Qualities Characterize A Great Ph.D. Student

This week, I pen down some fundamental qualities that characterize a "great" Ph.D. student as per the noted academics. I tried to compile a few of their views on this very topic.  

So let's get started!

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Professor David Karger (Professor of Computer Science and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT) once told "I have had the privilege of working with some of the very best Ph.D. students anywhere. But even here there are some Ph.D.s that clearly stand out as “great”."

"The ultimate goal of any science fellowship and the primary purpose of a graduate student is to advance knowledge and create value for humankind. 

Four indispensable qualities that he characterizes a "great" Ph.D. are:

0. Intelligence

1. Curiosity

2. Creativity

3. Discipline and productivity

(Interestingly, I'd say the same four qualities characterize great artists).

In the "nice to have but not essential" category, I would add:

4. Ability to teach/communicate with an audience

5. Ability to communicate with peers

Since you're working at the edge of what we know, the material you're working with is hard---you have to be smart enough to master it (intelligence). This is what qualifying exams are about. But you only need to be smart “enough”---I've met a few spectacularly brilliant Ph.D. students and plenty of others who were just smart enough. This didn't really make a difference in the quality of their Ph.D.s (though it does affect their choice of area---more of the truly brilliant go into the theoretical areas).  

But intelligence is just a starting point. The first thing you actually have to “do” to advance human knowledge is to ask questions about why things are the way they are and how they could be made better (curiosity). Ph.D. students spend lots of time asking questions to which they don't know the answer, so you'd better really enjoy this. Obviously, after you ask the questions you have to come up with the answers. And you have to be able to think in new directions to answer those questions (creativity), for if you can answer those questions using tried and true techniques, then they really aren't research questions---they're just things we already know for which we just haven't gotten around to filling in the detail.  

These two qualities are critical for a great Ph.D., but also lead to one of the most common failure modes: students who love asking questions and thinking about cool ways to answer them, but never actually “do” the work necessary to try out the answer. Instead, they flutter off to the next cool idea. So this is where discipline comes in: you need to be willing to bang your head against the wall for months (theoretician) or spend months hacking code (practitioner), in order to flesh out your creative idea and validate it. You need a long-term view that reminds you why you are doing this even when the fun parts (brainstorming and curiosity-satisfying) aren't happening.

Communication skills are really valuable but sometimes dispensable. Your work can have a lot more impact if you are able to spread it to others who can incorporate it into their work. And many times you can achieve more by collaborating with others who bring different skills and insights to a problem. On the other hand, some of the greatest work (especially theoretical work) has been done by lone figures locked in their offices who publish obscure hard to read papers; when that work is great enough, it eventually spreads into the community even if the originator isn't trying to make it do so.

My second answer is more cynical.

If you think about it, someone coming to do a Ph.D. is entering an environment filled with people who excel at items 0-5 on my list. And most of those items are talents that faculty can continue to exercise as faculty, because really curiosity, creativity, and communication don't take that much time to do well. The one place where faculty really need help is on productivity: they're trying to advance a huge number of projects simultaneously and really don't have the cycles to carry out the necessary work. So another way to characterize what makes a great Ph.D. student is:

0. Intelligence

1. Discipline and productivity

If you are off the scale in your productivity (producing code, running interviews, or working at a lab bench) and smart enough to understand the work you get asked to do, then you can be the extra pair of productive hands that the faculty member desperately needs. Your advisor can generate questions and creative ways to answer them, and you can execute them. After a few years of this, they'll thank you with a Ph.D.  

If all you want is the Ph.D., this second approach is a fine one. But you should recognize that in this case that advisor is “not” going to write a recommendation letter that will get you a faculty position (though they'll be happy to praise you to Google). There's only one way to be a successful *faculty member*, and that's my first answer above."

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On a similar note Professor Matthew Might, University of Utah depicted 3 qualities of successful Ph.D. students: 

1. Perseverance
2. Tenacity 
3. Ability to communicate

He writes, "every fall, a fresh crop of Ph.D. students arrives.

Since I'm actively looking for Ph.D. students, I get the same question a dozen times every year: "How long does it take to get a Ph.D.?"

This isn't the right question.

