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Ask Slashdot: Advice For Summer Before Ph.D. Program?
First time accepted submitter tookul03 writes "I'm a graduating senior from a small New England liberal arts college, and have secured a spot in a Biological Science Ph.D. program for the next five years. I realize this coming summer will be my last out of the lab for a long time and am not sure If I am interested in doing something related to my research interests or use it as an opportunity to find some new hobbies/interests. I figured the Slashdot community had a number of individuals who were/are in a similar position (albeit different fields) and could shed some light on things they (or others) had done. Thanks."
It's a pretty awesome experience.
A lot...
Sex, drugs, rock & roll. Next!
The sooner you start, the sooner you will finish and get a job that pays better or is more prestigious.
Simon's Rock College
Travel! Don't do research but travel and charge your batteries for what comes ahead.
(Currently writing up PhD thesis and in desperate need for a vacation)
I travelled across the country going from music festival to music festival the summer before I went to grad school. You will have plenty of time to do something research related. Just relax and have a great fucking time, you've earned it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Turn back while you still can.
I recently completed my PhD so I can offer some very recently acquired information for (hopefully useful) advice.
First of all, you need to find something else when you finish your PhD. Usually, academics went for a post-doc and non-academics went to industry. The game is a little different now, though, and pretty well everyone needs an academic post-doc, even to go to an industry position. Hence you should be thinking now about what you want to do when you finish, figuring out how to get there from where you are about to go. It really is never too early to start thinking about that. Some people say that the most important thing you do in grad school is line up a post-doc position.
Second, networking is critical. I highly recommend that you try to get to as many conferences as you can manage when you are a grad student.
Third, the job market for post-docs right now is terrible, unless you are in the right field at the right time. Right now it seems structural biologists are in high demand but in 5 years it could be something else entirely. Keep an eye on where the job market is going and know how to market yourself to the demand.
Fourth, start thinking right away about your committees for your time in grad school. You'll probably have a qualifying committee, an advisory committee, and a thesis exam committee. Obviously your advisor will be on all three but the rest might or might not carry over much between the three. Know how to deal with those people, how to keep them happy, and how to get them to help you graduate and network.
Fifth, if you don't have an adviser already, start talking to current students in the labs of advisers who are looking to pick up students. You want to know what your life will be like, and how long potential advisers generally keep their students around for before they graduate.
In other words, don't take this summer to escape academia. Take it to prepare for it. If your school graduates most PhDs in 5 years you really don't want to be the person who takes 7 due to lack of preparation.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If plan to work in industry (private sector) or a national lab, then by all means, go ahead and blow off some steam before the slog. But if your plans include an tenure track position in academe, you've got no time for such frivolity. Competition for academic positions in the biological sciences has reached the highest levels ever. Expect between 150 and 250 competitors for each position you will apply for. With that kind of competition, only the shining stars become assistant professors. And current expectations have risen to ridiculous levels of productivity and achievement. So if it's a tenure track position you're after, better use your last summer to get started on a grant proposal and submit your first few manuscripts. That's what it takes these days to succeed in academia.
http://disciplinedminds.com/
"In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
In almost every case it is acceptable to use a comma before "and". In the case of a series, it's a Harvard/Oxford/serial comma (and is either present or absent, depending on the editorial style of whoever you're writing for). In the case of a compound sentence, it is required. And in the case of a compound predicate (as in this sentence), it is considered optional. As a rule, you should not use a comma in a compound predicate unless the sentence is fairly complex. I probably would not have put in that comma, but I also probably would not have objected if someone else had put it in.
The only situation I can think of in which it is actually wrong (as opposed to being required or being a style issue) to use a comma before the word "and" is when you're writing a simple series of two things, e.g. "The boy, and girl went to the store."
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Move to your new university and use the summer to do (at least one) research rotation.
Here's why: you said "for the next 5 years." I'm not sure where you got that time period from, but if you're doing your PhD in the US, you're going to find that it's a completely open ended process. This is *really* important to internalize, because every other form of education that you've had experience with has a fixed term: you do what they tell you to for the prescribed time period and at the end they hand you the diploma. You can't run down the clock on a PhD. You don't graduate until you can convince your advisor that you've done enough to merit the degree. And it's generally against your advisor's personal interests to let you graduate.
