Grad school advice -- Year Three
I guess I was doing a great job of working on a lot of projects during my second year in the lab because at my annual "big picture" chat at the beginning of my third year in the lab, my advisor's advice was: focus on one project.
This piece of advice didn't come as a big surprise to me because I was working a few different projects, and one of them was definitely working better than the others. In fact, it was working well enough that we were starting to think about how we would write it up for publication. Unfortunately, I was spending too much time with my side-projects and not enough time on that particular project, so I just wasn't getting the last few experiments done that I needed for publication.
My advisor's advice was timely. I needed to focus. So, I took the sideprojects and froze down the strains, put the reagents in the freezer, and put them out of my mind for about a year.
Focus is something that I've struggled with throughout all of grad school. I've really only found one method to keep myself on task: paper lists of specific things I need to do. The latest system I've been using consists of a simple sheet of 8.5x11" paper that is taped up next to my monitor. At the top is the name of my project and beneath the title is a list of all the experiments I need to do to finish (or at least make progress on) this project. At the end of the week, I review the list and make up a new one for the new week. I file the old lists away for reference--just in case I need to remember when I did a certain thing and I can't find it in my regular lab notebook.
Focus makes a lot of sense for the 3rd year. By now, you should have an idea of what is working, and you need to bang away at it to make some significant progress. You might be approaching your first publication if things are going well. If progress is slow, then you need to at least get enough done to impress your committee and advisor when you update them on your work.
The fact of the matter is that science is pretty hard, and it simply takes a lot of work to make progress. My lab is organized so that just about everyone works on their own projects, and there is very little collaboration within the lab (beyond helping with very simple, little things, or giving advice). So, it's up to you to get it done, and it won't get done without putting in the hours with a focus on a specific project.
So, my investment analogy from my previous post breaks down with the advice in this post because I don't ever think you should put all your money into one basket, but when it comes to grad school you have to learn to focus on your project and let the peripheral things go. Otherwise, after 5 years you'll be 20% done with 5 projects instead being completely done with one or two of them.
This piece of advice didn't come as a big surprise to me because I was working a few different projects, and one of them was definitely working better than the others. In fact, it was working well enough that we were starting to think about how we would write it up for publication. Unfortunately, I was spending too much time with my side-projects and not enough time on that particular project, so I just wasn't getting the last few experiments done that I needed for publication.
My advisor's advice was timely. I needed to focus. So, I took the sideprojects and froze down the strains, put the reagents in the freezer, and put them out of my mind for about a year.
Focus is something that I've struggled with throughout all of grad school. I've really only found one method to keep myself on task: paper lists of specific things I need to do. The latest system I've been using consists of a simple sheet of 8.5x11" paper that is taped up next to my monitor. At the top is the name of my project and beneath the title is a list of all the experiments I need to do to finish (or at least make progress on) this project. At the end of the week, I review the list and make up a new one for the new week. I file the old lists away for reference--just in case I need to remember when I did a certain thing and I can't find it in my regular lab notebook.
Focus makes a lot of sense for the 3rd year. By now, you should have an idea of what is working, and you need to bang away at it to make some significant progress. You might be approaching your first publication if things are going well. If progress is slow, then you need to at least get enough done to impress your committee and advisor when you update them on your work.
The fact of the matter is that science is pretty hard, and it simply takes a lot of work to make progress. My lab is organized so that just about everyone works on their own projects, and there is very little collaboration within the lab (beyond helping with very simple, little things, or giving advice). So, it's up to you to get it done, and it won't get done without putting in the hours with a focus on a specific project.
So, my investment analogy from my previous post breaks down with the advice in this post because I don't ever think you should put all your money into one basket, but when it comes to grad school you have to learn to focus on your project and let the peripheral things go. Otherwise, after 5 years you'll be 20% done with 5 projects instead being completely done with one or two of them.
posted by pro_blogger at 2:48 PM
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