"Ph.D. school takes as long as you want it to," I tell them. There's no speed limit on how fast you can jump through all the hoops.

A better question to ask is, "What makes a Ph.D. student successful?"

Having watched Ph.D. students succeed and fail at four universities, I infer that success in graduate school hinges on three qualities: perseverance, tenacity, and cogency.

If you're in Ph.D. school or you're thinking about it, read on.

What doesn't matter?

There's a ruinous misconception that a Ph.D. must be smart.

This can't be true.

A smart person would know better than to get a Ph.D.

"Smart" qualities like brilliance and quick-thinking are irrelevant in Ph.D. school. Students that have made it through so far on brilliance and quick-thinking alone wash out of Ph.D. programs with nagging predictability. Let there be no doubt: brilliance and quick-thinking are valuable in other pursuits. But, they're neither sufficient nor necessary in science.

Certainly, being smart bits of help. But, it won't get the job done.

Moreover, as anyone going through a Ph.D. school can tell you: people of less than first-class intelligence make it across the finish line and leave, Ph.D. in hand.

As my advisor used to tell me, "Whenever I felt depressed in grad school--when I worried I wasn't going to finish my Ph.D.--I looked at the people dumber than me finishing theirs, and I would think to myself, if that idiot can get a Ph.D., dammit, so can I."

Perseverance

To escape with a Ph.D., you must meaningfully extend the boundary of human knowledge. More exactly, you must convince a panel of experts guarding the boundary that you have done so.

You can take classes and read papers to figure out where the boundary lies.

That's easy.

But, when it comes time to actually extend that boundary, you have to get into your bunker and prepare for the onslaught of failure.

A lot of Ph.D. students get depressed when they reach the boundary because there's no longer a test to cram for or a procedure to follow. This is the point (2-3 years in) where attrition peaks.

Finding a problem to solve is rarely a problem itself. Every field is brimming with open problems. If finding a problem is hard, you're in the wrong field. The real hard part, of course, is solving an open problem. After all, if someone could tell you how to solve it, it wouldn't be open.

To survive this period, you have to be willing to fail from the moment you wake to the moment your head hits the pillow. You must be willing to fail for days on end, for months on end, and maybe even for years on end. The skill you accrete during this trauma is the ability to imagine plausible solutions and to estimate the likelihood that an approach will work.

If you persevere to the end of this phase, your mind will intuit solutions to problems in ways that it didn't and couldn't before. You won't know how your mind does this. (I don't know how mine does it.) It just will.

As you acquire this skill, you'll be launching fledgling papers at peer reviewers, checking to see if others think what you're doing qualifies as research yet. Since acceptance rates at good venues range between 8% and 25%, most or all of your papers will be rejected. You just have to hope that you'll eventually figure out how to get your work published. If you stick with it long enough and work at it hard enough, you will.

For students that excelled as undergraduates, the sudden and constant barrage of rejection and failure is jarring. If you have an ego problem, the Ph.D. school will fix it. With a vengeance. (Some egos seem to recover afterward.)

This phase of the Ph.D. demands perseverance--in the face of uncertainty, in the face of rejection and in the face of frustration.

Tenacity

To get a tenure-track professorship after Ph.D. school, you need an additional quality: tenacity. Since there are few tenure-track faculty positions available, there is a fierce (yet civil) competition to get them.

In computer science, a competitive faculty candidate will have about 10 publications, and 3-5 of those will be at "selective" or "Tier 1" venues (crudely, less than 33% acceptance rate). A Ph.D. by itself won't even get you a job interview anymore.

There are few good reasons to get a Ph.D. "Because you want to become a professor" might be the only good one. Ironically, there's a good chance you won't realize that you want to be a professor until the end of grad school. So, if you're going to do a Ph.D. school at all, do it right, for your own sake.

To become a professor, you can't have just one discovery or solve just one open problem. You have to solve several, and get each solution published. As you exit graduate school, an arc connecting your results should emerge, proving to faculties that your research has a profitable path forward.

You will also need to actively, even aggressively, forge relationships with scholars in your field. Researchers in your field need to know who you are and what you're doing. They need to be interested in what you're doing too.

None of that is going to happen by itself.

