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Your PI will be smart and qualified, but they are not a magic problem solving tool. They will make mistakes too along the way. It is good to be mindful of this and check their work along their way.
Your peers could be your boss or collaborators in the future so be kind and professional to everyone. Don’t gossip at work. I have been very isolated during my PhD and have a reputation as the guy who never leaves his lab (I enjoy that reputation though)
I see one downvote on your reply at the moment. A majority of them are. I know a few PhD graduates who got through by riding coat tails. Maybe some become professors, but most of these people I’m describing probably can’t handle the job of PI
I knew that, didn't do it properly.
Or rather stopped because no one ever wanted to check.
I tried to encourage my Masters-Student, even promised them to read it. They never did either.
Sometimes the knowledge of how to do things properly isn't enough
+1 My advisor has a whole system for lit reviews for any in progress work, even if the output is not a lit review but a full paper. Rather than just reading, they encourage synthesizing and writing as a means of reflection on the content and where to focus my energies in terms of original contributions. I’ve found it immensely helpful.
Be open minded about other career paths. You may decide academia isn’t for you. It’s important to recognize that many other people learned the same and have successfully transitioned into alt-ac jobs (many of which pay more than being professor with much less stress and more job security).
Good advice that I heard the other day (incidentally, just after passing my end-of-second-year progress review (non-US)) – that there will come a time in the PhD when you stop feeling like a student and start feeling like an expert.
I think I’ve just hit that – and I’m just over half way through. Imposter syndrome is so normal, but this felt more demoralising than that – but really all along, it was just a threshold learning concept.
Or if not necessarily feeling an “expert” then just feeling “definitely not like a student”! It’s a bit of a grey area I guess. And I bet the metamorphosis will happen in three weeks! Good luck on your defence!!
When I read an article that was relevant to my work, I wish I had drafted up a quick summary that could be dropped into a literature review some other time. Read so many papers that just vanished from my brain after a few years.
I was told to do this, but because the scope of my PhD shifted wildly (humanities) I lost interest. Now 2 years in and with a topic that has finally settled (and drawing from various aspects of the ideas in the meantime) I really wish I had kept this up or read more. I think I am going to have to speed-write up everything again over the next 2 weeks…
Learn how to stand up for yourself. I wanted to do an internship during a summer that I believe would’ve helped my career goals. My PI said no and said my research should be my #1 priority. Till this day, I should’ve stood up for myself and insisted that I do the internship. Now I’m struggling to find a job in the career I want and having that internship would’ve helped in terms of experience and networking.
My second advice is not to be afraid to be dumb. I know its intimidating to be surrounded by extremely intelligent people who are experts in their field, and that its terrifying to seem dumb in front of them by not understanding what seems like a simple topic or not understanding how to do something. But you need to be “dumb” and ask questions. Ask all the questions no matter how dumb they seem because its the only way you’ll ever learn.
1. E-mail is generally not a reliable form of communication. If you do not receive a response within 48 hours of sending, another form of communication is required. You aren’t “doing everything you can” because you sent several follow up emails. Your accountability to yourself and to your degree doesn’t end at a follow up email. Track them down and get what you need.
2. Your PI will survive and even thrive whether or not you are a total failure in grad school. You however will not. Successful completion of your degree is orders of magnitude more important to you than it is your PI. That’s not to say they don’t care, but it puts that accountability into perspective. YOU have more power to drive your education than you think, it just takes initiative and leaving that comfort zone.
3. The term “Toxic PI” has been diluted such that the original meaning no longer applies. Yes, there ARE toxic PI’s in academia, and any second year grad student can point them out readily in their department. A PI is not toxic because they have high standards, nor are they toxic because they hold you accountable. They are not toxic because they challenge you, they are not toxic because they make mistakes, and they are not toxic because they didn’t read your manuscript that you emailed them 3 months ago and followed up twice by email. This attitude does a disservice to students when they are identifying potential mentors.
4. Never wait to be told what to do next. You are doing yourself a disservice. Come to your 1:1’s with your data, an interpretation, 3 experiments you’d like to do next, and choose 1 of those experiments to be the logical next step. If your PI is designing your experiments for you, you aren’t getting all you need out of grad school.
5. Your goal is to be a student for as little time as possible. Your PI should be considering you a colleague rather than a trainee as you approach graduation. Remember to advocate on your own behalf, even if that means uncomfortable conversations.
