How to fail as a graduate student?

Everywhere I see articles about how to succeed as a graduate student and how to get a job after Ph.D. What is missing from literature is a guide on how to fail as a graduate student. What if a student wants to fail as a graduate student instead of succeeding? Determined to fail in graduate studies, these students have nowhere to turn for advice. The following article serves a guide to the student to know whether he is in the right direction for determining his failure as a graduate student?

It is usually believed that it is hard to be successful and easy to fail. This is completely wrong. To be a right kind of failure in an environment which sees even failure as a success takes patience, hard work, and expertise.

By securing an assistance ship in a graduate school, the student succeeded in the first step, from here the student needs to plan carefully to fail at every step. If the student fails so drastically then he would end up dropping out of graduate school which may lead for him to find another job to support himself which can be called a success. A skillful graduate student determined to be a failure as a graduate student will do everything in his effort to stay as long as possible in the program so that his chances of failure will maximize.

The first year is crucial to determine the failure of a graduate student. It lays the foundation for the rest of the years. His attitude in the first year will inform his adviser whether he should be assigned to do more work or less work. Achieving failure requires conscientious effort. Here the committed student goes to work. He talks to seniors, and people who have failed previously and asks about class work. For ex: how long the test will be, how hard the test will be, and how strict the teacher in taking attendance. Then he chooses the easiest classes, and justifies to his adviser about why he is not doing any bench work by saying that he is always busy with class work. Here choosing the right amount of class work is crucial to failure. If he takes too many classes, then by default he is learning too much or if he takes too little classes then he can’t justify to his adviser that he is busy. So, from his skillful expertise he chooses right number of classes so he doesn’t have to do any bench work and not learn anything from classes at the same time.

One of the paradoxes in a research lab is that the student who is interested in research doesn’t care about dynamics of a lab, instead the student who is skilled at failing as a graduate student cares a lot about lab dynamics and his mentors work timings. The skilled student notes down how many classes his mentor is teaching this semester and their timings. He also notices how much his lab mates are willing to do his work. He carefully plans and comes to the lab only when his mentor is there. He assigns his job to his fellow students who are more interested. He usually keeps at least three reasons to tell his boss why he doesn’t have any data to show in lab meeting. He selects one of the three reasons based on his boss’s mood at the time. He doesn’t do anything in the lab yet he seems and talks like he is the only person working in the entire university.

By the middle of second year, the chances of doing bench work will increase as his course load decreases. Here again the skilled student goes to work to make sure to do everything in his power to avoid that. He achieves this objective by several ways.

One way is he uses all the reagents and gets absolutely no results. (Neither positive or negative; people in scientific field know that negative results are still results). Another way is to show technical errors (confounders) as results. Third way is to manipulate the data to show the results that his mentor is expecting. Every student knows that a professor can’t micromanage everything as he will be busy with his own work. The expertise and the dedication of the student can be found on the lengths the student will go to cover up his faked data.

An unskilled student who is trying to fail will find experiments that is completely unrelated to his project. But a skilled student will find an experiment that is related to his project but which needs equipment (not in his lab) and costly reagents knowing very well that his current lab can’t afford this and blames his mentor for not providing him enough resources.

University and the science department in general provides many opportunities to be a part of a scientific organization. Here the unskilled student avoids these organizations from the beginning. Then there are skilled students. They intentionally become part of an organization and takes up a leadership position. They will constantly complain about the organization without doing any work to improve the outcome. Their attitude will be so infectious that other people will lose interest in the organization. This is a success to the failure of the individual and organization. The skilled worker is usually challenged by someone in his organization. Someone will always be more interested to work in an organization and make it better instead of complaining. The skilled student instead of seeing this as a challenge will see this as an opportunity. He will let the other guy do all the work and resorts to only just complaining.

It is given that all graduate students earn less. This is the most vulnerable time in any student’s career. The skilled student takes advantage of this and he constantly complains to his mentor and fellow students about the pay he is receiving. He finds another job, completely unrelated to his field of study, without the institute knowing this and spends most of his time there.

By probability, the more awards you apply to-the more your chances of getting an award. A skilled student knows this and completely avoids applying for awards. Sometimes he can’t get out of applying for an award because his boss has directed him to do so. Then when he doesn’t get an award he will complain how the system is compromised and the judges are biased instead of learning form the experience. From this constant complaining his boss will probably not ask him to apply for the award again. Like a kid who breaks something every time he is assigned a task to get out of the work, the skilled student armed with his determination to fail will find an excuse to get out of something.

The way someone handles failure shows whether he will be successful in being a failure or not. Everyone knows that a student will fail in some area during his graduate years. How he utilizes this opportunity determines everything. If he really failed in a class, complains that the professor doesn’t know anything and he is better than professor.

Shows interest in going to places rather than talking to students when attending a meeting. Even when talking to people talks about everything but research.

Stress is an important component of a student’s life especially graduate student’s life. Some people work better in stressful environment some work better in relaxed environment. The skilled student does not have any stress but pretends stress in some situations. Knowing to be relaxed in stressful situations contributes to success and can be seen as high level confidence. To avoid that the student will avoid stressful situations because his carelessness can be attributed as being relaxed and might lead to success.

As a graduate students, the student is supposed to attend classes, give seminars, do research and participate in organizations. He won’t prioritize here and sees how it unfolds. Finally, complains that he is doing too many things and other people who are doing better are because they are doing less than him and he is better than them.

The combination of these ideas is so great that the failure of graduate student will be inevitable no matter how much someone encourages the student.

Do’s:

Do criticize the university for paying less.

Do find another job other than being a graduate student.

Do fake data.

Do forget basics

Be careless in doing your experiments

Do think that you are better than the rest.

Do take criticisms personally and try to criticize the same person again.

Don’ts:

Don’t attend conferences

Don’t read constantly

Don’t apply for awards

Don’t check for validity of experiments

Don’t do reproducible science

Don’t seek help from anyone.

If you see something wrong, don’t mention it to your boss as he can’t find out by himself.

Don’t dress professionally at meetings.

Don’t be passionate about research work.

Don’t learn from experience.

Don’t take notes and when asked about a protocol make it up.

Bonus Section: In a research setting, sometimes, “I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer but some people will give some other answer based on their level of expertise. Some of them are:

Question: Does this method works for this type of study?

Answer: We have already published the results!!

Question: How did you choose the number of factors?

Answer: The software does that!!

Question: Can you explain the theory behind NMR?

Answer: It is basic.

Question: Why did you chose this method?

Answer: It is like that in the protocol!!

Special Note: At first, I thought about writing an article called “How to be successful as a graduate student?”. It occurred to me that it would be cliche and there are countless articles out there that can give better advice than me. So, I decided to write the opposite for fun. For people who might not get it, this entire article is a work of fiction. It is a product of sarcasm. Any resemblance to someone living or dead is purely coincidental.