Cogency

Finally, a good Ph.D. student must have the ability to clearly and forcefully articulate their ideas--in person and in writing.

Science is as much an act of persuasion as it is an act of discovery.

Once you've made a discovery, you have to persuade experts that you've made a legitimate, meaningful contribution. This is harder to do than it seems. Simply showing experts "the data" isn't going to work. (Yes, in a perfect world, this would be sufficient.)

Instead, you have to spoon-feed the experts. As you write, you have to consciously minimize the amount of time and cognitive pain it takes for them to realize you've made a discovery.

You may have to go "on tour" and give engaging presentations to get people excited about your research. When you give conference talks, you want them eagerly awaiting the next episode.

You will have to write compelling abstracts and introductions that hook the reader and make her feel like investing time in your work.

You will have to learn how to balance clarity and precision so that your ideas come across without either ambiguity or stifling formality.

Generally, grad students don't arrive with the ability to communicate well. This is a skill that they forge in grad school. The sooner acquired, the better.

Unfortunately, the only way to get better at writing is to do a lot of it. 10,000 hours is the magical number folks throw around to become an expert at something. You'll never even get close to 10,000 hours of writing by writing papers.

Assuming negligible practice writing for public consumption before graduate school, if you take six years to get through grad school, you can hit 10,000 hours by writing about 5 hours a day. (Toward the end of a Ph.D., it's not uncommon to break 12 hours of writing in a day.)

That's why I recommend that new students start a blog. Even if no one else reads it, start one. You don't even have to write about your research. Practicing the act of writing is all that matters."

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My personal favorite notes came from Professor Stephen Stearns (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University)"

Always Prepare for the Worst

Some of the greatest catastrophes in graduate education could have been avoided by a little intelligent foresight. Be cynical. Assume that your proposed research might not work and that one of your faculty advisors might become unsupportive – or even hostile. Plan for alternatives.

Nobody Cares About You

In fact, some professors care about you and some don’t. Most probably do, but all are busy, which means in practice they cannot care about you because they don’t have the time. You are on your own, and you had better get used to it. This has a lot of implications. Here are two important ones:

1) You had better decide early on that you are in charge of your program. The degree you get is yours to create. Your major professor can advise you and protect you to a certain extent from bureaucratic and financial demons, but she should not tell you what to do. That is up to you. If you need advice, ask for it: that’s her job.

2) If you want to pick somebody’s brains, you’ll have to go to him or her, because they won’t be coming to you.

You Must Know Why Your Work Is Important

When you first arrive, read, and think widely and exhaustively for a year. Assume that everything you read is hogwash until the author manages to convince you that it isn’t. If you do not understand something, don’t feel bad - it’s not your fault, it’s the authors. He didn’t write clearly enough.

If some authority figure tells you that you aren’t accomplishing anything because you aren’t taking courses and you aren’t gathering data, tell him what you’re up to. If he persists, tell him to bug off, because you know what you’re doing, dammit.

This is a hard stage to get through because you will feel guilty about not getting going on your own research. You will continually be asking yourself, “What am I doing here?” Be patient. This stage is critical to your personal development and to maintaining the flow of new ideas into science. Here you decide what constitutes an important problem. You must arrive at this decision independently for two reasons. First, if someone hands you a problem, you won’t feel that it is yours, you won’t have that possessiveness that makes you want to work on it, defend it, fight for it, and make it come out beautifully. Secondly, your Ph.D. work shapes your future. It is your choice of a field in which to carry out a life’s work. It is also important to the dynamic of science that your entry be well thought out. This is one point where you can start a whole new area of research. Remember, what sense does it make to start gathering data if you don’t know – and I mean really know – why you’re doing it?

Psychological Problems Are the Biggest Barrier

You must establish a firm psychological stance early in your graduate career to keep from being buffeted by the many demands that will be made on your time. If you don’t watch out, the pressures of course work, teaching, language requirements, and who knows what else will push you around like a large, docile molecule in Brownian motion. Here are a few things to watch out for:

1) The initiation-rite nature of the Ph. D. and its power to convince you that your value as a person is being judged. No matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to avoid this one. No one does. It stems from the open-ended nature of the thesis problem. You have to decide what a “good” thesis is. A thesis can always be made better, which gets you into an infinite regress of possible improvements.

