 The plan for this session is that for about 20-25 minutes I will talk about time stress management and ethics and then we will have the group discussion on you and your research. This time and stress management is quite an important topic and evidently one cannot do justice to it in 20-25 minutes but I am going to talk about a few important points alone. Someone has said that time management is the art of doing the right things and doing the things right. So, there are many things you may have to do but it is lies in your judgment to decide what are the things that you should do and what you need not. So, therefore, that is the first part doing the right things and the things that you choose to do should be done right correctly, efficiently, effectively and so on. So, that is the second aspect of doing things right. So, broadly there are three parts to it. In fact, a lot of material on time management, stress management is available on the internet. You can do a browse that yourself because this is a very general topic everybody needs to do time management and everyone needs to do stress management. What I am going to discuss is only those aspects which are relevant to a research scholar. Those are relevant to a research scholar and for doing research there are several sources of stress. For example, a research scholar may have a stress because of some problems in the family right. Now, that is not something that I am going to talk about here though that may be very important. So, I am going to talk about time and stress management with in relation to the research work or PhD work. So, you have three things to do planning that is what are all the things you should do prioritizing in what sequence you would do those things. Just now in the previous session I said when you are taking many readings it is important for you to decide in what order you will choose to take the readings because that has an effect on errors. So, similarly or rather analogously in time management it is very important to do things in a proper order. So, that is called prioritizing or rather you should that actually that is scheduling prioritizing means that you categorize the things you have to do into important urgent and so on in the order of importance and urgency. Now, the important thing in time management is to schedule difficult things during peak hours. So, what are what is meant by peak hours, peak hours are those where our efficiency is maximum, the peak refers to the efficiency. So, when we are likely to be most relaxed our efficiencies are going to be high. So, for instance doing things in the morning after you get up, so those are the peak hours. On the other hand at the end of the day when you have worked from let us say morning 9 to evening 5 the time at that is not really peak because you are tired. So, normally our tendency would be if we find things difficult then we may be less interested in doing taking up such things and then we may push it to this non-peak or rather tough hours if you would like to call them that is towards the evening and so on. So, that is not really the right thing to do. If things are important then the most difficult things among the important months should be done during the peak hours that is a way you must plan your work, procrastination is not good. So, now this concept can be illustrated very well with the help of an analogy. So, supposing you have a container and you are asked to fill this up with stones and sand and you are asked to fill it up as many stones and as much sand as possible. So, how would you go about doing it? So, it is important that you first fill the container with stones and only then you add the sand. So, the sand grains go into the open spaces between the stones and unless you fill the container in this order that is first stones and then sand you would not be able to maximize the number of stones and the amount of sand that can be fitted in to this volume. So, if you did the other way round you first put the sand then it would fill the entire volume up to some level and then only the remaining volume would be available for the stones and the volume the open spaces between the stones will not have anything right. So, this is the analogy given to emphasize the importance of prioritizing and scheduling. Now, the time pressure is proportional to our resistance to what we are doing. The internal factors are important attitudes and confusion about goals and values the internal factor right. So, time pressure is a function of internal factors. So, what is it that causes this pressure? So, improper attitudes and confusion about goals and values. So, this is what we must focus on. So, if our attitude is not right we will develop time pressure and if our goals and so on we are we are confused about them or we do not know exactly what we want to do. Now, let us come these are some general principles now let us come to the application of these two research. Let us talk about scheduling and prioritizing ok now we cannot say that go and discover the second law of thermodynamics in the afternoon because you know ideas strike by chance of course they strike only to prepared minds, but even to prepared minds they strike by chance. So, really it is not so easy to specify that at this time of the day you are likely to get the ideas. Therefore, in the matters of finding a problem or formulating a problem and so on discovering laws discovering new things you really cannot apply the concept of prioritizing ok. So, that is why it is said that PhD is not a part time job. So, we do have a concept of part time PhD and normally people who do part time PhD interpret this to mean that daily you can do your work from main work from 9 to 5 and in the remaining time you can do research ok. You may take a little bit longer because you are not able to allocate sufficient time daily, but still you can do a good PhD over a longer period, but this is