Surviving Graduate School: Twelve Thoughts

[Cheynem]

A while back, Eric Mukherjee asked me to think about some "tips for surviving graduate school." I'm not sure if he ever posted that or did that himself, but I thought I would share my thoughts about the graduate school experience. I write from the experience of someone who had a mixed experience in grad school--some highs, some lows, and ultimately I am (currently) out of academia after (an admittedly brief and non-intensive) a failed job search. Full disclosure: my masters was in public history and my doctorate was in American Studies.

Here are my twelve thoughts. arranged in somewhat "chronological" order of what you should be thinking of and asking yourself as you go. Since I'm not a prospering academic, I'm not sure if I'm the best to offer advice, but I also completed a thesis, survived, and overall had a happy experience, so there you go.

1. Make sure you want to go. The flip response to the question "should I go to graduate school?" is frequently no, which I disagree with. Let me be clear, though. Graduate school is not for everyone, and professors do a disservice by simply urging every talented undergraduate to go to grad school. Some good rules of thumb. if you're not sure, don't go. If you're going to place yourself in a lot of debt, don't go. If you have unrealistic goals or conceptions of grad school (see below), don't go. A lot of people can save themselves time and headaches by simply not going to graduate school. That said, I do think that if you do want to go, have a realistic mindset, and are in the right situation, graduate school might be good for you.

2. Make sure you're in the right situation. This is slightly different from #1. Grad school may be right for you, but a SPECIFIC grad school might not be right for you. Do the research beforehand, obviously, but also try and pay attention to warning signs. What kind of fellowship or teaching package did you get? How many other graduate students are working with your adviser? How good is the program's reputation? Some might quibble, but I would advise not sacrificing your financial and mental health to take a bad opening at the top school in your program. At Minnesota, most of my cohort got fellowships our first year that were non teaching, which allowed us to do course work and begin research right away. One of my friends, who was very bright and had interests that aligned with professors there, did not and had a teaching load her first year. She fell behind all of us, became overwhelmed, and ended up leaving. Not all grad schools are right for you.

3. Make sure you like academia. This sounds simple, but even I found myself taken aback by this. A lot of times people are fascinated by a portion of academia, especially as undergrads--they like the idea of teaching college students, they like the idea of doing research or writing. But also keep in mind that in most academia contexts, you're going to have to do teaching, research, publishing, conferences, service to the university (committee work, etc.), and probably many other things. Get a sense of what a professor's "typical year" looks like and ask yourself "how much do you like all of the things they have to do?"

4. Be realistic. A lot of grad school sour grapes tends to come from people who expect to be working at R1 or top liberal arts schools and get disenchanted when they end up at a CC or a state school or having to take a variety of temporary or adjunct posts. This is especially true if you're attending a grad program that is heavily clogged like U.S. history or some English programs. To use an example, I think all of my cohort at Minnesota besides me who finished has an academic job...but they really range in attractiveness from tenure-track at sharp schools to adjunct in small Southern towns (no offense to small Southern towns). Keep your expectations realistic.

5. Be selfish with your time. Time is a graduate student's best friend. You cannot afford to waste it. You may not be able to do everything you want to do--I remember the further I got in grad school, the less time I found for quizbowl. You also have to learn how to say "no" to people, who will ask you to do numerous favors or accept lots of opportunities--go to this conference, join my thesis group, review this, etc. Many of these things are good things that you should actually do, but you can't do all of them without going insane. A colleague at Morris was absolutely brilliant at this--when he was busy doing things, he would have no problem basically telling colleagues/students to get out of his office.

6. Get the right people on your side. My adviser at Minnesota (Kevin Murphy, who looked a lot like the MST3K Kevin Murphy) was fantastic. He told me what I needed to hear and kept me on the right track to finishing. Not everyone is so lucky, and I've heard various horror stories about bad adviser/committee relationships. My adviser at Western Michigan was a nice woman who was passionate about her work, but she didn't really like the department and was sort of single-minded in what she wanted her students to do. I ended up finding other professors who gave me a different range of advice and suggestions. I think it's okay for you not to be buddy-buddy with your adviser or committee, but I do think that somewhere in grad school you have to find some professor/faculty member/mentor who will really go to bat for you and tell you what you need to hear.

7. Avoid getting bogged down. Grad school is almost like a throwback to high school in that a lot of people gossip about each other and compare themselves to each other. At Western, I heard a lot about who was sleeping with whom, who hated whom. At Minnesota, it was more professional, but there was still an underlying "____ got a fellowship and got published, what have YOU been up to?" And none of this changes when you get a teaching job either. On the one hand, I advise you not to get bogged down in these petty squabbles--your mental health and your productivity are better. On the other hand, there are people who are excellent at knowing the lay of the land--whom they should ally with and whom they shouldn't (I never mastered this).