Recognize that you cannot a perfect thesis. There are going to be flaws in it, as there are in everything. Settle down to make it as good as you can within the limits of time, money, energy, encouragement, and thought about your disposal.

You can alleviate this problem by jumping all the explicit hurdles early in the game. Get all of your course requirements and examinations out of the way as soon as possible. Not only do you thereby clear the decks for your thesis, but you also convince yourself, by successfully jumping each hurdle, that you probably are good enough after all.

2) Nothing elicits dominant behavior like subservient behavior. Expect and demand to be treated like a colleague. The paper requirements are the explicit hurdle you will have to jump, but the implicit hurdle is attaining the status of a colleague. Act like one and you’ll be treated like one.

3) Graduate school is only one of the tools that you have at hand for shaping your own development. Be prepared to quit for a while if something better comes up. There are three good reasons to do this.

First, a real opportunity could arise that is more productive and challenging than anything you could do in graduate school and that involves a long enough block of time to justify dropping out. Examples include fieldwork in Africa on a project not directly related to your Ph.D. work, a contract for software development, an opportunity to work as an aide in the nation’s capital in the formulation of science policy, or an internship at a major newspaper or magazine as a science journalist.

Secondly, only by keeping this option open can you function with true independence as a graduate student. If you perceive graduate school as your only option, you will be psychologically labile, inclined to get a bit desperate and insecure, and you will not be able to give your best.

Thirdly, if things really are not working out for you, then you are only hurting yourself and denying resources to others by staying in graduate school. There are a lot of interesting things to do in life besides being a scientist, and in some, the job market is a lot better. If science is not turning you on, perhaps you should try something else. However, do not go off half-cocked. This is a serious decision. Be sure to talk to fellow graduate students and sympathetic faculty before making up your mind.

Avoid Taking Lectures -They’re Usually Inefficient

If you already have a good background in your field, then minimize the number of additional courses you take. This recommendation may seem counterintuitive, but it has a sound basis. Right now, you need to learn how to think for yourself. This requires active engagement, not passive listening, and regurgitation.

To learn to think, you need two things: large blocks of time, and as much one-on-one interaction as you can get with someone who thinks more clearly than you do.

Courses just get in the way, and if you are well motivated, then reading and discussion is much more efficient and broadening than lectures. It is often a good idea to get together with a few colleagues, organize a seminar on a subject of interest, and invite a few faculty to take part. They’ll probably be delighted. After all, it will be interesting for them, they’ll love your initiative – and it will give them credit for teaching a course for which they don’t have to do any work. How can you lose?

These comments of course do not apply to courses that teach specific skills: e.g., electron microscopy, histological technique, scuba diving.

Write a Proposal and Get It Criticized

A research proposal serves many functions.

1) By summarizing your year’s thinking and reading, it ensures that you have gotten something out of it.

2) It makes it possible for you to defend your independence by providing a concrete demonstration that you used your time well.

3) It literally makes it possible for others to help you. What you have in mind is too complex to be communicated verbally – too subtle, and in too many parts. It must be put down in a well-organized, clearly, and concisely written document that can be circulated to a few good minds. Only with a proposal before them can they give you constructive criticism.

4) You need to practice writing. We all do.

5) Having located your problem and satisfied yourself that it is important, you will have to convince your colleagues that you are not totally demented and, in fact, deserve support. One way to organize a proposal to accomplish this goal is:

a) A brief statement of what you propose, couched as a question or hypothesis.b) Why it is important scientifically, not why it is important to you personally, and how it fits into the broader scheme of ideas in your field.

c) A literature review that substantiates (b).

d) Describe your problem as a series of subproblems that can each be attacked in a series of small steps. Devise experiments, observations or analyses that will permit you to exclude alternatives at each stage. Line them up and start knocking them down. By transforming the big problem into a series of smaller ones, you always know what to do next, you lower the energy threshold to begin work, you identify the part that will take the longest or cause the most problems, and you have available a list of things to do when something doesn’t work out

6) Write down a list of the major problems that could arise and ruin the whole project. Then write down a list of alternatives that you will do if things actually do go wrong.

