The growth and experience of Ph.D. lies in every bit of the whole process. After several years of long-term accumulation, the upgrading and transformation from quantitative change to qualitative change are formed. In this process, excitement, tension, happiness, busyness, confusion and even temporary loss are mixed. This article continues with the previous articles, recording my experience of studying as a doctor in a systematic and detailed way.

1. A fierce quarrel with the tutor

Although the first article of my doctor was published smoothly, the whole years of my doctor's research were not smooth sailing, full of twists and turns and ups and downs. One example is a quarrel with a tutor.

This happened in my first year as a doctor, when I spent most of my time reading a lot of literature and preparing review articles. In addition, I also need to start experiments. Once my tutor took me to the laboratory to be familiar with the experimental platform and various measuring instruments. I was particularly impressed. At that time, my tutor showed me how to operate the whole experimental platform. During this period, I personally fell on the ground under the table of the experimental platform, screwed the screws, connected the wires, and sweated on my head and under my shirt and elbow. At that time, I was very moved, thinking that there are not many professors who can do it by themselves and have no airs, so I have to cherish it.

After that, every week or two, my tutor asked me what progress I had made in the experiment. I was always cautious in the experiment. I thought about every detail repeatedly and practiced it until I fully understood it and could operate it skillfully. I started to do the experiment because I was worried that if I didn't realize some mistakes from the beginning, I would rush to do the experimental data, If the problem is found later, the data measured before may be discarded. In addition, my tutor only demonstrated it to me once, and the rest of it all depended on my own exploration, and there was no elder martial brother or elder martial sister to consult. So that led me to slow progress in my experiments.

About two or three months later, one afternoon, my tutor appeared in the laboratory and asked me how the experiment was going. As a result, I not only didn't start to measure the experimental data, but also explained to him a lot of problems on the experimental platform. Maybe the tutor was not in a good mood that day, and the Italians were full of emotion. When he heard this, he immediately became anxious and said, "I'm too slow. I haven't been able to run the experimental platform for several months, and there are so many excuses.". At that time, the French postdoctoral was also present. I saw that he was embarrassed and didn't say a word. The atmosphere of the whole laboratory was very tense. The air seemed to solidify, and my face was hot.

After the fight, my mood fell to the lowest point. That night, I came home with no appetite at all. I thought over and over again that the doctor's relationship with his tutor had developed like this in less than a year. I didn't expect from the beginning that there might be more research problems in the future. Wouldn't it be more noisy. Think about the future? The offer of Eindhoven Polytechnic in Holland has been voluntarily abandoned by me. The only possible one is the professor in California. I said in the previous article that I met the professor's lover on the way to the airport and left my contact information. Finally, I decided to keep calm and stick to it. If there are two or three similar quarrels in the next year, I will consider running away.

The next day, I came to the laboratory with a heavy heart, thinking that the quarrel yesterday will inevitably lead to the embarrassment in the future. Later I met my tutor. As a result, he changed the way he was yesterday and was very interested in discussing with me as if nothing had happened yesterday. I finally let out a long breath. It seems that I overestimated the seriousness of the matter. What's more, a lot of things later made me realize that westerners' thinking is to deal with the matter on its own, no matter how serious the quarrel was at that time, they would immediately return to normal work, continue to solve problems, and no longer have criticism and blame. A concrete example is that those politicians often fight with each other in meetings, sometimes even fight with each other, but then they still get along with their colleagues.

After that quarrel, the tutor didn't seem to be pushing so hard in the experiment, and I got a better understanding of the tutor's temper. Fortunately, since then, I have never had a fierce quarrel with my tutor, and my escape plan has failed.

2. Experimental automation

When I finally understood how to operate the experimental platform, I found that the data acquisition and control system of the whole experimental platform was very basic and simple. Basically, I have to stay there all day, judge whether the data has reached a stable convergence state by eye observation, and then manually measure point by point, so that I can only collect and measure data points on a curve at most one day. At that time, most of the equipment in the laboratory was connected and controlled through the virtual instrument software LabVIEW. I spent a lot of time in-depth learning and studying this software to see how the whole experimental process was realized in this software program.

Every time I learn some new functions of this software, I can't wait to implement them on the experimental platform. I think it's very interesting and fun. Slowly, I fell into the software deeper and deeper, and constantly added new functions on the basis of the original LabVIEW program, which made the whole program architecture more and more huge and more complex, but I needed less and less manual operation. Of course, when the program was changed to a problem, once I didn't realize that a cycle control module that increased the current entered a dead cycle. As a result, the current of the test bench increased rapidly in a short time, resulting in smoke in the test part.

At the same time, this control program has been changed by me to be more and more intelligent. By the time of the final version, I have completely saved my labor. I just need to go to the laboratory every morning, open all instruments, run LabVIEW program, the program will automatically start to measure from the first point on a curve, automatically collect and record until the data converges, and then automatically jump to the next data point to be measured, so repeatedly automatically measure the last data point, and automatically draw all the effective data on the coordinate map. The only thing I need to do is cut off the power supply of all instruments after the last data point is measured.

This makes my experimental efficiency greatly increased, and the measured curve is very smooth, and the data distribution on the curve is very uniform. The lab is on the first floor, while my office is on the second floor. For a period of time, I often need to go downstairs to see if the automatic test has been completed, because it is difficult to predict the end time. Later, I found that LabVIEW has a communication function, which can send e-mail. I try to add this cool feature, so that the program test is over, send me an email, so that I don't have to go downstairs to check it many times. However, I studied this function for a long time and failed to achieve it. Until I found that the time I spent was several times as much as the total time I spent walking up and down the stairs, I gave up the pursuit of this function.

Later, I often need to explain to others how the experimental measurement control system works. Because the system is too complex and has too many functions, it takes a long time, and others may not be able to understand it immediately. So I wrote a laboratory control manual, which has dozens of steps, to explain how to operate each step, and why to operate in this way. This manual has 20 or 30 pages. I feel very successful after I finish it.