Amy Zheng GMC-E
As we get ready for a new year of graduate school, I thought it would be a good idea to review some best practices.
1. Find at least one person you feed comfortable talking to that has been through or currently going through graduate school
This could be an fellow graduate student in your program, postdoc or a friend from undergrad that you can bounce ideas off of. Identify and get close with a few people that you like in your department or program that you feel comfortable discussing your difficulties with. I have a few close friends from undergrad that are also in PhD programs that I call up every once in a while to talk about grad school life. They have definitely been instrumental in helping me feel competent when I feel like I’ve been floundering my way through graduate school.
2. Always have a plan when meeting with your advisor
I always try to bring a presentation or at least a list of topics to discuss with my advisor. Even if the slides are just a blank slide with a title, they help me remember the little things I need to ask my advisor. Writing a to-do list at the end of my presentations help me keep organized from meeting to meeting on what needs to be finished.
3. Learn the method of organization that works for you
I’m still working on improving my organization methods. But, I have found a method that works for helping me keep track of what I do in the lab. I type up detailed protocols for my experiments. When it’s time to conduct them, I print and date them and take the paper with me into the lab. Through this process, I’ve realized that the best way I can keep track of my mistakes and changes in the lab is to write them on the protocol and save my print-outs in a binder.
4. Think about what you want to do after graduate school early and often
I still have flexible ideas of what my career will be like after graduate school. However, I think it is really important to create a mental list of what type of career you envision after graduate school. Especially in as a PhD student when the finish line feels far away, it can be easy to get tunnel vision and only think about your day-to-day work. Having at least an idea of what life you want after graduate school can help you target who you would like to network with at conferences and within your university. That way, you can build a network before you graduate.
Below are some references for this topic that give more perspectives and more details
References:
Corcoran, V. (2018, October 31). Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved August 16, 2020, from https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2018/10/31/advice-about-grad-school-phd-holder-looking-back-decade-later-opinion Gaudet, A. (2015, March 20). A grad school survival guide. Retrieved August 16, 2020, from https://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6228/1386 Pratt, W. (n.d.). Graduate School Survival Guide. Retrieved August 16, 2020, from https://grad.ucla.edu/asis/library/survivalguide.pdf Azuma, R. T. (2019, February). “So long, and thanks for the Ph.D.!”. Retrieved August 16, 2020, from https://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html
