Member-only story
Daydreaming: Leveraging My Thesis Writing Process to Build a Professional Profile
I am in the final year of my PhD and just two months away from submitting my thesis. My research focuses on traffic simulation using machine learning models, particularly Adversarial Inverse Reinforcement Learning (AIRL). My goal is to propose new methods or frameworks to interpret these black-box models within the traffic simulation context, covering both car-following and route choice modeling. Currently, I am still working on my third project, which involves route choice modeling.
Given the tight timeline, I plan to complete this project and simultaneously start writing my thesis, aiming to produce a 60,000-word first draft within a month. I am not sure if this is feasible and but I need to consider strategies for achieving it.
In addition to completing the thesis, I want to make the most of this process to strengthen my professional profile. My work spans coding, AI, and traffic simulation, and I see this as an opportunity to build a portfolio that showcases these skills for job hunting. I am considering creating a demonstration website with documentation of my work process, breaking down thesis segments into blog posts to highlight my expertise. Here are the thoughts.
1. Create my Writing Timeline and Content Outline
- Outline Structure: Create a skeleton of my thesis with placeholders for essential sections, which aligns with sections of the documentation and coding. I will start with fundamental content like ‘why do we use neural network’.
- Set Milestones: Divide the 60,000-word target into achievable weekly and daily goals. Aiming for around 15,000 words each week. Sounds crazy though. 2,000 words per day.