8. Find some outlets/maintain your mental sanity. So mental sanity is extremely important in grad school. I think just about every grad student thinks about quitting at some point because they feel like they're too stressed out. You do need some non-academic outlets--quizbowl was like that for me, but it can be anything. I knew a guy in my dissertation discussion group--super nice, always seemed bursting with optimism and energy. About a year after I finished up, he killed himself. There are a variety of reasons why that happened, but the fact remains that grad school is mentally draining. Take care of yourself, physically and mentally.

9. Don't stop. I ended up committing the cardinal sin of academia in that I stumbled after finishing my thesis. I rested on my laurels too long, which is tempting and dangerous. i spent too much time on one area of my career (teaching) and neglected the rest. I was sure I could get something published and let that slide. I didn't want to move on to another project. Academia is pretty much like a sport. The guy who gets called up to the majors from AAA doesn't get to stop and celebrate, he's got to produce. I remember a colleague at Morris finished his first book when I was there. Everyone was very happy and supportive, but there was sort of the ominous subtext of "don't get too confident."

10. Ask for help, but be proactive. I might be wrong on this, so others can correct me. I think it is better to ask for help at various points in your graduate school experience rather than not do so to avoid looking foolish. I do think that since image matters in academia, that asking for help too much is a bad optic, but academia also tends to assume everyone knows how to do everything. I remember I had great hopes that my final year of thesis work would be covered by a fellowship. It wasn't. I literally wasn't sure what to do. I was currently on a one year teaching fellowship at Morris. I ended up asking the Morris administration if I could stay on for another year...that turned into a three year gig. Don't be afraid to ask.

11. Don't assume anything. Kind of the flip of #10 is not to necessarily assume anything even if you do ask. My last year at Morris, I was having some early failures on the job market. Our discipline coordinator dropped by to tell me that even if I didn't find an outside job, they would probably still need me to teach courses next year and that possibly I was being thought of as a potential replacement for the very old current U.S. history professor (who had been at Morris since 1969). Now, the red flags should have been going off with how many times words like "probably" and "possibly" were being used, but I was kind of grasping at straws, so I felt sure at least I had a backup plan if the job search fell through. About a month or so later, she dropped by again to say that they weren't going to need me to teach courses next year and good luck in my future endeavors. Now, I don't think she was lying just to screw with me, but the fact remains I made a mistake. I assumed I had a job waiting even though I had no guarantee.

12. Have a fallback plan. At some point in your graduate school experience, whether it's after the first year, first class, midway through, or in the ABD/post graduate phase, you might end up leaving grad school/academia for whatever reason. You need at least an idea of a fallback plan, particularly if you have debt or a family to support (and if you do, may I suggest looking at #1 and #2 of this list again?). What are you going to do if things go south? My fallback plan is not particularly glamorous (I live at home and I write quizbowl questions--as Joe Nutter once pointed out, "sounds like you've wasted your life"), but I knew I wasn't going to be homeless (as one of my Western Michigan colleagues was until recently!) or adrift (like one of my Morris colleagues, who moves from state to state in a desperate attempt to get any money he can find teaching).

Hopefully this helps. Maybe other, more successful academics can lend their suggestions as well.

[Corry]

While I'm not pursuing academia, I found this post to be fascinating, and I'd be eager to hear if any other quiz bowl academics have thoughts on grad school matters.

[alexdz]

I'm in a bit of a different kind of grad school situation, since I don't plan to stay in academia, but still happy to share some thoughts. After I got my bachelors in 2012, I spent the following academic year working as a middle school science teacher, which is another story to tell altogether some other time. Although I loved teaching, I ended up finding a higher-paying job closer to home that was still in the field of education, and so I took that job and left the classroom. I was making good money for someone basically straight out of college and had a nice flexible job. I started to think about my career going forward, and unfortunately this position did not offer much in the way of "next steps." My partner had, by this point, graduated from undergrad and entered a graduate program at the University of Illinois, so I thought this seemed like a good opportunity to go back to school myself. I figured if I waited too much longer, I'd be out of "student mode."

So, I applied to the masters program in education policy at UIUC and ended up getting accepted. One thing I did, which I think was a smart choice, was to not actually commit to moving and going until I had funding lined up for my program. Since it's a masters, there was no guaranteed fellowship or anything. I applied and interviewed for several assistantships before taking my current one, where I teach writing and public speaking courses. I like teaching, so this works for me. Although I'm doing a MA with a thesis, I'm not planning to go into research or academia after this, so publishing isn't on my radar too much. Thus, the teaching assistantship is a nice way to be funded that lines up with my goals. I feel like this helps me feel like "being productive" in grad school can be channeled to other places, like making interdisciplinary connections between my major and minor fields.