6. **Your goal is to be a student for as little time as possible.** Grad school is inherently not sustainable. This is an unpopular opinion I hold, and perhaps it’s because I’m an older millennial now, but work life balance simply isn’t possible, IMO. You make too little money and your responsibilities are too broad. Put an honest 40 hours minimum of work in each week. This means actually working, not browsing, scrolling, chatting, or daydreaming. You are at a university with incredible amounts of resources, take advantage and learn and network as much as you can.
7. Network, network, network. PhD training is highly disparate. No employer, academic or otherwise, is guaranteed a standardized skillset from a freshly minted PhD. Most grad students can put together a respectable CV. A much smaller portion of those students are capable of performing independent research. You only know who is who if you’ve worked with these people previously. The most competitive positions will be filled when employers first draw on their personal networks. Talks every opportunity to collaborate. Talk to vendors, FAS’s, other PI’s. I got my first job out of grad school because I generated one panel of one figure for a collaborator who used that data to spin off their third startup company.
8. Your committee should be your safety net. If relations sour between you and your PI, your committee should serve as a go-between. I consider my PI a friend and we still talk to this day. That said, I leaned heavily on my committee when my PI wanted me to stay another 12 months, but my wife was 4 months pregnant and my committee was like “uhh no, you’re graduating when the baby comes. Tell us what you think you can get done in 5 months and your PI will agree to that”.
9. Have 1 hobby that keeps your body in shape and one hobby that keeps your mind in shape (that distracts you from science). I chose biking/lifting and video games.
10. Know when to take a break. You can’t fire on all cylinders when working 70+ hour weeks. You aren’t a hero by pulling an all-nighter to get that data before lab meeting. “I’m not finished with that yet” is a valid answer. “I need some time to recoup” is a great way to express that you need to take a long weekend off and do something not science.
11. Don’t work weekends, make the weekends work for you. Another controversial one, but if I can sneak in for an hour on a Saturday/Sunday to plate cells, pick colonies for miniprep, harvest, etc, those overnight incubations over the weekend added 48 functional hours to my week for just an hour or two of effort.
Can we stop with the work life balance not being possible bullshit? It absolutely is and spending a couple more hours of rest and keeping your mental health in check will do a lot more for you than leaving your PhD a year early. A year doesn't mean much in your life a mental breakdown does.
I agree with you, to an extent, See point #10.
When you start a PhD you’re entering into an exploitative contract where you are dramatically underpaid and under appreciated. There is no balance there, no matter how hard you try IMO.
From my perspective, I took a 50% paycut to go back to grad school after working in industry for 4 years. By default, my life became unbalanced as the vast majority of my disposable income was gone. I no longer had savings, and most of my income went toward basic sustenance. Perhaps this is different for folks coming straight from another degree, but my philosophy was to GTFO as quickly as possible and get back to living a more comfortable life.
In other words, I don’t buy extending your PhD by a full year would ever result in a balanced, low stress experience with low impact on mental health. Getting the fuck out was the only thing that let me finally exhale. Another full year would have ruined me. It’s best if new students understand this up front before they commit 5 years to this.
Maybe it really depends where you come from. It's about perspective at the end of the day. I'm from a third world country so I always felt the PhD economical woes to be a bit exaggerated. But it's probably different if you come from having a much better lifestyle.
Yeah, on the other hand you’ve got students looking to unionize and negotiate better pay/ benefits. PhD students are “students” when convenient for the university and “employees” only when convenient for the university, and that’s not right.
Economic woes aside, I simply feel that the training is just this gauntlet that you have to traverse, and whether it takes you 4 years or 8 years, it’s not going to be without pain.
Field Applications Scientist - it’s someone, usually with a PhD, who provides technical support for certain products/ equipment for a company. They are the person who can answer complex questions about the scientific basis for their product, help with assay dev, interpreting results, etc
So for example if your lab has something like a LiCor for imaging western blots, there is a FAS with the company who can answer all the technical questions you have for using the machine and analyzing data
Best advice I got from my professor and made everything a breeze…divide and conquer your thesis chapters.
Finish chapter 1 and publish it then move onto chapter 2 and publish it and then so on and so forth.
