Dear all,
Mother has forwarded me some editorial someone wrote on creaders about graduate school and academia, asking me how accurate it is. More specifically, she added, she's curious about what it's like to be a graduate student. After the initial moment of blankness where my mind gibbered to itself in mild hysteria, the second response my psyche provided was, "It's complicated", which frankly sounds more like how people would describe an ambiguous, occasionally awkward, occasionally frustrating relationship that they just don't know how to walk away from, rather than a system of education.
And then I realized: oh wait. It's exactly like that.
It's "complicated" in many senses and more so for a PhD student in the sciences, I think, than someone getting their MS. (Our lab has had a few of those in the past and I also know a few of them, so if only vicariously, I know of which I speak, at least in the field of biology.) Masters and doctorate graduate students in the science start off exactly the same: there's a per-requisite number of courses and amount of teaching, be it TA-ing or high school out-reach, that all graduate students have to do in order to graduate. The key difference is in the amount of time spent in research. The average masters degree in my school is about three years, first year mostly classes, but from the second year onwards you are expected to do research, resulting in your thesis and, hopefully, a publication that will catapult you to the next step in your career, whatever it may be.
In contrast, for my program and what I've heard about the biology and neuroscience doctorate programs, we are told from the get-go that classes are not important. Make sure you don't flunk out (read, grade point average less than 3.5) and that's all that matters. Your primary focus should always be research, research, research. We are trained as if we were going to continue in academia and this is our terminal degree. We are requited to have at least one first author paper (though the pressure is usually two and if you're very, very luck and very, very productive, or work in comp bio, three). Not only that, but it has to be in one of the top tier journals in our field which, for the graduate programs that I've mentioned, means the Science, Cell, Nature trio (though other Cell publications, such as Neuron, is considered acceptable. PNAS is...well...you should be aiming for the trio). The average length of time for a doctorate is 5.5 years, more often 6-7 if you are working with vertebrates (longer generation time). We spent 50+ hours a week in lab to try to achieve this goal and so spend as much time in lab as any of the post-doctoral fellows, except we are scientists-in-training and so we make more mistakes, which reduces our overall productivity when compared to the post-docs, but we're also very cheap labor, which is why some of the PIs like us (note: don't join their labs if you're career oriented and actually want a nice PI).
We are "students" though, outside of the first few years we don't take classes. We are students in the sense that we work more closely with the professor who runs our lab and learns from more senior lab members what are the right experiments to do, how to manage / analyze data, etc. Quarters and finals means zip to us except we need to remember to register so we get listed as students.
We are researchers though we are listed as students. We are in lab as often as any other lab member, if not more (to make up for our mistakes, see? Because like the post-docs, we need a publication in a top tier journal), though we're not actually employees so we don't really get "vacation" or "maternity leave", which is another reason why you want a nice PI (short for Primary Investigator, which is another name we use for the professor who leads and funds a research lab with his/her work). We are like any other researcher you might find except we need to deal with qualifying exams and candidacy exams and the annual committee meeting so our mentors can be sure that we are making progress both in our research and our overall training as scientists.
We are at the in-between place between students and employed researchers.
Here's what my typical day looks like:
Get up between 6:30-7am. Goes through morning routine, which includes breakfast but does not include showers.
Leave house for bus stop between 7:30 and 7:45am.
Arrive on campus: 8:30-8:45am.
Take out all the samples incubating samples and put them in wherever they need to go. Put together all reagents needed for the morning's experiments and let them reach their desired temperature from their stored temperature. While this is happening, check email, then, if time, facebook.
Start experiment 1, during first incubation over 10min, start experiment 2 so the incubation times can be staggered and more can be done, if possible. In times of overlapping experiments / experiments that can be staggered (sometimes the time conflict for the protocol just can't be resolved, especially when both experiments are extremely time sensitive) finish checking email and facebook. Read papers. Read news. Near the end of either one of the experiments, starting putting together reagents for the next experiments.
Noon is approaching, start planning for lunch break such that, right before going to lunch, set up everything that has an incubation of at least 30min and all the reagents that need to be warmed up / cooled down for the afternoon experiments.
Go eat lunch. This can occur anytime between 12pm and 3pm.
Start the afternoon experiments. Adjust schedule for lab meeting and seminar when applicable. In the incubation periods analyze data from morning, type up the notes. If time left /procrastinating (also = any time incubation time < 10min), check to see if anyone's online and message them / check facebook again / etc.
6pm approaches, start wrapping up experiments. Set up all samples that need overnight incubation, double check all machines and hazardous waste.
Leave for bus stop between 6:15 to 6:40pm.
Arrive home between 7:15 to 7:40pm.
Dinner first thing after getting home, then clean up, then shower. At this point it will be well past 8pm, usually past 8:30pm. Make up lunch for the next day. Read stuff / draw stuff depending on level of exhaustion, then do the nightly routine. Depending on how tired I am and how much to do there is, I get to bed anytime between 9pm to 11pm.
Repeat.
This is a schedule that is only possible if you're really into what you're doing.
This schedule does not take into account the fact the emotional stress that your experiments fail 90% of the time, that the current pay rate for funding from the national science institutes is about 5%, the fact that science is based on critical thinking and can be cut-throat like you wouldn't believe, where you are surrounded by very competent, very competitive people, in a system where you are repeatedly told that you're good, but not quite good enough and you learn to pick yourself up and keep going anyway.
This is way of life that's only possible if you're really into what you're doing.
It is frequently awkward and frustrating. There is no one right way to do grad school or mentoring or even science, so things are frequently ambiguous and no one really knows what's going on, but we keep going anyway, because (for most of us) we love science and we can't quite bear to walk away.
It's complicated.
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