Surviving Grad School: 3 Tips Before You Even Apply
Graduate school is hard. Not going to sugar coat that. But it can also be a truly amazing and unique time in your life, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be miserable on top of being difficult. Here are some things you can do and think about before you even start applying to Ph.D. programs* that can help make the experience better—and hopefully something that makes you grow as a person and as a researcher:
And if you’re on the fence about whether getting a Ph.D. is right for you in the first place, check out this other article.
1. Find an advisor who is a good fit for you
In the world of research, we’re taught to dream of studying at prestigious universities under big-name professors. While that may look good on your resume at first glance, it might not necessarily be the best experience for you. There are three big things to consider when looking for the right advisor:
(A) Advising style: How a professor advises their students can play a huge role in your Ph.D. experience. If you are the kind of person who is an independent worker and doesn’t feel like they need to be checked up on much, then an advisor who leans toward a more hands-off style is probably less likely to annoy or frustrate you. Conversely, if you want to meet with your advisor on a regular basis and get a lot of help and mentorship from them along the way, then you’ll want someone with a more hands-on advising style. Some professors—especially big-name folks running large lab groups—can be so busy or have so many students that they just simply don’t have a lot of time to devote individual attention to them all. A good way to learn what style a certain advisor has is to reach out to their current or former students and ask. It’s also a good idea to reach out to current/former students to learn about their experience with the professor in general to see if they would or would not recommend them. They can also tell you about any red flags, like if the professor has a history of harassment or treats gender minorities, people of colour, women, etc., poorly, which are all signs to look elsewhere for an advisor.
(B) Research focus: Find a professor that is working on projects that are well-aligned with your long-term career goals. A great way to go about this is to scour the literature of the fields that interest you. See whose names pop up as authors on papers on topics that you find intriguing. Want to work on space missions? Look into who the principal investigators, co-investigators, and/or collaborators on instruments aboard the space missions that interest you. Getting involved with missions early in the game can give you an opportunity to become an established figure on that mission and the celestial body on which the mission focuses down the line. This is extremely beneficial if you plan to stay on the academic track and want to apply for roles like a Participating Scientist on missions, or propose your own instrument/mission someday.
Once you find people you’re interested in working with, reach out to those folks and see if they’re taking on students (see C below). If they are, don’t be afraid to ask for a Zoom coffee chat—now that we’re all used to that sort of thing these days—to see if you seem like a good match in terms of both research and personality (going back to A above). In a Ph.D. student/advisor relationship, you’re committing to working very closely together for years, so it’s worth the legwork up front to make sure it’s a good match as much as you can.
(C) Funding: This is an important one. A professor could think you’re the best student in the world, but if they don’t have funding to take on students in the semester you’re looking to start graduate school, then there might be nothing they can do. So sometimes it’s not you, it’s them. If it’s someone that you are truly set on working with, see if there are teaching assistantship options available in their department. Alternatively, you might plan your graduate school entrance timeline around their funding situation if they’ll have grant funding flowing in at some point in the near future. If you choose that option however, make sure the funding has been secured on the professor’s side. The last thing you want is to plan around a hopeful grant that has been submitted, only to find out later that it was not successfully funded and the professor can’t take you on as a student after all.
2. Create a support network
Pursuing a Ph.D. will have stressful times even with the best of advisors. Balancing coursework, research, and teaching (if that is part of your duties) can be a struggle. You’ll have late nights. You might cry from time to time. You’ll want to vent. This is where creating a network with other graduate students will be critical. You can help each other through the tough times when you become disillusioned with some aspect of your research, frustrated with your advisor, or feeling like you can’t cut it. But it’s hopefully not all terrible and you can also share in the glow of the good times like when you pass your comprehensive exam, or get a paper published, or rock your first conference talk! Some of these students will also later become your professional colleagues, so forging these relationships can have long-term career benefits as well from a networking sense. I still talk to many of the folks from my former Ph.D. lab group, and have co-authored papers, scientific proposals, and even a book, with some of them! They are truly friends and colleagues to this day, even years later.
Social media has also become a great place to connect with other graduate students and share experiences. #AcademicTwitter is a hashtag worth following on Twitter if you need a space to vent, or need to ping a large community for a sanity check on whether something you’re going through is typical/appropriate/etc. or not—and what you can do if it’s not.
3. TAKE YOUR TIME
This was a piece of advice I received from a professional mentor that, looking back, I wish I had heeded myself. It can be easy to want to just hurry up and graduate so you can move on with your career (and get a real salary so you’re not so broke anymore!). But your Ph.D. is likely the last time in your entire life that you will get to pursue pure knowledge. The time you get to spend entirely on research after graduating drops rapidly even if you’re on the academic track, with many professors having to spend huge amounts of their time on teaching, grant writing, and administrative/management responsibilities. I was shocked at how quickly even in my post-doc, my only time for “research” was through the students I was advising—I had very little time to delve into research myself anymore, and that was a little heartbreaking. If you go into industry, the chances at doing pure research in your job are even smaller.
Graduate school also tends to provide schedule flexibility in a way that you’re unlikely to ever see again in your life. Sure, sometimes that “flexibility” may mean toiling away in a lab until late at night getting some precious time on the microprobe, or pounding coffee and energy drinks to write your thesis in the wee hours of the morning. But I can unequivocally say I have far less free time to pursue the things I loved outside of my research now that I have a full-time job than I did when I was a graduate student. I certainly saw friends more often, socialized more, and had some pretty fantastic adventures along the way with things like planetary science field school, analogue missions, and conference trips.
This flexibility leads to a related tip: Allow yourself to take breaks. You don’t have to work on your thesis 24/7. It is okay to give yourself weekends, and to have hobbies and activities beyond your work. Rather than working yourself to the bone, try to figure out what time management skills and productivity tricks work for you. Giving yourself time to relax and recharge will ultimately make you more productive in the long run because you’re not constantly running on fumes.
Many students have asked me about whether they should take a gap semester, or a gap year, to take an internship opportunity as undergraduates. If your university allows this option, then I say 100% yes, seize that opportunity! At the end of the day, delaying your graduation by a semester or a year won’t cause anyone to bat an eye. Having that internship on your resume will also bolster your CV compared to students with no real world, hands-on experience in their desired field. It could also help you hone in on what you might want to focus on for your thesis research, and give you some great networking opportunities.
So take your time and enjoy the ride. This is a time in your life that will never come again. You don’t need to be in a hurry to launch your career to the Moon—because the journey there will still be pretty damn special.