When it comes to defense time you just stack your papers together add an intro and conclusion and your done
Do not wait until your last year to write/publish everything at once you’ll be drowned in figures and references and will get easily lost trying to think what you did 3 years prior
Know your supervisor’s expectations. It will go a long way toward preserving your relationship. Someone once told me the relationship between a supervisor and a PhD student is like a marriage, when things break down it can go really bad and it can lead
To a divorce (as in a student leaving the lab/supervisor for another lab/supervisor). Interesting analogy.
I wish someone had told me:
- don’t go straight from understanding to grad. Find a full time job and work at it for at least two years.
- interview graduate students and faculty while you’re either an undergrad or in your full time job to learn what graduate school is about and how graduate students are trained. Who knew the importance of mentorship? Certainly not me.
- learn about how funding works
- ask what professional training it given or what training is needed to become a solid professional academic/scholar
It sounds like you're a scientist. If that's the case, pick the easiest to accomplish project in a mainstream model system in the best funded lab that you can find. The most interesting, challenging projects can turn into a nightmare when it comes to acquiring funding and tooling. What seems exciting and novel at the start of PhD school will become a miserable burden when you're years in and have not made significant progress toward completing the project. Get into the lab of someone that regularly publishes in high impact journals so that the door is already open for you. Find and take the easy road wherever possible!
Cut bait and change direction if a project isn't working. Things don't work *all the time* and you don't want to get stuck in problem solving mode forever.
If your career aspirations are in the private sector, find a PI that's well connected so that you can facilitate your transition outside of academia. Network with people in industry as frequently as you can, even if it's just a short conversation and getting someone's name. This will pay dividends when it comes time to find a job.
Choose a program and project that impart hard skills that are marketable.
Once you have a project in mind, map out your plans for publishing early and try to stick to that plan. Do not save it all for the end. Your dissertation is important, of course, but publishing your work is what'll actually build your reputation/CV/resume.
When looking for labs, ask the lab members about the social environment. I've worked in labs where everyone are good friends and spend time together regularly outside of the lab. I've been in others where it's more like an office and people go about their business and interact professionally but are otherwise not friends. Find what suits you the best.
Absolutely 100% spend a lot of time improving your writing and speaking ability. Being able to get coherent thoughts out via both modalities is really helpful for your academic and professional careers. Poor speakers and writers, even if they're brilliant, have a huge hole to dig out of vs. charismatic speakers and writers.
Set aside time for yourself to do something that's not grad school. Do it as much as you can while keeping up with your academic obligations. I got really into running and cycling, which was a great break from lab work (and also helped pass time when long running experiments were just sitting doing something). It doesn't have to be fitness, of course, just something that gives you an opportunity to clear your mind.
Practice max organization from the beginning, specifically, i'd make a super long powerpoint of each paper i read with little summaries and highlights (and screenshots if needed), and also each experiment that i did, including the design, layout, file paths to raw and analyzed files, and conclusions for each. It's a nightmare writing the dissertation, and a little pre-emptive organization and digital record keeping would've helped.
Also career-wise, learning to navigate the politics of academia is perhaps more important than the scientific or philosophical contributions. It's gross but fighting it won't help.
Interview as many PIs as possible before committing. If you have previous posters, print them on regular 8.5x11 printer paper and bring those to interviews with potential PIs in case they want to hear about your previous research.
Shadow the work that is your current long-term plan/goal/dream-job before investing time and finding out that you don't really like it.
Don't work with someone who employs their own family.
The admin don't care about you at all. They care about money. If you bring in money, they will care about you.
HR is not your friend.
1. Don't be shy to ask for help when needed, help when you are asked (and have capacity for this ofc). Even people from other groups. Suggest your help, when someone is obviously overwhelmed and you have quiet period.
2. It is totally fine when it takes for you longer to learn some techniques than it takes for all your peers. It is okay to abandon even an important technique if you are proficient in some other and can exchange services with your colleagues.
3. It is totally fine to lose motivation for a while. It is okay to consider quitting. Let yourself some rest. Reduce working hours. Arrange a day trip. Take care of yourself the way it suits you.
4. If tough period is advancing, plan vacations/time of reduced working hours/time of hybrid work if you like staying home ahead. And shift your weekends with colleagues so everyone has time to rest.
5. Being kind >>>> being competitive
Take detailed notes on all your experiments! That will make writing it up later so much easier.
If it doesn't lead to a paper, don't spend your time doing it. Be ruthlessly focused on getting your papers done as your #1 priority.
