Kesedaran

Masih menunggu feedback drpd Tuan SV. Mula2 ingt nak bermalas2an, apatah lg Holiday is in the air, bak kata org. Tp mujur la insaf awal. Smlm ada presentation drpd Hans lab mate yg tahun 1 tu. Rupanya dia dah pernah wat PhD dulu kat Weimar, Germany, tp dia tggalkan and now dia nak sambung balik kat sini. Agak cuak dgn presentation dia, sbb nya byk jg la idea2 dia tu, sampaikan Prof suruh dia kecilkan scope. Terus rasa kedhaifan diri, dan buat pegi la siapkan Gantt Chart yg harus di supplement kan bersama Transfer Report nanti.

Lagi buat Gantt chart, lg insaf. Sbb nya, baru la sedar yg dah nak masuk 14 months dah kat sini, next January dah 15 months. Then by April 2010 dah 18 bulan kat sini. Half way dah tu maaaa!!!! (I am at where the red dashes are on the chart). Wah, scary giler. Ni dia cartanya, tp mungkin esok lusa ubah lg, sbb belom finalize ngan SV. Xpe la, at least dah clear apa yg patut kena buat in the next few months, plus or minus a few things. Tp jgn salah paham, yg clear nye adalah WHAT to do, HOW to go about doing it, adalah satu cerita yg lain. Itu psl la utk Lit. Review aje mmg lukis satu garisan panjang kuning tu. Life-long learning la tuh hahaha...




Td ada sedikit heart-to-heart perbualan dgn Al. Mamat ni nak siap dah by February next year. Bila February tu, dia genap2 37 bulan (sebulan dia akan sara sendiri, dia ckp). Ni adalah PhD kedua beliau, maka aku percaya he knows what he's doing. Dia bg byk tips2 yg berguna td. Antaranya, jgn confuse kan PhD ni dgn nak bgnkan system yg best, sbb nya dia takut aku terlalu focused on producing a system than the actual contextual idea behind it. Hakikatnya, system x perlu ada pon. In fact, kalo system kecundang atau x mampu nak program pon x pe, janji we know the area well and convey la dlm thesis what you were trying to program (what makes it different than other available system).

Dia kata budak2 Comp Sci senang nak terbabas that way walhal yg lebih penting adalah apa novel contribution dalam niche kita itu. It could be an idea, an algorithm, a new technique of doing things, etc. As long as you have a SOUND knowledge of your area, and you KNOW almost every researcher's work in that field on the tip of your finger (e.g. sebut nama and tahun, tahu paper apa and what is it about, or dalam viva bila ada examiner tanya something nak smash kita aje, terus smash balik like hard rock dgn references org lain yg kita mmg ingat benar content dia). That's why it's important to narrow your scope. Coz you can't read and remember everything in a huge area, so make your area specific, and hadam betul2 area tu. You should be the master in that teeny, tiny area, and x dak sapa dah yg lebih tera dari anda dah dgn topik tu.

Mcm mana nak rekod kan jurnal2 and paper2 yg beratus2 anda dah baca tu? Maka kena la menulis dari skang. Al kata, after a few papers yg kita baca dalam bidang yg sama, buat la satu review seolahnya kita nak hantar a review paper somewhere, tp utk diri sendiri aje. I have NEVER been a big fan of writing awal2, sbb nya, what's the point? Along the way we are bound to konar kiri or konar kanan, kan? Kalo tulis LR awal2, last2 yg tulis utk thesis lain jg. All that time wasted aje la. Baik buat benda lain like development, etc.

BUT... Al ckp, he sees it differently. Kalo dah tulis awal2, you'll have the flow of your thesis in your mind. You will see where the gap is in your reading so that you can address it earlier on. You have made a review of other people's work that you can come back and read again whenever you forget. By writing a review, you know the pros and cons of other people's work, so you always know what you need to perform better than what's already available. You have a bank of written materials that you can pull when an opportunity to publish something arises later. And when it's time to sit down and write that thesis for good, true, you 'll have massive documents to sort through, but truth is, you only need to filter out what's relevant and what's not, instead of baru terngadah2 nak tulis from scratch. Plus, if you treat every piece of writing as a review paper, you would have done your references from start, so when it's time to produce a thesis, all the links and citation would have been done already. AND You will also have kesedaran awal2 lg of how long it takes to write, rather than convincing yourself all these while that, "It's okay, all I need is 3 months to wrap up my thesis". Oh denial sungguh!

Bila dgr argument Al ni, aku terasa byk kebenarannya. Aku bersyukur sbb nya UoP ni mewajibkan pelajar dia undergo the Transfer Process. Masa tulis report baru2 ni, mmg betul2 la terasa betapa I had underestimated the time I needed to write, how I had just put some referencing together for the sake of referencing, tp paper x digest sgt2 pon, how I had struggled to write in such way to make it flow perfectly from one chapter to the next. Had I done all this from the beginning, mesti ayat2 aku pon lebih pleasant and coherent, sbb byk masa nak mengarang properly. Writing is a creative process, so x leh nak cram seadanya aje.

Aku betul2 jd smgt balik. Terasa betapa kecilnya ilmu aku. Mmg knowledge aku in this area is very, very shallow, and sometimes I hoenstly feel I'm neither here nor there dalam area ni, but hopefully it's not too late to do something about it. First step, aku reorganized my reading materials into areas (segmentation, audio extraction, synthesis, speech, concatenative music, misc), and then I further organized by authors.

Also, aku berazam nak baca balik paper2 ni menggunakan teknik Effective Reading spt yg aku dah gi workshop dia hari tu (tertulis di entry ini). Dah habis baca satu area, aku nak buat review or basic write up terus guna LyX, so that the referencing all works hey presto (spt di entry ini). Hopefully, this will all work out for the best, Insya Allah. Berakit2 ke hulu, berenang2 ke tepian...