昨天下午一口气读完了Philip J. Guo 写的回忆录《The PhD Grind》，感慨颇多，深深为这位华裔作者研究经历、为获取博士学位而奋斗的精神所佩服。知道了从2012年开始，Stanford要求博士生必须发表2到4篇顶级会议 (Top  tier conference) 才能有资格参加博士论文答辩。Stanford就是牛，它们培养的计算机科学博士是在做真正的研究。知道了作者怎样发现一个问题，慢慢逐步的细化，直到编写成原型 (prototype) 写成论文。

通过作者的介绍，知道了workshop和conference的区别：

a published workshop paperusually does not “count" as a dissertation contribution in our department.Workshop papers are meant to disseminate early ideas and are not scrutinized asrigorously as conference papers. Whereas a conference paper submission has an 8to 30 percent chance of acceptance, a workshop paper submission has a 60 to 80percent chance.

Most professors in ourdepartment don't encourage students to submit to workshops, since if the papergets accepted (which is likely), the professor must pay around $1,500 oftravel, hotel, and registration costs using their grant money for the studentto attend and give a talk at the workshop.