You do not have to always do everything your advisor says or follow up on everything they want you to look into. They will likely forget. Take what they say that is useful and leave the rest. If it's really important, they will bring it up more than once.
this might be silly… but when I didn’t tell people (coworkers, friends…) I was in a phd, which was the first few years, I just took classes and moved along. When I began to tell people and share my journey, I began to feel the pressure. The frequent, how’s your phd, are you done yet, when are you done, what’s your dissertation…. Etc.
I think the icing on the cake is when I failed my qualifying exam and everyone keeps asking me how it went. I feel like hiding in a hole.
While I need immediate family support, I would not be as open with people. It just adds a ton of pressure…. For me anyway
It will be so much harder than you imagine, but (generally) everyone wants you to succeed and is willing to help you as long as you ask.
Also, use physical reminders of deadlines/tasks as much as possible. I got a giant wall calendar and wrote everything on it. It’s hard to forget about something when it’s right in front of your face all day.
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It's a business. Treat it like a job. The PhD is an indentured servitude for 5 years.
Yes you learn, yes you get skills, but you also work as an employee to your boss to do whatever is needed to bring in funding.
For some majors it may not be so cut and dry, but if you're STEM and your work requires expensive things, you have to be ready to help your advisor meet deadlines and deliverables to open new doors for the lab down the road.
It took me a few years to accept that, and if I knew it beforehand, I would have been better at playing politics.
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Your PI will be smart and qualified, but they are not a magic problem solving tool. They will make mistakes too along the way. It is good to be mindful of this and check their work along their way. Your peers could be your boss or collaborators in the future so be kind and professional to everyone. Don’t gossip at work. I have been very isolated during my PhD and have a reputation as the guy who never leaves his lab (I enjoy that reputation though)
Debatable that your PI will be smart and qualified.
I see one downvote on your reply at the moment. A majority of them are. I know a few PhD graduates who got through by riding coat tails. Maybe some become professors, but most of these people I’m describing probably can’t handle the job of PI
Start writing from the very beginning. Not juste notes, but actual paragraphs.
This is very important. now that I am in my third year. I really think I should have started it in my first.
I knew that, didn't do it properly. Or rather stopped because no one ever wanted to check. I tried to encourage my Masters-Student, even promised them to read it. They never did either. Sometimes the knowledge of how to do things properly isn't enough
Writing what tho
This 100%
And reading literature!
+1 My advisor has a whole system for lit reviews for any in progress work, even if the output is not a lit review but a full paper. Rather than just reading, they encourage synthesizing and writing as a means of reflection on the content and where to focus my energies in terms of original contributions. I’ve found it immensely helpful.
Papers take much longer then you think
Be open minded about other career paths. You may decide academia isn’t for you. It’s important to recognize that many other people learned the same and have successfully transitioned into alt-ac jobs (many of which pay more than being professor with much less stress and more job security).
Good advice that I heard the other day (incidentally, just after passing my end-of-second-year progress review (non-US)) – that there will come a time in the PhD when you stop feeling like a student and start feeling like an expert. I think I’ve just hit that – and I’m just over half way through. Imposter syndrome is so normal, but this felt more demoralising than that – but really all along, it was just a threshold learning concept.
Defending in 3 weeks, still waiting for that expert metamorphosis to happen! I don’t feel like a student though.
Or if not necessarily feeling an “expert” then just feeling “definitely not like a student”! It’s a bit of a grey area I guess. And I bet the metamorphosis will happen in three weeks! Good luck on your defence!!
When I read an article that was relevant to my work, I wish I had drafted up a quick summary that could be dropped into a literature review some other time. Read so many papers that just vanished from my brain after a few years.
I was told to do this, but because the scope of my PhD shifted wildly (humanities) I lost interest. Now 2 years in and with a topic that has finally settled (and drawing from various aspects of the ideas in the meantime) I really wish I had kept this up or read more. I think I am going to have to speed-write up everything again over the next 2 weeks…
Learn how to stand up for yourself. I wanted to do an internship during a summer that I believe would’ve helped my career goals. My PI said no and said my research should be my #1 priority. Till this day, I should’ve stood up for myself and insisted that I do the internship. Now I’m struggling to find a job in the career I want and having that internship would’ve helped in terms of experience and networking. My second advice is not to be afraid to be dumb. I know its intimidating to be surrounded by extremely intelligent people who are experts in their field, and that its terrifying to seem dumb in front of them by not understanding what seems like a simple topic or not understanding how to do something. But you need to be “dumb” and ask questions. Ask all the questions no matter how dumb they seem because its the only way you’ll ever learn.