wrong. There is nothing like a part time PhD in this sense because we cannot state at which point of the day will be discover problems to work on or get new ideas. So, we must allocate all 24 hours for research work, but then we have so many other things to do in life. So, how do we do it? So, the important point is at least in the initial phase of PhD you should be completely committed to research and you should reduce the amount of other responsibilities that you can have. It is in the later stage when your problem has been formulated sufficiently clearly and a direction for solution has been chopped out. It is then that you can do a number of things and apply time management principle there. So, repeat go and discover the second law of thermodynamics in the afternoon is not possible, but if you are able to arrange our schedule so as to set aside time for thinking and experimenting we put ourselves in the way of discovering something new. So, you must regard research as a top priority and allocate sufficient time. Unless you let us say think for maybe 6 or 7 hours you may not get an idea. So, thinking at a stage for 6 and 7 hours 6 or 7 hours is not the same as putting in those 6 or 7 hours over 6 or 7 days at the rate of 1 hour per day. So, these are not equivalent. So, working out a new idea requires much routine work and to this part of an investigation we can apply efficiency or time management methods. So, once a direction is set problem is defined then it is possible to do a number of things simultaneously and do research part time. Now, one important principle is make hay while the sun shines. So, as soon as you get an idea and you think that this idea is something significant you must start working on bringing the idea to a practical stage and bringing it to completion. For instance, if you have to write a paper then you must start doing it as quickly as possible after you have discovered that you have hit upon something new. You should not take a long time to do the writing. The writing part also should be done as quickly as possible. So, whenever such a thing you get a new idea you must allocate 24 hours to bringing this idea to completion. This is the meaning of make hay while the sun shines. And you can then you know after you have brought this idea to some completion then if you want you can take off for some time do other things. Next important thing is set deadlines. They motivate and create the necessary pressure to get work done. So, sometimes some deadlines are set by the system. For instance, every IIT has a yearly review of your research work. So, these meetings are arranged and then they set a deadline for you to just write up something and also make a presentation and so on. So, these kind of deadlines are good. You should these are deadlines set by the system. But internally you should also be able to set deadlines for yourself. For instance, if you take up a paper for writing you should kind of put a deadline and say within 15 days I am going to do this job. So, like that you must set deadlines for yourself. Stress and fatigue dull our faculties and prevent us from doing our best. We normally believe that but please remember stress is not always bad. So, that is why nowadays psychologists talk about good stress and bad stress. Some stress is good in any learning. No learning can happen without stress. So, when we say that the learning should be without any stress what we are saying is the bad stress should be removed. It is like you know what is called good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. So, for example, how did I think of preparing all these lectures and devise some devise a course like introduction to research and so on. It is because I myself face lot of stress during my PhD and I also saw that many other people face stress. So, it is only out of that stress that an idea came that if there is some sort of mechanism of reducing this stress and hastening the process of research then it would be good. So, stress is not always bad. Now, let us look at sources of stress for research scholar. The most important source of stress is the monotony and repetitiveness of concentrating on the same idea for extended period of time. This is the primary thing that a research scholar does. So, in other words, the most important source of stress lies in thinking and thinking on an extended period of time or concentrating for an extended period of time. So, in your habits you must incorporate some sort of mechanism to achieve this objective of concentrating over a long period by introducing some relaxing methods. So, some are listed here that you know you keep changing your position or move about some method of keeping yourself fresh is important. The next important source of stress now whatever I am reporting here is not only my opinion. I have done some reading and some research on these things or rather I have read up some research that has been done on stress for research scholars and then whatever I am reporting is the result of some such a research on a large number of research scholars. The second important source of stress is a strained relation between guide and student. So, this is also something that you must pay particular attention. I am going to discuss this point a little bit more detail shortly. The next important source of stress is criticism. Research scholars work for one or two years and then they write a paper and then they get a rejection of their paper and the reviewers criticize their work. Then it is stressful. So, you must be able to take criticism this is very important. Then deadlines you have to achieve deadlines and when deadlines are there you have to submit a paper to a conference by some date. So, you at least for two or three days before the deadline you end up working for all 24 hours of the day. So, no sleep. So, this can be a source of stress. And cyclical changes in emotional states because