7) It is not a bad idea to design two or three projects and start them in parallel to see which one has the best practical chance of succeeding. There could be two or three model systems that all seem to have equally good chances on paper of providing appropriate tests for your ideas, but in fact, practical problems may exclude some of them. It is much more efficient to discover this at the start than to design and execute two or three projects in succession after the first fail for practical reasons.

8) Pick a date for the presentation of your thesis and work backward in constructing a schedule of how you are going to use your time. You can expect a stab of terror at this point. Don’t worry – it goes on like this for a while, then it gradually gets worse.

9) Spend two to three weeks writing the proposal after you’ve finished your reading, then give it to as many good critics as you can find: Hope that their comments are tough, and respond as constructively as you can.

10) Get at it. You already have the introduction to your thesis written, and you have only been here 12 to 18 months.

Manage Your Advisors

Keep your advisors aware of what you are doing, but do not bother them. Be an interesting presence, not a pest. At least once a year, submit a written progress report 1-2 pages long on your own initiative. They will appreciate – it and be impressed.

Anticipate and work to avoid personality problems. If You do not get along with your professors, change advisors early on. Be very careful about choosing your advisors in the first place. Most important is their interest in your interests.

Types of Theses

Never elaborate a baroque excrescence on top of existing but shaky ideas. Go right to the foundations and test the implicit but unexamined assumptions of an important body of work, or lay the foundations for a new research thrust. There are, of course, other types of theses:

1) The classical thesis involves the formulation of a deductive model that makes novel and surprising predictions which you then test objectively and confirm under conditions unfavorable to the hypothesis. Rarely done and highly prized.

2) A critique of the foundations of an important body of research. Again, rare and valuable and a sure winner if properly executed.

3) The purely theoretical thesis. This takes courage, especially in a department loaded with bedrock empiricists, but can be pulled off if you are genuinely good at math and logic.

4) Gather data that someone else can synthesize. This is the worst kind of thesis, but in a pinch, it will get you through. To certain kinds of people lots of data, even if they don’t test a hypothesis, will always be impressive. At least the results show that you worked hard, a fact with which you can blackmail your committee into giving you the doctorate.

There are really as many kinds of theses as there are graduate students. The four types listed serve as limiting cases of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Doctoral work is a chance for you to try your hand at a number of different research styles and to discover which suits you best: theory, fieldwork, or lab work. Ideally, you will balance all three and become the rare person who can translate the theory for the empiricists and the real world for the theoreticians.

Start Publishing Early

Don’t kid yourself. You may have gotten into this game out of your love for plants and animals, your curiosity about nature, and your drive to know the truth, but you won’t be able to get a job and stay in it unless you publish. You need to publish substantial articles in internationally recognized, refereed journals. Without them, you can forget a career in science. This sounds brutal, but there are good reasons for it, and it can be a joyful challenge and fulfillment. Science is shared knowledge. Until the results are effectively communicated, they in effect do not exist. Publishing is part of the job, and until it is done, the work is not complete. You must master the skill of writing clear, concise, well-organized scientific papers. Here are some tips about getting into the publishing game.

1) Co-author a paper with someone who has more experience. Approach a professor who is working on an interesting project and offer your services in return for junior authorship. She’ll appreciate the help and will give you lots of good comments on the paper because her name will be on it.

2) Do not expect your first paper to be world-shattering. A lot of eminent people began with a minor piece of work. The amount of information reported in the average scientific paper may be less then you think. Work up to the major journals by publishing one or two short – but competent – papers in less well-recognized journals. You will quickly discover that no matter what the reputation of the journal, all editorial boards defend the quality of their product with jealous pride – and they should!

3) If it is good enough, publish your research proposal as a critical review paper. If it is publishable, you’ve probably chosen the right field to work in.

4) Do not write your thesis as a monograph. Write it as a series of publishable manuscripts, and submit them early enough so that at least one or two chapters of your thesis can be presented as reprints of published articles.

5) Buy and use a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Read it before you sit down to write your first paper, then read it again at least once a year for the next three or four years. Day’s book, How to Write a Scientific Paper, is also excellent.

6) Get your work reviewed before you submit it to the journal by someone who has the time to criticize your writing as well as your ideas and organization.

