firmly believed that I wasn’t inferior, but just needed to work a little harder. I still refused to be a person who could easily see the end goal. I still hoped to produce work that satisfied myself. I still believed that striving for my goals, even if not fully realized, was still worth it.
Now back to the point. After learning that our paper was accepted to SIGCOMM, we began preparing the camera-ready version, which is the final version. For readers who may not know, in the field I work in (computer systems), all paper acceptances are conditional acceptances. This means that theoretically, reviewers can reject a paper if the camera-ready version does not meet their expectations. This system is in place to encourage authors to prepare the final camera-ready version with care.
Previously, due to the hasty submission, I only had the energy to conduct experiments and create charts and tables. The paper was mainly written by my supervisor. Therefore, this process of preparing the camera-ready version is my first time formally learning about paper writing. What I did not expect was that this kind of writing was far more painful than I imagined. The process of constantly thinking about how others will view my writing and searching for more concise expressions is like forcing myself to examine myself, as if holding a knife, tremblingly cutting open my own wound. This has left me mentally exhausted.
A year ago, I would never have realized that a PhD is not just a collection of several papers. As a scholar, one needs to pursue rigorous scientific research and strive to be seen and heard by more people. This often requires using one’s scarred hands to reach for a rose with thorns, smiling through tears as they pull out the thorns stained with blood, and placing it on their heart. However, the scattered pain experienced will turn into nourishing spring mud, becoming a thread-like fragrance.
Outro
Although I have only completed one-fifth or one-sixth of this journey, I have gained a lot of new insights into the word “doctor”. I used to think that the reward of a doctorate was just a few papers and a dissertation. But now, I realize that this view misses the essence of the doctoral career. The essence of the doctoral career lies in the pursuit of this degree, where one learns how to structure a vague problem, overcome obstacles, communicate effectively with different audiences in different ways, and how to be independent, steadfast, and persistent in pursuit of one’s goals.
Therefore, a doctorate is a journey of creating knowledge. This journey may be lonely and fearful at times, but it has its own unique joy. Unlike the simple joy one may get from playing games or eating sweets, this joy is intrinsic and enduring, like a river flowing with a faint glow under the moonlight. As Li Jian (one of my favorate singer) said, when you look at the work you have truly created with your heart, you will feel rich from the bottom of your heart.
However, to achieve this joy, one must have the passion to overcome difficulties in pursuit of new things in the field. When you are lost in the darkness and hit your head and bleed on the road of scientific research, this passion will give you unwavering strength. Ideally, this passion can evolve into a desire to change the field and even change the world through the field. The joy of integrating knowledge and action is beyond words.
The past year has passed, and a new journey is ahead. Let us continue to move forward with the momentum of sharpness and passion while our blood is still hot.