often when you feel that you have discovered a new idea first you get elated and then after that you sleep over it and the next day you find lot of faults in the same idea. So, then you feel depressed. Oh, you thought you got a very good idea but then you are now able to see lot of defects lot of problems with it. Now, the point to know is that every research scholar goes through this and every time you get an idea always first you only see the good side of it and it is only later that you come to know about the other side and every idea has both sides. It has advantages it has disadvantages. So, this is what is meant by cyclical changes in emotional states. So, you go through this every idea it goes through that. So, you first see the positive side of it and you feel very happy that you have hit upon something very great. Then you see the negative side of it and you see what a fool I was to think that you know I have hit upon something great. Then, but you then find some methods of overcoming some of the faults and then you realize oh it is not that bad. So, you again go up in your emotions. So, you get excited oh no it is not that bad. Then again you discover a few more faults and so on. So, this is how cyclically you perfect the idea or perfect your problem or perfect your solution to the problem. So, because of this there are changes in emotional state. Another reason for the source of stress is lack of awareness of psychological phases of a PhD process. So, whatever I have said in addition to that some of the other changes that happen and this happen in all research scholars. This is kind of a pattern for valid for all research scholars. Enthusiasm ok lot of research scholars when they join research they feel that they are going to develop something new at the end of their PhD and there is lot of enthusiasm. But after some time there is a feeling of isolation as you start working on your problem and your colleagues also start working on their problems each of them goes into a shell. So, initially there is a lot of so called comradery and so on and suddenly when people have got into their problems and started working on it they get isolated from each other. Then there is a positive stage when you get more interest in your work increasing interest because you start seeing it is like end of a tunnel you start seeing some light you feel that some publication is going to come out and so on increasing interest. Reduction of dependence on supervisor. So, in the beginning you have a lot of dependence but slowly you become you know tend to become independent start doing taking your own decisions and things like that. So, there are stages in which you feel bored about your research and you feel it was it a right decision for you to take to you know decide to do a PhD. So, in the beginning it is all enthusiasm but then you feel oh it is not that interesting at all it is boring because you have to do certain jobs repetitively ok. As a person has said that in any realization of idea there may be one percent inspiration and 99 percent is perspiration. Frustration ok ideas are not working out and finally at the end you feel that somehow you must finish your PhD. So, most research scholars though they start on enthusiastic note towards the end they feel now somehow you want to complete and go to the next stage right. So, if you get this kind of feelings please remember that they are not unique to you and all research scholars go through this. So, if you are aware that many people are in the same board then the amount of stress on you reduces. So, that is a point that is being made here. A few points about interpersonal skill right. There is a quote in since we are in Bombay Bombay ke bheed mein har aadmi akela hai. So, there are a lot of people around but each person is alone. This is how someone described her experience doing her research. So, she said I work alone in a lab full of people but all working alone. So, this is one of the problems that we research scholars should try to overcome and this part of the problem arises because of a misconception that when you are working on your idea you feel that your idea is something unique and you know nobody understands it and it is completely different from the kind of research that other people are doing. So, it is because of this misconception what happens is people do not have technical discussions. They feel you know nobody else will understand your idea but once you know that a significant part of research process thinking process and so on is common no matter what is your specific area of work. Then you see common ground and then you also see the positive things that can come out of a discussion with someone who is not working in the same area as yourself. So, then this kind of feeling can be overcome. So, research is an intensive process which requires the development of social apart from academic and other skills. So, this comma is actually should not be there apart from academic skills. So, little bit of time on guide student relation. So, there should be a match between the nature of scholar and the guide and an agreement on how to work. This is very very important in the beginning stages of research this should be established. Now, match between the nature of scholar and the guide. Now, we need to know which aspects of the nature should match. This is here where we must understand the motivations of people in their work. So, by match between the nature more specifically we mean the match between their motivations and the match between their goals. Now, let us see rather I would not say match but complementarity of their goals. For example, what is the motivation of the guide? Why should a guide take up a student for guiding? Like please think about it. If you are a student please think of the other side. You know why you have taken up research, why you have taken PhD, why you want to do a PhD but you do not bother