So, if you want to complete your degree in a reasonable period of time (e.g. 5 years), you have two tasks: 1) Find a lab with a research advisor who you like and trust, because you're putting your life in his or her hands. If you wouldn't give him/her copies of your keys and your ATM PIN, you shouldn't be in that lab. 2) Get established in that lab so you can start organizing and taking charge of your own project and working toward first-author publications.
The first step towards this is doing lab rotations. Summer is often a good time to do these, because your first year is likely to be filled up with classes which will make it difficult to spend enough time in a lab to really get a feel for it. Just make sure that the PI in whichever lab you're rotating in is going to be around (sometimes they are gone for months at a time in the summer) because the most important thing you need to get out of the rotation is deciding whether you trust the PI.
I suspect there will be several threads of people recommending various voyages of self-discovery or self-education. If you had something that you really *wanted* to do, I wouldn't try to talk you out of it, but from the way you've phrased your question it doesn't really sound like there is, and there's no point finding a new hobby this summer that you won't have time to continue once you start your program.
Best of luck with your program.
If you are doing a PhD, your subject matter will have to become your hobby. it shouldn't be your only one, but you should be absolutely enraptured with what you're studying. You are guaranteed to run into a dichotomous moment in your 5-7 year program where you will honestly consider quitting. It will only be through your personal passion and drive that gets you through the 'salmon of doubt'.
Since your spot is secured, you either have obtained grants, you have an academic advisor, or both. Spend the summer reading everything your advisor has written, and read everything in your field. If you are coming into a new PhD program you will most likely have a comprehensive exam (ours is verbal) where your committee will test your knowledge in the field to the point they would be comfortable allowing you to research independently. If you have not formed a research committee, use the summer to select internal and external examiners for your project. Selecting your committee is like drafting for a hockey team: there are heavy hitters and there are marginal academics. you may even encounter, as i have, a committee member that will attempt to sabotage your research. that's all part of grad school, so investigate who you're working with through previous students. Your prospective committee's individual publications is a good first step.
Spend the summer reading to the level where you can converse with someone in your field and be able to drop first and last names of the most pertinent research done between the last 50-100 years ago; much of this research (at least in my field of fish larval development) will be in the stacks and in the library; it is incredibly irksome to encounter a PhD candidate that has no references out of what they could pull out of an online paywall. A lack of understanding the foundational research makes the researcher rootless; it is as if a leaf has no idea it is attached to a tree.
Don't stop reading. keep reading. you should be reading already, but keep reading throughout the summer. clearcut an entire state of trees if you need to; keep reading. This is a primary failure mode of the graduate student: not everyone can take graduate school because not everybody can stand having their brain physiologically rewired on a daily basis as they encounter conflicting research, bad research, obscure research, and science-related gossip. Read until you feel comfortable holding conflicting ideas in your head. read until you find yourself asking a question that leads to no answer, and begin to formulate your project from there.
Changing gears slightly, the second most important thing to knowing your pertinent research intimately is the ability to communicate science to non scientists. My program stresses and indoctrinates strong presentation skills. i would highly recommend reading a book like Randy Olson's Don't Be Such a Scientist. Learn the jargon, and learn to internalise the jargon and be able to speak to non-technical audiences. the more you can communicate your message and research, the better you will be.
Good luck!
Second that.
I recommend the following site for those who are entering or those who are thinking of quitting.
http://100rsns.blogspot.com/
New Economic Perspectives
screw the Appalachian Trail...well, not really. Don't let other people's idea of 'adventure' bias your decision.
The idea is, do something that requires alot of time and commitment that you truly enjoy. Something that the future you're going for may not allow the flexibility for. It can be something challenging like a long backpacking trip. That's a popular thing to do in this situation.
Let's say you're going to be an oceanographer. You're going to have all kinds of adventures in your program. You probably already have had some interesting research trips. You might want to try to see a baseball game in every stadium in the National League or something like that.
Don't be the kind of person who does things 'for the story' so you can look cool.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Semicolons are useful; some of us are sad we can't use regular colons more in everyday writing, and they let us pretend otherwise.