Graduate school::
The Balloon Man has posted some tips for incoming graduate students. He has taken the noble route providing encouragement and useful advice; things learned in the trenches, tips that will make research easier. After nearly five years as a graduate student, I’ve decided to take another route. Judge for yourself…
Going to graduate school is choosing to enter a dysfunctional relationship. No sane person would consider a graduate level degree if they knew exactly what they were getting into; unless it came with a continually refilling prescription for Vicodin. But like any new relationship, the beginning is wonderful. It is filled with hope for the future and a warm, fuzzy-feeling of goodness. Everything you read about your work is new and exciting. You feel privileged to join the academic elite and that you, a mere mortal, has the chance to work on something cutting-edge. But like the paint on a new car, eventually a bird craps on it, and things don’t shine like they once did.
The real trouble doesn’t really appear until later. Any new graduate student will be lulled into a false sense of security by things that they recognize. First off are the classes we got used to as undergraduates. The only difference is now grades are, more-or-less, arbitrarily determined and really pointless. It isn’t as though we are going to apply for more schooling to need real grades. If you do choose more schooling after grad school, then I really can’t help you. You have reached a level of insanity that even I can’t fathom.
Slowly you work your way to the thesis project, which is like the bathroom remodel that is never finished. It seemed like a good plan on paper until the third week of using a bucket instead of a toilet and taking a shower in the yard, where you want to shoot yourself and anyone who told you that this was a good idea to get into. And like the bathroom remodel, it will always take longer than you think it will and it will never go according to plan.
Next comes the peculiar inter-personal relationships you get to have with your immediate supervisor, and later the Committee. We all recognize familial dysfunction. This is no different. Your immediate supervisor becomes akin to an adoptive parent. At first, you constantly want to please them and then later want to torture for trying to make you eat broccoli, or in this case for having to show what you have been doing for the three weeks he was on vacation and you were trapped in the lab. Disappointing you supervisor is like disappointing your parents; initially, you would rather cut off your left arm with a dull knife but later you realize that their disappointment in you is something they should get used to.
The Committee is something else entirely. It is your extended your family come home to visit for the holidays where they insist on staying at your house and on discussing the current state of your relationships (your work) and when you plan on getting married (writing your thesis) and having babies (having a defense).
Your friends, who tend to be limited to the people you see in the lab, are more like your partner’s mistress, because for the most part you all have the same supervisor. If not, then you are all third cousins because you all have the same Committee. And you know how much you like mistresses and third cousins; you’ll talk to them rather than do any real work but you honestly have nothing to say to them beyond mundane observations on the weather or weekend binge drinking expeditions.
You get paid just enough to think you have a job but not so much that you can actually do anything. You stay because you can’t get a real job without the degree that you still can’t figure out how to actually get and because getting a real job is scarier than staying and putting up with the crap you have finally figured out how to deal with. You deal with the long hours and social isolation because really finding new friends is just more work than it’s worth because once you’ve found them you realize that you still don’t have any time to actually hang out with them. It is this vicious, self-torturing, cycle.
If you ever meet someone who is actually considering entering graduate school give them this advice: don’t. And if they are persistent (read masochistic) and choose to go against these wise words then share these helpful pieces of information.
1. Learn to love coffee. If you don’t drink it, start. It will be the most guaranteed way to ensure procrastination. Going to get coffee, drinking coffee, and the ritual of coffee has ensured that PhD’s take 4 years.
2. Your supervisor is not your friend.
3. You will both hate and love what you do with remarkable intensity.
4. You will be poor.
5. You will be a loser.
6. Your supervisor will consider you a moron.
7. Eventually you will not care about points 4 through 6.
And always remember: Graduate school is the dysfunctional relationship for the academic world.
August 20th, 2008 at 17:13
Here we go!!!
August 24th, 2008 at 18:49
It’s quite fascinating. Your messages are really interesting. To have a good resource you should not only to post smth, but do it from the heart. You cope with it.
November 10th, 2008 at 0:13
Great work.