that much to think why your guide has taken you chosen you to guide. If this is where you spend a little bit of time then you can overcome difficulties in relation. Now, some guides want to guide people to become independent researchers. So, they want their research students to become independent researchers. They feel the ultimate goal of PhDs to develop independent researchers. On the other hand, some other guides want research scholars as efficient research assistants. So, they may have some ideas which they want to realize. They may have taken projects. Nowadays a lot of PhDs, a lot of research comes out of projects taken up by the guide. So, people work in the project mode where some goals have to be achieved. You are answerable to the sponsoring agency. Now, in such cases often the amount of freedom available for the research scholar in the choice of the problem is limited. Now, this is where if you are very particular that you want to work in a specific area and you also want that you should be given the freedom to make mistakes and learn by yourself. In other words, you want to become an independent researcher. Then it is important that your guide likes to work with such students. So, this is where there should be an agreement on how to work. There are some guides who work in both modes. So, in case they find that there are students who really want a lot of independence, they have no objection to giving them independence. On the other hand, if they find that some students prefer that some hand holding is done in the beginning stages. In defining the problem and so on, if the students want more help, they do not mind it in taking a greater share of that burden. On the other hand, some guides are very, their mode of working is very specific. In fact, it has to be done with the nature. I mean, some people can work only in that fashion. There are some people who cannot work very well with independent minded people. So, this is where the natures have to be matched or at least complemented. Now, let us take more specific things. It can happen that your guide feels that whenever you come to meet with him or her, you should have done some work and you should have come with a plan of what you are going to do in future. On the other hand, in some other situations, the guides would prefer that they give a direction to the student on what to do and the next time you come back, you should have finished that and you should have, you should be able to convince your guide that you are moving in that particular direction. So, this is where, if you find that, you know, you are facing some difficulty with your guide, you must seek a clarification, exactly how he would or she would like you to work. Now, maybe I should give some examples or practical examples of this. In a particular situation, a student joined research with a lot of, you know, romantic ideas about research, about doing something very challenging and, you know, intellectually satisfying and so on. And so, he would work on some problem and then he would soon find that, you know, that is not a very challenging thing to work on and he would shift to a different problem, that is, the student. But then he would also go to the guide and discuss the problem. Now, the guide would know that after some time, the student is going to find that, you know, this problem is not sufficiently interesting to work on and it is going to discard and move to another problem. So, after some time, the guide realized that any discussion, spending time in discussion with a student like that is not fruitful because tomorrow you do not know whether he will continue to work in that direction or not and he will leave that. Student, on the other hand, did not realize that he is wasting the time of the guide because of his nature. So, this is when some sort of difficulty arose between the student and the guide. Now, sometimes the problems are compounded when the guides are not able to tell what the difficulty is to the students. For instance, in this situation like this, the guide has to be a little bit forceful and tell the student that, you know, this is the difficulty he is facing and that the student should make up the mind about which area he would like to work on and so on and then have some direction in the work. So, and the student did not know that this is what is causing the difficulty. There was another instance where the guide wanted the student to work in a particular area. The student was not interested in that area. However, the student had no way of bringing it to the attention of the guide. You know, the student was wondering how he could tell the guide that he is not interested in whatever he is being assigned. But at the same time, after a few months he knew that, you know, he cannot go on like this because unless he developed certain amount of interest in the work, he would not be able to pursue a Ph.D. So, in cases like this, the difficulties are acute. Now, therefore, there should be some amount of transparency about these matters and both the guide and the student should muster some amount of courage to express themselves frankly and clearly, but politely. So, this is what is meant by there should be some sort of a match between the natures of the scholar and the guide. So, there should be free and frank discussions about these matters. So, another aspect I touched upon in the very first lecture, my very first lecture, introducing the motivation for this course and discussing the differences between research and undergraduate education. So, wherein I pointed out that in the research process, the difference between the guide and the student gets blurred. So, the student is developing in a particular area and then the distinction between the student and the guide, mentor and the student and the mentor and the student is getting blurred. So, this can be another source of stress. So, one must learn to deal with relationships