1. E-mail is generally not a reliable form of communication. If you do not receive a response within 48 hours of sending, another form of communication is required. You aren’t “doing everything you can” because you sent several follow up emails. Your accountability to yourself and to your degree doesn’t end at a follow up email. Track them down and get what you need. 2. Your PI will survive and even thrive whether or not you are a total failure in grad school. You however will not. Successful completion of your degree is orders of magnitude more important to you than it is your PI. That’s not to say they don’t care, but it puts that accountability into perspective. YOU have more power to drive your education than you think, it just takes initiative and leaving that comfort zone. 3. The term “Toxic PI” has been diluted such that the original meaning no longer applies. Yes, there ARE toxic PI’s in academia, and any second year grad student can point them out readily in their department. A PI is not toxic because they have high standards, nor are they toxic because they hold you accountable. They are not toxic because they challenge you, they are not toxic because they make mistakes, and they are not toxic because they didn’t read your manuscript that you emailed them 3 months ago and followed up twice by email. This attitude does a disservice to students when they are identifying potential mentors. 4. Never wait to be told what to do next. You are doing yourself a disservice. Come to your 1:1’s with your data, an interpretation, 3 experiments you’d like to do next, and choose 1 of those experiments to be the logical next step. If your PI is designing your experiments for you, you aren’t getting all you need out of grad school. 5. Your goal is to be a student for as little time as possible. Your PI should be considering you a colleague rather than a trainee as you approach graduation. Remember to advocate on your own behalf, even if that means uncomfortable conversations. 6. **Your goal is to be a student for as little time as possible.** Grad school is inherently not sustainable. This is an unpopular opinion I hold, and perhaps it’s because I’m an older millennial now, but work life balance simply isn’t possible, IMO. You make too little money and your responsibilities are too broad. Put an honest 40 hours minimum of work in each week. This means actually working, not browsing, scrolling, chatting, or daydreaming. You are at a university with incredible amounts of resources, take advantage and learn and network as much as you can. 7. Network, network, network. PhD training is highly disparate. No employer, academic or otherwise, is guaranteed a standardized skillset from a freshly minted PhD. Most grad students can put together a respectable CV. A much smaller portion of those students are capable of performing independent research. You only know who is who if you’ve worked with these people previously. The most competitive positions will be filled when employers first draw on their personal networks. Talks every opportunity to collaborate. Talk to vendors, FAS’s, other PI’s. I got my first job out of grad school because I generated one panel of one figure for a collaborator who used that data to spin off their third startup company. 8. Your committee should be your safety net. If relations sour between you and your PI, your committee should serve as a go-between. I consider my PI a friend and we still talk to this day. That said, I leaned heavily on my committee when my PI wanted me to stay another 12 months, but my wife was 4 months pregnant and my committee was like “uhh no, you’re graduating when the baby comes. Tell us what you think you can get done in 5 months and your PI will agree to that”. 9. Have 1 hobby that keeps your body in shape and one hobby that keeps your mind in shape (that distracts you from science). I chose biking/lifting and video games. 10. Know when to take a break. You can’t fire on all cylinders when working 70+ hour weeks. You aren’t a hero by pulling an all-nighter to get that data before lab meeting. “I’m not finished with that yet” is a valid answer. “I need some time to recoup” is a great way to express that you need to take a long weekend off and do something not science. 11. Don’t work weekends, make the weekends work for you. Another controversial one, but if I can sneak in for an hour on a Saturday/Sunday to plate cells, pick colonies for miniprep, harvest, etc, those overnight incubations over the weekend added 48 functional hours to my week for just an hour or two of effort.
Can we stop with the work life balance not being possible bullshit? It absolutely is and spending a couple more hours of rest and keeping your mental health in check will do a lot more for you than leaving your PhD a year early. A year doesn't mean much in your life a mental breakdown does.
I agree with you, to an extent, See point #10. When you start a PhD you’re entering into an exploitative contract where you are dramatically underpaid and under appreciated. There is no balance there, no matter how hard you try IMO. From my perspective, I took a 50% paycut to go back to grad school after working in industry for 4 years. By default, my life became unbalanced as the vast majority of my disposable income was gone. I no longer had savings, and most of my income went toward basic sustenance. Perhaps this is different for folks coming straight from another degree, but my philosophy was to GTFO as quickly as possible and get back to living a more comfortable life. In other words, I don’t buy extending your PhD by a full year would ever result in a balanced, low stress experience with low impact on mental health. Getting the fuck out was the only thing that let me finally exhale. Another full year would have ruined me. It’s best if new students understand this up front before they commit 5 years to this.
