Rocket Scientista

As a part of an attempt at professional development, my department has begun a course on being a good scientist in academia.  For one of our early assignments, we read some articles and blog posts and were told to write an article on a related topic.  I decided to write about the difficulties involved in choosing your graduate research advisor, as I think it’s a choice that can make or break your career.  My apologies for the tone, but I figured some of you might be interested.  Here it is in all its (really long!) glory:

Graduate school can be a miserable place if you find yourself in a bad situation without the knowledge of how to fix it. After graduation, most students can pinpoint at least one instance where they wish they would have made a different choice. In this report, I look at one of the biggest decisions one encounters in graduate school- picking an advisor and research project. I use anecdotes from current and former students to illustrate that while there are many difficult choices to make in grad school, making mistakes is ok as long as you have the fortitude to fix them.

The decisions to enter graduate school, how to prepare, and where or how to apply are not to be taken lightly. With obvious effects on one’s future career, these steps to becoming a scientist are agonized over and the causes of much stress for undergraduates.
Though these decisions are difficult and weighty, the path to making choices is well laid out and advice is given freely. Across the internet, in seminars, and in books, one can find an amazing array of tips, charts, warnings and cautionary tales from those on both ends of the graduate school application process. With these tools to guide you, the daunting process can be easily manageable. However, once one accepts an offer to an institution, the tough choices do not end there.

Students often see graduate school as the logical next step in their progress toward becoming scientists, but forget that the onus rests with them to utilize this time to truly develop into the professional they strive to be. Instead of a well-tread path to a career, the navigation of graduate school is largely unmapped and full of opportunities to misstep.

How, then, does one approach finding their way past the roadblocks to doing good science? Specifically, how does one choose an advisor and a research project? If things do not proceed as intended, how does one alter plans to achieve success? How can you control your place within your department and the larger world of your field? With input from former and current graduate students and my personal experiences, I discuss some of the significant choices one has to make along the way, as well as how to deal with the sometimes unpleasant consequences of bad decisions. In this article and the others to follow, I hope to provide insight into the possible pitfalls during graduate school and hopefully help others not make the same mistakes I (and countless others) have.

Picking an Advisor and Project

Most graduate programs require coursework and exams to progress to degree completion. These hurdles, though stressful, serve to produce graduates with a consistent set of background knowledge in the field. The tricky parts of getting ones degree are those which are not standardized. As graduate students are notoriously poor decision makers
[1], methods for picking an advisor and research project are discussed.

Upon matriculation, most students either begin their graduate lives as a teaching assistant or research assistant. For those who accept research assistantships right away, the choice of an advisor is initially easy. While taking courses, you will start on a research project, familiarizing yourself with the techniques and theory behind your experiment. If you become unhappy with your appointed project or advisor, see the next section for a discussion of what to do when you are unhappy in your research. However, not all students begin research with an advisor right away, and for those the decision with whom and about what to do research can be excruciating.

There are many factors to consider when picking an advisor and project. You must determine your priorities and weigh your options accordingly. Some students find a professor with highly compatible research interests; others want an advisor they get along with, who has a similar work ethic. Other questions to ask are: has the Professor mentored successful, employed PhDs? Is the research well-funded or will you have to TA? Is the Professor a young faculty member with less experience, or is she about to retire? If you wanted to work for her, would she start you on a trial run, or would she expect you to sign on for the entire PhD? There is an ocean of questions [2], but for some students, the choice is simple. If you are of the type who can deal with most anything, you may pick the project that is most appealing, choose that advisor, and just deal with any issues along the way. For most students, however, this is not the ideal path toward academic contentment.

In picking your advisor, carefully consider your options. Though you enter graduate school with an idea of what you might want to pursue, do not let that limit your search for the perfect match. You may find a research project suits you well, even though it is not in the precise area you had originally preferred. A third year graduate student in physics states, “I’ve ended up kind of far from the topics I talked about wanting to pursue in my
(statement of purpose)… it turns out I really enjoy what I’m doing now.”* As soon as you have the time, start scheduling meeting with anyone whose research you find interesting. Go to office hours or email professors to make an appointment. Do not be afraid to ask questions, and do your research ahead of time [3]. Talk to students currently working for each professor, as well as students and post-docs within the department. Not only do the inner workings of the research group matter, but perception and activity within the department and field do, too. Ask specific questions and concerns- DO NOT BE SHY. If you wanted to work for them, would they start you on a trial run, or would they expect you to sign on for the entire PhD? Professors want graduate students they can work well with and who will do good work. They do not want disinterested students who do not share their passions for the science.