at an equal level. Now, a few points about ethics. Prof. Sukath may already mentioned about jagerism. Today, this is the single most important problem because lot of material is readily available on internet and one can do cut-paste and one often does cut-paste. So, I want to emphasize that even making presentations such as the ones that you made, some three participants made presentations on different ideas. Now, I would give them a test, right? How many sentences that they wrote on the slide were copy-pasted from elsewhere. So, if I copy-paste a sentence from somewhere and I do not tell the source, then I am indulging in plagiarism because I am passing it off as my own. Further, if you are copying and doing copy-paste of a sentence as a whole, then apart from citing the reference, you must also put the sentence in inverted comma. The reason is you are quoting another reference. So, normally it is suggested that you convert those ideas in your own words and then use your own language to express the same idea giving the source of the idea. Now, that is the best way to avoid any form of plagiarism. So, often it has been noticed that in the early reports that the research scholars are asked to provide, particularly the first report that research scholars make up most of it is cut-pasted because they are doing literature survey and that is all what they want to report in their that is all what they want to write in their report. So, they simply do a cut-paste. Now, this is completely unacceptable. Right from the beginning you must develop the habit of writing in your own words. So, it spent a lot of time. In the beginning it may take you one week to write up a two-page report. One week meaning 24, daily you spend about eight hours writing and you take about a week to write a two-page report on your own. And also this is not expressing your idea. I am talking about simply summarizing what you have come across in the various papers that you have surveyed. Expressing your own new idea on the other hand can take even longer. Another important thing in where students are unethical is reporting observations truthfully. Now, I will give an example. Some years ago I had a research student who was doing some experimental work and I asked him to do a number of measurement to ascertain the relationship between two variables y and x. And I was surprised that when he came back and I told him that he must finally present his results in the form of a graph and I would like to see the graph when he comes back after making all the measurements. Now, I was surprised that I found a perfect linear relation between y and x and that to a straight line passing through origin. Now, I was really surprised because I asked him how does he know beforehand that the relation between y and x will be linear and when x is 0, y will be 0. Because after all we do not have an understanding of this particular relation. We have to develop that understanding. And then he responded by saying, sir, generally we always like the straight line relationship between two and we always like if the straight line passes through origin. Now, this was something very eye-opening. You know, it was revealing to me. So, people have this sort of misconceptions. I said, okay, but how did you ensure that all your readings fall on the line? So, he said that actually I removed all those readings which did not fall on this line. Now, this is an example of unethical conduct. And the student did not know that he is indulging in unethical conduct. And you top it all when I pointed out to him that you know this is not correct because then you will not discover the correct law, the correct relation between y and x. If the correct relation is non-linear, then you have to, you know, report that relation is non-linear. It is not linear. On the other hand, if you find that no relation can really be established between y and x which happened. I have shown you some results on yesterday's slide,ization as a function of area and so on. So, if you cannot discern any relationship, then it should be reported as such that you cannot find any relationship. So, the student also said, sir, whenever we write a paper, generally not many people will read it. Only a few people will read it. Is it not? So, why bother so much? Now, it is alarming that students with this kind of motivation are taking up research. So, it is important that they are alerted right in the beginning that research involves being truthful. If you want to discover the correct law, you have to be truthful about your experiments, measurements and so on. Do not try to fit them into any preconceived pattern. This is really being highly unethical. Then giving credit to co-workers. So, authorship and acknowledgement. So, all those people who have contributed significantly should be included as authors and by and large an accepted practice is to order the authors in the order of their contribution. So, normally the first author has made the maximum contribution. The second author has made the next amount of contribution and so on. The exception to this is when the authors in a paper are not of the same status. For instance, supposing a paper is being written by a student and the guide. In such case, what would be the correct thing to do? One common practice is to always have the student write his name as the first author and the guide is the second author. Now, this is somewhat like you know children when they are going to school. It is the mothers who do the project but the project goes in the name of the child. So, often it is said that the homework for the child is nothing but homework for the mother and not for the child. The child just plays around and the mother does all the work and the child just submits. Now, this sort of a thing should not be carried forward in the research stage. Though the difference between the student and the guide in terms of experience and age