Speaking to the point of keeping sane and not overextending yourself, I really got myself into a big mess with that this past semester. It was by far my worst semester academically (although my final grades came out alright, I really struggled through my courses), for one. But I also took on several outside projects that really ate into my time and energy, and by about October I realized I was really, really behind on everything. I was supposed to be working on a book chapter that I'd volunteered to write, but I also had quizbowl writing gigs that needed to be knocked out, meetings and rehearsals to attend, and conferences to present at. It got so bad, I actually had to back out on a tournament writing gig and I felt really terrible about it, so much so that my mental health suffered a bit for the next couple of days as I was beating myself up inside. I finally realized that if I stood any chance of finishing my other work, I had to get back up on the horse, so to speak. Even though I did as much as I could muster, I still ended up having to ask for an incomplete in one course so I could focus on another [you should not feel ashamed to do this if you're in that kind of situation!]. This past semester has convinced me my biggest problem is being unable to say "no."

Luckily (even though it ate up a lot of my time), I had a "sanity outlet" in student theatre. I recently got back into it, and it's been really cathartic. Especially since my partner left school to take a job on the east coast, I'm very glad I had the built-in group of people who've become some of my closest friends. I've even had the opportunity to write and direct a play on campus, and that's been a nice outlet for my creativity as well that I can't necessarily work into a seminar paper.

All this is really to say, "grad school" can take a different shape than just a PhD-into-academia track. Consider that you have other options to further your education in your field once you finish an undergrad program that don't necessarily involve research and publishing. Grad school also doesn't have to be a full-time gig; my brother is working full-time and pursuing an MBA as well. My partner left an unsupportive program and found a good job that fit well, so remember too that you're not always "stuck."

[This was all more of a rambling story than any coherent advice, but I just wanted to offer a different-ish perspective on grad school.]

[Muriel Axon]

I think all of Mike's advice is good -- as a student in the sciences, some of it I might emphasize more or less than he does, but it's all pretty much true.

The main thing that comes to my mind is to make sure you're the kind of person who can get things done. This means, among other things: Having the willpower to do unpleasant but necessary things, being able to do everyday tasks without being paralyzed with indecision, being a reliable collaborator, and being prepared during important meetings. A lot of grad students don't really have these skills/habits, so you get cut a lot of slack, but if you do have them, you can get a lot more done. When you enter grad school, the clock starts ticking -- you need to do creative work (and publish / present it) by the time you start looking for postdocs / faculty positions / other jobs -- so what you do now and during your postdocs will echo throughout your career. For many of us who were used to coasting by on smarts in undergrad (me included), the "work" part is more trouble than the "creative" part. So my advice is to become the sort of person who can get things done. If you really struggle with these issues, I'd suggest putting off grad school for a bit and working another job.

Doing a PhD is kind of weird because it straddles the line between job and lifestyle. I like to think I have a good work/life balance, and I don't consider myself overworked by any means, but my roommate's a PhD student, my girlfriend's a PhD student, and a solid majority of my friends in Minnesota are academics, so even when I'm not working, I'm surrounded by that milieu. These are all smart, supportive people, and I care for them deeply, as you should care for your academic friends and colleagues...but it's not a bad idea to make some friends who are not academics. (Quiz bowl is great for this!)

[adamsil]

1. Make sure you want to go. The flip response to the question "should I go to graduate school?" is frequently no, which I disagree with. Let me be clear, though. Graduate school is not for everyone, and professors do a disservice by simply urging every talented undergraduate to go to grad school. Some good rules of thumb. if you're not sure, don't go. If you're going to place yourself in a lot of debt, don't go. If you have unrealistic goals or conceptions of grad school (see below), don't go. A lot of people can save themselves time and headaches by simply not going to graduate school. That said, I do think that if you do want to go, have a realistic mindset, and are in the right situation, graduate school might be good for you.

I just got to grad school, so my opinions probably don't mean much, but I'll weigh in (with advice mainly catered to scientists too). Note that I haven't become jaded...yet.

I didn't have the best relationship with my undergraduate research advisor, but he did give me some very good advice--get some real work experience before you decide on graduate school. I had a decently marketable undergraduate degree (well, before oil prices tanked, anyways), but having done three summer internships that barely challenged me intellectually, I figured out that the R&D jobs I actually wanted in industry required higher education than a bachelor's. And since an MS in my field is worth jack, here I am. I'm just at the start of my graduate program, but knowing that singular piece of information--that getting a PhD will eventually get me in the door to having an R&D job, rather than monitoring a production line 40 hours a week--has already been a powerful motivator for when I'm stuck in lab very late at night on consecutive Friday and Saturday nights. But without having done those internships, I'd probably be moping right now about how my UG friends are making bank (albeit by selling their souls to Exxon-Mobil).