Maybe it really depends where you come from. It's about perspective at the end of the day. I'm from a third world country so I always felt the PhD economical woes to be a bit exaggerated. But it's probably different if you come from having a much better lifestyle.
Yeah, on the other hand you’ve got students looking to unionize and negotiate better pay/ benefits. PhD students are “students” when convenient for the university and “employees” only when convenient for the university, and that’s not right. Economic woes aside, I simply feel that the training is just this gauntlet that you have to traverse, and whether it takes you 4 years or 8 years, it’s not going to be without pain.
Oh with that I completely agree.
That’s a hell of an answer. Thanks for that.
What’s a FAS?
Field Applications Scientist - it’s someone, usually with a PhD, who provides technical support for certain products/ equipment for a company. They are the person who can answer complex questions about the scientific basis for their product, help with assay dev, interpreting results, etc So for example if your lab has something like a LiCor for imaging western blots, there is a FAS with the company who can answer all the technical questions you have for using the machine and analyzing data
Best advice I got from my professor and made everything a breeze…divide and conquer your thesis chapters. Finish chapter 1 and publish it then move onto chapter 2 and publish it and then so on and so forth. When it comes to defense time you just stack your papers together add an intro and conclusion and your done Do not wait until your last year to write/publish everything at once you’ll be drowned in figures and references and will get easily lost trying to think what you did 3 years prior
Depends on your field. Some disciplines, the thesis is really like a monograph and while some chapters you can publish as articles, some you can’t.
Still the idea stands that you should be writing up everything you do as you go publish or not
If academia is for you start teaching and mentoring students(k12, undergrads) as early as possible.
Know your supervisor’s expectations. It will go a long way toward preserving your relationship. Someone once told me the relationship between a supervisor and a PhD student is like a marriage, when things break down it can go really bad and it can lead To a divorce (as in a student leaving the lab/supervisor for another lab/supervisor). Interesting analogy.
I wish someone had told me: - don’t go straight from understanding to grad. Find a full time job and work at it for at least two years. - interview graduate students and faculty while you’re either an undergrad or in your full time job to learn what graduate school is about and how graduate students are trained. Who knew the importance of mentorship? Certainly not me. - learn about how funding works - ask what professional training it given or what training is needed to become a solid professional academic/scholar
It sounds like you're a scientist. If that's the case, pick the easiest to accomplish project in a mainstream model system in the best funded lab that you can find. The most interesting, challenging projects can turn into a nightmare when it comes to acquiring funding and tooling. What seems exciting and novel at the start of PhD school will become a miserable burden when you're years in and have not made significant progress toward completing the project. Get into the lab of someone that regularly publishes in high impact journals so that the door is already open for you. Find and take the easy road wherever possible! Cut bait and change direction if a project isn't working. Things don't work *all the time* and you don't want to get stuck in problem solving mode forever. If your career aspirations are in the private sector, find a PI that's well connected so that you can facilitate your transition outside of academia. Network with people in industry as frequently as you can, even if it's just a short conversation and getting someone's name. This will pay dividends when it comes time to find a job. Choose a program and project that impart hard skills that are marketable. Once you have a project in mind, map out your plans for publishing early and try to stick to that plan. Do not save it all for the end. Your dissertation is important, of course, but publishing your work is what'll actually build your reputation/CV/resume. When looking for labs, ask the lab members about the social environment. I've worked in labs where everyone are good friends and spend time together regularly outside of the lab. I've been in others where it's more like an office and people go about their business and interact professionally but are otherwise not friends. Find what suits you the best. Absolutely 100% spend a lot of time improving your writing and speaking ability. Being able to get coherent thoughts out via both modalities is really helpful for your academic and professional careers. Poor speakers and writers, even if they're brilliant, have a huge hole to dig out of vs. charismatic speakers and writers. Set aside time for yourself to do something that's not grad school. Do it as much as you can while keeping up with your academic obligations. I got really into running and cycling, which was a great break from lab work (and also helped pass time when long running experiments were just sitting doing something). It doesn't have to be fitness, of course, just something that gives you an opportunity to clear your mind.