both the difference can be large this sort of thing is not acceptable. In fact, if there is some very significant idea that is being presented in a paper it would not be unusual or incorrect if the guide puts his name first and the student puts the name second because it is important that the first author be able to defend the work successfully against any criticism. That is the you know important criterion one can use to decide who is the first author. So, even if the idea is given by the guide if working out the idea takes a lot of effort and that is the effort that student has put in and if student guide has the student has understood the idea in complete detail even though it originated from the guide in such a case students name can be put first because the student is able to defend the work it is unethical to put the first author as a student just as a matter of routine practice. The student is not able to defend the work whenever there is a criticism it is the guide who comes for come to defense then it is not correct to put the name of the student as the first author. And on the other hand let me take the other extreme in some cases the student may have done the work completely by himself even though student has a guide it can happen that the student conceives of an idea and then works out the idea in detail and writes up the paper and so on in such a case it is not necessary that guide should put his or her name on the paper. So, this practice also of always including the guide's name whether or not the guide has contributed is not correct. Now, why is this fact a factor very important you see later decisions to for admission to academic institutions employment and so on are taken based on your research publication in academic circle. So, unless it is clear what is your contribution in your research work and what is your competence level unless this is correctly reflected in the authorship a wrong decision can be made. So, if the guide has done most of the work and still has been you know generous so to say and has put the students name first you can have a situation where a student who has worked independently all by himself and produced just couple of papers. But in other case a lot of work has been done by the guide and therefore the student has published may be four papers and the guide is also generous I use the word generousness in the quote and has allowed the student to put his or her name as first author now when both of these people suppose they happen to go for a job it is likely that the student with four publications may get the job but unfortunately he is not he or she is not as competent as the other person. Now in such a case if you take care of the authorship properly and be ethical about it then proper decisions can be made ok. So, therefore this authorship issue is also non-trivial. So, I strongly advise you to do an internet search on this there are some articles on authorship and acknowledgement ok how who should be acknowledged and how the authorship should be ordered. So, you do an internet search on this and please read up ok. So, with that I come to the end of this particular section. So, let me go to Periyar Maniyammai colleague what we expect from the guide and what we have to do to take the research for identifying the research problem. So, you are asking me to what extent should the guide help an average research scholar I mean let us put it like this is that what your question is. Yes sir. Now let me tell you I have already said that research involves developing independent thinking. That is the fundamental difference between research, PhD and MTech or BTEC. So, unless and until a person is capable of independent thinking or interested in independent thinking, developing independent thinking he or she should not take of research that is the first important point. So, it is not an extended MTech or BTEC project. In an MTech or BTEC project the guide is expected to give reasonably well defined problem, reasonably well defined. I am not saying well defined. In fact, every project to some extent is not clearly defined in the beginning. That is why it is a project then otherwise it will be examination question. So, that is not what it is research or project work is not there. But in MTech or BTEC project it is quite okay for the student to expect clear direction from the guide. You set up this apparatus you take and make a measurement like this whereas for research it is the student who has to take the initiative. That part is common whether it is an average researcher or whether it is a intelligent, highly intelligent researcher that part is common. Initiative should be there with the student for PhD. On initiative there is no compromise. But the extent to which average research scholar can think can be different from another person who can be very, very intelligent or very, very creative. So, in such cases the guide may have to give more help. So, the guide may have to give more direction. But at no point should a research scholar expect that following that I go to the guide, guide tells me do this course work. Okay, I go back and do my course work. Then I go to the guide, he tells me he defines the problem statement. He writes on a piece of paper you know this is what you should do. Okay, you go back and take up all those readings. Guide also tells in what sequence you should take the readings. Everything guide tells and then you are just like a hand extended hand of the guide. So, such a thing is not acceptable. So, no research scholar even average scholar should expect that level of involvement from the guide. Okay, so that is what I mean. The initiative is with the student. But more often the guide can interact with the student. If the student needs more help that number of times or amount of interaction the guide can increase. But initiative and so on has to be there with the student. I think we will stop this interaction