How The First Year (ish) Of Grad School Went

Me in front of Singapore's most impressive building (btw that hat is not mine)

So for those of you who missed it, I am currently a grad student in Singapore, trying really hard to make my way through the complicated concepts of computer science. My major in undergraduate was not computer science which did make things harder, but I felt I have managed to make the shift decently well, having also passed my qualifying exam and ensuring that I won’t be immediately kicked out of the school. Here’s a record of how I find it so far.

So what did you have to do in your first semester?

In the first semester (or even the first year), you aren’t expected to be a productive researcher yet. There are some who hit the ground running right from their first day of graduate school (in fact quite a few from the people I talk to), but I was definitely not one of them, and I was not expected to be one either.

The first semester was spent, in a way, trying to find ourselves. In my first semester I took a few classes, but the big part was doing lab rotations. We had to register to a few professors and we did some work with them, so that we are more familiar with the area of research they were doing, and see if we would be a good fit with the professor in terms of the work they do and their style of advising. I did two lab rotations, one with a professor who worked on algorithms, and another who worked on robotics. I ended up joining neither of these labs due to reasons, but did find another professor to be my advisor.

Then what?

After the first semester I actually had an advisor, and so I started to do more “targeted” exploration. I started to read on random topics which the lab worked on and which also interested me, in order to search for a starting point for my research work. I ended spending a bit of time just reading on things like differential privacy, Gaussian processes (which I intend to make a video on at some point), federated/collaborative ML, and eventually more on uncertainty quantifications in ML.

There were also discussions with my advisor (and eventually other labmates) on what kind of problems I can work on in these areas, and eventually I did find one which I have been working on for a good part of a year, before submitting the progress as my qualifying exam report and eventually making it more complete for a conference submission.

This is done while also taking some classes for course requirements as well. I have taken some classes related to ML, but also a handful of classes more in the theory side (did a class on algorithms, and another on topics related to game theory), which have all been enjoyable for different reasons.

Anything fun you got to do so far?

Nighttime around the School of Computing

I mean, being able to work on interesting problems with (relatively) little pressure if it fails is a nice thing. I haven’t been exploring other areas as much as I would like to yet (since I have mostly been focusing on this one project for now - quite bad at handling many things at once) but it’s still a fun learning experience to get to do all this work. The classes and readings have also opened me up to more topics that I haven’t had much of a chance to look at much during my undergraduate. I feel that even if I had to quit my PhD now, the journey I have taken so far would have left me with a good impression and would not have felt like a waste of time considering some of the things that I have gotten to learn over the past 1.5 years.

It has also been fun talking to other people in the labs as well. Not only just about work, but also about other random things that comes up. You do learn quite a bit about everything when you talk to others who come from different backgrounds, or are more senior than you and have been through a bit more than you have.

How hard was it to adapt to the PhD life?

Quite hard. It is a bit of a switch to go from undergraduate to graduate, and also for me to go from a smaller university to a larger one. There are differences in the classes you take, or the expectations you have put on you, or your peers. However it has been easier when you have others you are able to talk to and consult about. If not physically, at least on r/PhD there are always people who are willing to give strager’s advice to you on these topics.

A big thing that PhD students (or other professionals I guess) have to deal with is imposter syndrome. When I first started, I looked around, and I saw people who were already publishing (or published), and had much better base knowledge than I had because they actually had better ML basics than I had. But as mentioned before, people in my lab have been very helpful, and made me feel more okay with my skill level, that (1) I am not that much worse, and (2) even if I was it wasn’t detrimental since the whole process is still somewhat forgiving (or at least I like to think that my advisor is - he won’t shout at his students or something if they mess up) and you still had a chance to learn things to make you better at whatever work you’re doing. So I kind of keep that in mind and carry on working.

Enough about your studies. How’s Singapore in general?

I like it. I think it’s a very well-planned city, especially in terms of transportation. I can go everywhere I want through good, cheap public transport. If a place is within a few kilometres of me, I can walk there (or bus if I’m lazy). Otherwise, it’s a combination of walking, bus, or the MRT. The sidewalks are nice and often shaded, and are also very extensive.

Safety is the other aspect a lot of people like to point out for Singapore. I sometimes go places (not the bar) and return late at night, and I do not feel like I am in any danger on the way back. I walk across the road (at the zebra crossing) and cars will actually stop for me.

For me, it’s also very close to my home country. I have flown back home a couple of times and once in the middle of semester (no more than 3 hours depending on where I go in Thailand), and it has been very convenient. The ticket fares are great especially if you book in advance, and the weather is basically the same (minus the cold seasons I get in northern Thailand).

There are aspects I do miss though, such as how food is quite a bit more expensive here than it is back home (which may sound weird if you come from other places - but I find that generally that in Thailand I can probably get a comparable meal for about half the price I pay here). Also, like every foreigner, I find that I can’t quite find a place that makes my local cuisine like they do back at home.

Another big con is that the country is quite tiny, and having been stuck here over quarantine for a while, I have almost gone everywhere there is to go. It does kind of get boring after a while. You can only go to the beaches at Sentosa so many times before you just don’t want to go there anymore. There are still many places here that I haven’t gone to (yet to go to the westmost end of the island) but even then I don’t know what to do there. Contrast this with my friends who are in larger countries like the US, Australia, or even the UK, where they essentially have a much larger area they could wander around in. But at the same time, I am quite busy so I don’t know how much of those desert/beaches/Scottish highlands I could really explore.

How different were things in Singapore during the quarantine?

I came to Singapore in the middle of lockdown, having to even do quarantine before being able to roam around freely in the country. The quarantine, while expensive, was one of the best bits of nighttime sleep I have. It did get annoying though that I can’t go outside or even get some fresh outside air, but ultimately the bed was nice enough that I didn’t really care.

Being in the country in late-2021/early-2022 was also great since in the middle of lockdown, a lot of the touristy places had little crowds, and I can go around taking photos and act like tourists but minus the annoyances that comes from having to wait in lines (although that was replaced with having to scan TraceTogether to get into places, which is honestly still preferrable to having to be in a palce with a lot of people).

Me in front of the Thailand national football team

The other cool thing I got to do due to the quarantine was watching the AFF Suzuki Cup (as it was called then), which is usually held in different stadiums across southeast Asia. However, in 2021, they decided to host all of the matches in Singapore, and as a result, I got to watch Thailand thump Vietnam in one of the semi-finals, and see them eventually receive the trophy to crown them the best team in SE Asia in the final match on New Year 2022. Surprisingly those were the first live football matches I had the chance of going to, and it was watching my national team playing away.

However since they relax the COVID policies, everything has started to return closer ot how it was two years ago. This is also great in a different way, since it meant I am now able to go to parks, malls, and even return home to Thailand over the breaks. Friends are visiting me here, and reconnecting with them and taking them places have been great fun. Events are also starting to be back to normal, with many American or European bands are starting to make stops over in Singapore in their Asia leg of the tour (the first show I’ll probably be watching is the upcoming Phoebe Bridgers concert in February).

What now?

As mentioned I do have some work I intend to finish, hopefully submitting it to a conference soon. Afterwards I would want to continue to look for the next project to work on, and maybe look to do some TAing and get teaching hours under my belt. Other than that will just live each day doing interesting stuff I guess, and make sure I survive the next few years here.

And make more videos. I have had people ask me about it, and I really do want to make at least one video in 2023. No promises though.