Some departments offer lunchtime meetings or seminars so that new students can see what is going on within the department. Take advantage of these. Also note how professors interact with other faculty members and with seminar speakers from elsewhere. Are they always negative? Do they have insightful comments and questions? Do they not care to attend seminars? All of these questions can help you make inferences about if a professor might be a good match. A good match for one person might be a horrible combination for another. Each professor has strong suits and areas for improvement (much like graduate students), so it is not realistic to expect perfection.
Once you have met with various professors and want to make a decision, sit down and assess your priorities. Making a chart or keeping notes as you meet with professors will help you weigh your options [4]. Once you know what is important to you and have made a decision, schedule another meeting with that professor to address any other additional concerns and tell them of your keen interest.  Some professors may not be receptive at first, or may expect you to contact them at least once more to make sure you really do care. Be fervent in your excitement (it should be easy! This is the stuff you came to grad school to do!) and you will  find yourself an advisor.

The Consequences of Your Decisions

So you’ve been working on a research project for a while now, but you realize things are not going as planned. You find yourself bored, dreading work, or in a headlock with your advisor. You start having misgivings about your project and even the decision to enter graduate school in general. She’s always gone, she’s too demanding, or the research just doesn’t interest you. Don’t fret. It can be fixed. Part of being a graduate student is learning to take the responsibility for yourself and your career. Things happen, decisions are made based on incorrect assumptions, people change.

At my first graduate institution, I found research beginning to wear on me. When I was introduced to the project, it seemed like a perfect fit. As time wore on and the cracks were exposed, I became increasingly uncomfortable with my place in the research. My advisor had been appointed chair and was rarely around to address my concerns, another competing lab and technology had finally proven its own and had begun to overtake the efficiency of our experiment by leaps and bounds. I spent over ten hours a week in teleconferences with collaborators at other institutions and the science seemed the furthest thing from my mind.

When looking for advisors, I had met with multiple professors and asked what I thought were the hard questions. I sought advice from fellow students and even previous professors and I was happy with my decision. But these issues started cropping up and I became increasingly unhappy with my progress. After some soul-searching, I realized my best choice might be to leave my institution. I had encountered other troubling issues while there and the research troubles sealed the deal. I knew I still wanted to be a graduate student, wanted to pursue research, but just not in that lab, or at that school. I had many conversations with my advisor and let him know early on that I was likely leaving. I applied to graduate schools for a second time, finished my masters coursework, continued doing some research, and left. I have had to start mostly from scratch, though I am much happier at my current institution and get a second chance at all those decisions I was forced to make as a new grad student.

Another student began work as a research assistant the summer before matriculation.
“I had the option, at this school, of coming in normally with all the other grad students and TAing until I found an advisor I liked. But I got a call in April before the school year began asking me if I wanted to be an RA in this one lab — I could even come work over the summer if I wanted,” but she quickly found it was not the perfect match for her. “I didn’t realize that choosing to be a research assistant for someone basically meant joining their research group permanently, and I also didn’t ask any questions about the structure of the grant…I absolutely hated the research — they’d played it up as being very open-ended, but really I was trying to accomplish a specific goal for a corporate sponsor — but felt like there was no way out.”*

Do your homework and find out the nitty gritty details. Do not get discouraged as the project goes along — there will be bumps along the way. But if things get really bad, know what should happen if you do decide you want out. Asking these questions beforehand and being prepared for even the worst can put you in a much better decision, even if your research goes well. Not feeling like you are stuck in a situation often helps lighten the load.

For some other students, bad research matches have not been the issue. Instead, poor matches in personality or academic style can cause delays. One student says, “I get along pretty well with my PI, and I love my research. I guess I really can’t ask for more that.
But he is disorganized and under funded … And he has all the same flaws and bad habits I do.”*  These tiny issues come in any advisor/advisee relationship.

Finally, while the responsibility for keeping up with degree progress rests with the student, the advisor can make some aspects unnecessarily difficult or time-consuming, even delaying ones studies for years. One student says, “I shouldn’t have picked the advisor I did. While it allowed me to do the work I wanted… [Working with him] doubled my stay at the department.”*

While graduate school is a long, uphill battle, picking the right advisor to fit your goals is an important decision that can make those years go smoothly. Do not take the decision lightly and make sure you cover your bases. The more you know about your advisor, and she about you, the less likely it is that problems will arise. And should you encounter any issues along the way, talk to your advisor first. Advisors have been in your shoes and have become successful working scientists with a wealth of knowledge. Communicate your ideas, progress, and concerns and you will thrive. Good Luck!

[1] Groening, M. (Executive Producer, Creator of the Simpsons). Home Away From Homer.

[2] Dermer, Marshall L.  “An Insider’s Guide to Choosing a Graduate Adviser and Research Projects in Laboratory Sciences” http://www.ou.edu/cas/botany-micro/grad-stu.html

[3] Rojas, Fabio. “Grad Skool Rulz:7 -Picking the Adviser” http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2007/04/23/grad-skool-rulz-7-picking-the-adviser/

[4] “Guide to Surviving Graduate Schools- Tips Articles”,  http://www.educationindex.net/educationarticles/graduateschoolstips/survivinggradschool.html

* From personal communications with graduate students in physics, space sciences, materials engineering, and biophysics.  Names withheld.