Put Another Dataset In Episode 4: Things I wish I understood when starting my PhD

Hello everyone and happy October! My favorite month - birthday, anniversary, Halloween, what more could you ask for? ??

As I get closer to graduation, I’ve been having more conversations with both grad students in years behind me as well as connections I have met on LinkedIn, and it got me thinking about the things I would tell someone who maybe either has just started grad school or perhaps is thinking about applying. These are things I wish I didn’t just know but really understood and came to terms with before getting deep into my PhD candidacy when they just slap you right in the face.

For the record, knowing these things wouldn’t have changed my mind about pursuing a PhD, I would have just been better prepared physically and emotionally to handle these situations.

Also, these tips are just from my experience and may not apply to others, especially at other schools/programs and are also geared more towards PhDs pursuing industry positions following graduation and maybe apply less to those wanting to go into academia.

1.???There is no metric for success in getting your PhD

This one has been the hardest for me to handle during my PhD journey, so I want to make others aware of it so perhaps it won’t affect them as much as it did me.

Personally, my job is most gratifying when I see positive results from my efforts. When I work hard, I like knowing that it is seen and valued. It can be a raise, it can be a promotion, it can be getting more trust/respect/time with higher-ups, it can be an increase in ability to travel to conferences, it can literally be the excitement, enthusiasm, and momentum of the PI- almost any sort of “atta-boy” really.

However, I learned the hard way (hard way being emotional strife) that during your PhD, there is no good metric of success. Time after time, I have witnessed students who work their a** off achieve the same or often less “success” (fellowships, awards, publications, etc.) compared to students who may not show up at all. In my experience, taking on challenging projects or working “overtime” gives you 1, a longer project and more years in grad school and 2, fewer publications, fellowships, etc. compared to a student who chose a “safer,” more established project.

I am sure there are exceptions to this, but if your goal is to go into industry, there is no real benefit in choosing the hardest project. You need to get a certificate saying you have a PhD, and there is no reason to choose the hardest route possible to get there. In grad school there are no raises, no bonuses, no promotions and at the end of the day, everyone walks with the same degree whether they spent 20 hours in the lab or 200. This was really hard for me to accept, and I spent many hours frustrated that this was the case, but unfortunately it just is.

DO NOT kill yourself by picking the most challenging project if your goal is to go into industry. Pick a sounds project, do a really great job at moving it forward, and graduate in the shortest amount of time possible, because industry sees experience, not years in grad school, so get out as soon as you can and get into the field!

2.???If you want to go into industry, push to do an internship!

In my college, there are 5 departments. Some of those departments have a well-established system of students leaving for a few months to do an industry internship, usually in the summer. Unfortunately, mine is not one of them. To my knowledge, no one in my department has ever done one, and for that reason most students don’t even ask. No one knows what it would look like, no one knows how to pursue it or how to bring it up to their PI. The PIs don’t promote it, so it becomes a completely wasted resource for students who want to make the transition. To be fair, this is no one particular person’s fault, it just takes the bravery of one student to break the barrier and set the precedence.

If I could go back in time, I would absolutely have applied for an internship. What better way to gain experience, insight, and network with a company than to work for them for a few months?? Without having done one myself but from talking to others, I know students need to come to an agreement with their mentors on a good time to do one (ideally when the project is in a good place, is self-sufficient, or there is proper help from others in the lab to keep it from languishing), but assuming this was done properly, I would absolutely have pushed harder for completing a summer internship, and I am disappointed and feel behind having not done so.

3.???Have your dissertation completely written the semester before you want to graduate!

This one may have the most variability between colleges/programs, but for UF the deadlines for dissertation drafts come up so fast that starting to write the semester you want to graduate is asking for trouble.

I wish this was stressed more by the mentors or explained really explicitly at the start of the PhD journey and repeated several times, but do not be caught off guard by dissertation deadlines by putting off writing until you’re ready to graduate. In fact, some advice that was given to me that was very helpful was to keep a running, formatted, Word document of every single experiment you do and what the premise was, what the hypothesis was, the methods, results and next steps. It is so easy to not do this, but this was one piece of advice I did use, and man! has it made it significantly easier to write my dissertation. By the way, when I say “formatted” I mean learn to use the headings and subheadings in Word. At the cost of making myself look ridiculous, I went YEARS without knowing what this thing was for:

Learn what this is and how to use it NOW and it will make your dissertation writing experience SO much better!

That’s all I have for now. Those are the 3 things, though somewhat random, that I believe would have (or did) made (make) my PhD experience a bit easier to tackle. I hope this helps others who may be pursuing or are thinking to pursue their PhD and as always, I’d love your feedback, questions, opinions, etc.!