Mathematics Students discussion

Hi,

I am currently a math PhD student and am looking for books containing advice for graduate students. Books can contain advice on various topics, such as writing the dissertation, the job search, post-docing, writing grants, conferences, etc. Advice on teaching mathematics at a university level would be great too.

I have already read "How to Teach Mathematics" and "The Mathematician's Survival Guide" by Krantz, but I was wondering if there are anything similar to these.

At the most basic level Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning an M.A. or a Ph.D. has some relatively sound advice. If you need something entertaining my friend Adam Ruben's book Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School is pretty good.

For some of the other topics you mention, start reading The Chronicle of Higher Education. Most of it is available online without a subscription, but they've got lots of current faculty writing regularly on the topics you mentioned.

Slowly you'll find a community of online professors like Robert Talbert (http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/cast...) or blogs like http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/ that can be very helpful. Then there's even folks like https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ as well.

On twitter, you might consider following some the people on this list to start: https://twitter.com/ChrisAldrich/list...
Within twitter, there are a handful of hashtags you might following/comment along with including: #mathchat, #PhDchat, #PhDLife and likely a handful of others.

On the practical side, consider creating accounts on mendeley.com, academica.com, researchgate.com, etc. as a way to find people, help, material, etc. You might also consider starting yourself a blog (aka Commonplace book) to collect all your thoughts: http://stream.withknown.com/2015/why-... (Keep in mind that some platforms like WordPress allow you to keep things as "drafts" without publishing them, so they're then available everywhere you might need them.)

Finally, for graduate level math, I highly recommend spending the $100-200 for a Livescribe Pulse pen: http://www.livescribe.com.

Feel free to ping me here or via other means (http://boffosocko.com) for help/questions.

There is one book from a Computer Scientist named Philip Guo. It is his rendition of the PHD experience. I found out about it when searching Google for 'Industry vs. Academia'. A short read, provides a window into a PHD students life.

http://pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm
The 122 page eBook is provided in the above link.