As I near the end of my graduate school journey, it's about time to look back and evaluate. My mom always says I should write a handbook for the fresh out of college, bright eyed newbie.....but isn't half the challenge figuring it out for yourself? The answer is YES. Otherwise there would already be a handbook. It's not like graduate school is a new concept. Millions of people have been going to graduate school for hundreds of years. And no one gives away their secrets. However, here are some of the things I've learned (and they're going to seem depressing and jaded but get over yourself, no one finishes graduate school fresh and rosy. If you do, something went very wrong!).
1. You're supposed to feel inadequate. If you don't, you're not doing it right.
2. Graduate school is extremely loosely guided self-paced learning. Although I don't recommend it, I think it's quite possible the laziest of people could emerge from a graduate seminar without really having learned anything.
3. If you enter a PhD program thinking you know what you want to study and you end up writing your dissertation on that subject you're either the most stubborn person alive or you ignored every course you ever took.
4. If a reading list (either for a course or your doctoral exams) seems palatable, something is hidden. If a reading list seems completely over the top and there's no way you could even consult all of those sources, that's the one you should be working from.
5. If you're sleeping 8 hours a night and spending your weekends doing fun and exciting things, you're not working hard enough.
6. You should feel attacked at least once. You never know who will be the one to do it, it could be a professor or another student, but if you're doing the right work, someone should attack your work at some point. If you make it through without embarrassing yourself, congratulations, you've just had your first taste of academia.
7. At some point, hopefully earlier rather than later, you will think you have uncovered a new theory, approach, or movement. You will do a ton of research and still think that you're the first to arrive at this new idea. You're not. You'll turn that paper in, the professor might even get excited about it.....but sooner or later, it will become evident that you just weren't looking in the right place. Your "original" ideas are not original. Someday they might be....but not yet.
8. You live in a bubble. Books and research are your reality. At some point you're going to emerge from your bubble and realize you missed some huge world event that never even made it's way into the farthest corner of your awareness. This is the life of a student.
9. It's always a competition. In class, at conferences, the race for publications.....it's all a competition. Even if you somehow make it through your coursework without feeling it, you will realize it when you're up against a close friend and classmate of yours for the one job that's left out there. And you'll want to win it.
10. If you don't believe in caffeine, you will not make it. If you don't ever need it, you're not doing it right.
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