Seconding Mike's and Shan's points about having outlets for non-research things. This past week was the first time where I had a day where I did science--labwork, data analysis, class, homework, group meeting, reading papers--for 12 hours straight with only a 15-minute break to eat lunch (and then afterwards went to quizbowl practice, where Dylan apparently expected me to answer science questions). You won't succeed without having something else. QB can be a part of that, but the QB community is full of either academics, would-be-academics, or people who act like academics, so it's not quite the same. I enjoy playing a set of tennis with people who don't know what a riboswitch is and frankly couldn't care less. For one thing, it's less likely that they'll call BS on your research focus. :)

Finally, and most importantly, like the people you're around. If you're picking between schools, go the place that you'll be happiest, where you like the people best--this applies to both the faculty and current graduate students. There were other schools with better-known faculty or higher rankings that I was considering, but I felt like I could enjoy my time at Northwestern most. So far, I think it has been a great decision.

[ValenciaQBowl]

A lot of grad school sour grapes tends to come from people who expect to be working at R1 or top liberal arts schools and get disenchanted when they end up at a CC or a state school or having to take a variety of temporary or adjunct posts.

Sadly, I know some folks like this at Valencia. They got PhDs and expected to be at UF or FSU, but the competition for such slots is brutal, so they've found themselves teaching section after section of Comp I and Comp II (English teachers, of course), cynical about the skills and learning abilities of our students, and suffering a sense of resentment for being at a CC. Fortunately, those folks are a distinct minority.

I'll just say that the life of a CC professor can be the absolutely great. I teach 15 hours of classes each term, hold six hours of quizbowl practice, serve on lots of committees (I actually like being part of the governance and oversight process of my institution), and still am done with work before 4 pm most days, and by noon on Fridays. If you like teaching, you should consider a CC. Will you have students who have the academic abilities and interests that you did as an undergrad? Probably not, but you'll have people who want to learn, and it's a great feeling helping people who don't come from families with college expectations (or previous graduates) find their way. And best of all, you can do it with just a master's degree in your field.

Mike, you'd make an excellent CC professor! Come on down to Valencia, and I'll hook you up.

[Steeve Ho You Fat]

12. Have a fallback plan. At some point in your graduate school experience, whether it's after the first year, first class, midway through, or in the ABD/post graduate phase, you might end up leaving grad school/academia for whatever reason. You need at least an idea of a fallback plan, particularly if you have debt or a family to support (and if you do, may I suggest looking at #1 and #2 of this list again?). What are you going to do if things go south? My fallback plan is not particularly glamorous (I live at home and I write quizbowl questions--as Joe Nutter once pointed out, "sounds like you've wasted your life"), but I knew I wasn't going to be homeless (as one of my Western Michigan colleagues was until recently!) or adrift (like one of my Morris colleagues, who moves from state to state in a desperate attempt to get any money he can find teaching).

I think the fact that you've come up with helpful learnings like these indicates that you haven't wasted your life!

I also 100% agree with Adam that everyone who wants to go to grad school should seriously consider spending a year or two in the workforce, or at a minimum doing serious internships in the area you'd be going in to. For many people, graduate school may be the right choice, but it's a big commitment to make when you've never spent any time living the alternative of employment with your bachelor's degree.

[Sima Guang Hater]

Thanks for starting this thread Mike. I endorse all of his advice, and I want to add some that's particularly useful for scientists.

I made two cardinal mistakes in grad school:

1. I wasn't as productive as I could have been, due to mental health issues, burnout, and not being able to organize my time correctly. Learn how to deal with those things and how to organize your time (Dennis Loo called this "adulting"). The best graduate students I've seen aren't the ones that spend crazy hours doing their work - it's the ones that do efficient work 9-10 hours a day (with occasional weekends), who keep reasonable hours, and who take time for their mental and physical health. Above all, be efficient, and make incremental, manageable progress.

Quizbowl may not be compatible with the mental health part of this, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.

2. My project became a huge quagmire, with more and more experiments, collaborators (some of whom were hard to work with), and work to be done. It got to the point that I became the fall guy for literally everything, even though I had to teach myself a programming language, make two different mutually incompatible software packages work with each other, and learn an entirely new field of biology that I wasn't trained in. Part of this was my fault, but a lot of it was out of my control. This made me think of a few things I'd do differently:
-Take as much control of your project as you can. I'll never work with a co-first author again if I can avoid it.
-Have clear, well-thought out outlines for each project. Make sure everything is publishable even with a negative result, and make sure your experiments are well-suited and well-powered for what you're trying to do.
-Publish regularly, and focus entirely on publishing and being productive. My program requires 2 publications to graduate. Try to get the first one out early, preferably by taking over an already almost-finished project to start (this is what one of my labmates did to great success).
-Vet your collaborators carefully. Make sure they know what they're doing, whether they have experience with your particular application, etc. If they don't, find someone else, or better yet, do it yourself.
-Don't be afraid to try new methods or techniques that could make your life easier
-Keep some extra irons in the fire in case your main project doesn't work out

May add more later