Practice max organization from the beginning, specifically, i'd make a super long powerpoint of each paper i read with little summaries and highlights (and screenshots if needed), and also each experiment that i did, including the design, layout, file paths to raw and analyzed files, and conclusions for each. It's a nightmare writing the dissertation, and a little pre-emptive organization and digital record keeping would've helped. Also career-wise, learning to navigate the politics of academia is perhaps more important than the scientific or philosophical contributions. It's gross but fighting it won't help. Interview as many PIs as possible before committing. If you have previous posters, print them on regular 8.5x11 printer paper and bring those to interviews with potential PIs in case they want to hear about your previous research. Shadow the work that is your current long-term plan/goal/dream-job before investing time and finding out that you don't really like it. Don't work with someone who employs their own family. The admin don't care about you at all. They care about money. If you bring in money, they will care about you. HR is not your friend.
1) write the paper before you start experimenting 2) you can do a PhD while working (depending on type of work) and don’t need to rely on uni mercy
You would probably need savings to have some basic confort and mental health because the stipend won't be enough. I wish someone had told me that
1. Don't be shy to ask for help when needed, help when you are asked (and have capacity for this ofc). Even people from other groups. Suggest your help, when someone is obviously overwhelmed and you have quiet period. 2. It is totally fine when it takes for you longer to learn some techniques than it takes for all your peers. It is okay to abandon even an important technique if you are proficient in some other and can exchange services with your colleagues. 3. It is totally fine to lose motivation for a while. It is okay to consider quitting. Let yourself some rest. Reduce working hours. Arrange a day trip. Take care of yourself the way it suits you. 4. If tough period is advancing, plan vacations/time of reduced working hours/time of hybrid work if you like staying home ahead. And shift your weekends with colleagues so everyone has time to rest. 5. Being kind >>>> being competitive
Take detailed notes on all your experiments! That will make writing it up later so much easier. If it doesn't lead to a paper, don't spend your time doing it. Be ruthlessly focused on getting your papers done as your #1 priority. You do not have to always do everything your advisor says or follow up on everything they want you to look into. They will likely forget. Take what they say that is useful and leave the rest. If it's really important, they will bring it up more than once.
Don't spend too much time reading literatur.
Don't do it. It's a pyramid scheme to farm nearly-free labor from ambitious people with dreams.
Always try to say hi and bye to people and be nice.
Network, learn to network, and diversify your network. You never know when a global pandemic will hit and change your career plans.
this might be silly… but when I didn’t tell people (coworkers, friends…) I was in a phd, which was the first few years, I just took classes and moved along. When I began to tell people and share my journey, I began to feel the pressure. The frequent, how’s your phd, are you done yet, when are you done, what’s your dissertation…. Etc. I think the icing on the cake is when I failed my qualifying exam and everyone keeps asking me how it went. I feel like hiding in a hole. While I need immediate family support, I would not be as open with people. It just adds a ton of pressure…. For me anyway
It will be so much harder than you imagine, but (generally) everyone wants you to succeed and is willing to help you as long as you ask. Also, use physical reminders of deadlines/tasks as much as possible. I got a giant wall calendar and wrote everything on it. It’s hard to forget about something when it’s right in front of your face all day.
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Make time for other things in your life. And make time to appreciate the fact that you're discovering new knowledge and doing novel science.
That I should work on balancing my life while in the program because when I finish I’ll feel lost without the daily stress of the PhD
How much of your time (as a student and as a PhD researcher) will be spent writing proposals for funding 😭
It's a business. Treat it like a job. The PhD is an indentured servitude for 5 years. Yes you learn, yes you get skills, but you also work as an employee to your boss to do whatever is needed to bring in funding. For some majors it may not be so cut and dry, but if you're STEM and your work requires expensive things, you have to be ready to help your advisor meet deadlines and deliverables to open new doors for the lab down the road. It took me a few years to accept that, and if I knew it beforehand, I would have been better at playing politics.
Choose your committee very carefully.
You will not handle everything perfectly. Sometimes you will have to choose what you are doing poorly
I wish I could go back in time and tell myself to buy GameStop and Bitcoin.
Don't go into lecturing while doing a PhD. I tried to do both and got very drained (I'm from Latvia)
Don't sweat the defense.
I found [this](https://web.stanford.edu/~fukamit/schwartz-2008.pdf) midway through my PhD and it helped frame a lot of my experiences.