Don’t Look Down on a Master’s Thesis

The only reason not to do a masters' is to fulfill the generally false conceit that you’re too good for that sort of thing. The masters' have a number of advantages.

1) It gives you a natural way of changing schools if you want to. You can use this to broaden your background. Moreover, your ideas on what constitutes an important problem will probably be changing rapidly at this stage of your development. Your knowledge of who is doing what, and where, will be expanding rapidly. If you decide to change universities, this is the best way to do it. You leave behind people satisfied with your performance and in a position to provide well-informed letters of recommendation. You arrive with most of your Ph.D. requirements satisfied.

2) You get much-needed experience in research and writing in a contextless threatening than doctoral research. You break yourself in gradually. In research, you learn the size of a soluble problem. People who have done a master’s work usually have a much easier time with the Ph.D.

3) You get a publication.

4) What’s your hurry? If you enter the job market too quickly, you won’t be well prepared. Better to go a bit more slowly. build up a substantial background, and present yourself a bit later as a person with more and broader experience.

Postscript

This comment was originally entitled “Cynical aids towards getting a graduate degree, or psychological and practical tools to use in acquiring and maintaining control over your own life.” It originated as a handout for the Ecolunch Seminar in the Department of Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, on a Monday in the spring of 1976. Ecolunch was, and is, a Berkeley institution, a forum where graduate students present their work in progress and receive constructive criticism. At the start of the semester, however, no one is ready to talk. This was such a time.

On Friday morning at Museum Coffee, Frank Pitelka, who was in charge of Ecolunch for that semester, asked me to make the presentation on the following Monday. “Asked” is probably a misleading representation of Frank’s style that morning. Frank bullied me into it. I had just given a departmental seminar on the Ph.D. work I had done at British Columbia, and did not have much new to say about biology. Frank’s style brought out the rebel in me. I agreed on the condition that I had complete freedom to say whatever I wanted to, and that the theme would be advised to graduate students. Frank agreed without apparent qualms. Then I charged upstairs to Ray Huey’s office to plot the attack.

I whipped out an outline. Ray responded with a more optimistic and complimentary version (see the following commentary article), and I wrote a draft at white heat that afternoon. We felt like plotters. We were plotters. There were acts of self-definition in the air. On Monday, I recall that I made a pretty aggressive presentation in which, to emphasize how busy faculty members were, I kept looking at my watch. Near the end, I glanced at my watch the last time, said I had to rush off to an appointment, left the room suddenly without taking questions, and slammed the door. They waited. I never came back, but Ray took over and presented his alternative view. Ray told me later that Bill Lidicker turned to him and said, “You mean he’s not coming back?” I wasn’t. Fortunately, they took it well. They were and are a group of real gentlemen.

I mention these things to explain the tone of our pieces. We would not write them that way now, having been professors ourselves for some years. We never intended to publish them, having regarded the presentations as a one-time skit, but our notes were xeroxed and passed around, and eventually, they spread around the United States. In the fall of 1986, I got a letter from Pete Morin at Rutgers suggesting that we publish the notes. Its survival for ten years in the graduate student grapevine convinced me that there might actually be a demand for them. I had lost my original, and Pete kindly sent me a copy, which turned out to be an nth generation version with marginal notes by a number of different graduate students. On rereading it, I find that I agree with the basic message as much as ever, but that many of the details do not apply outside the context of large American universities.

Ten years later, I have one afterthought.

Publish Regularly, but Not Too Much

The pressure to publish has corroded the quality of journals and the quality of intellectual life. It is far better to have published a few papers of high quality that are widely read than it is to have published a long string of minor articles that are quickly forgotten. You do have to be realistic. You will need publications to get a post-doc, and you will need more to get a faculty position and then tenure. However, to the extent that you can gather your work together in substantial packages of real quality, you will be doing both yourself and your field a favor.

Most people publish only a few papers that make any difference. Most papers are cited little or not at all. About 10% of the articles published receive 90% of the citations. A paper that is not cited is time and effort wasted. Go for quality, not for quantity. This will take courage and stubbornness, but you won’t regret it. If you are publishing one or two carefully considered, substantial papers in good, refereed journals each year, you’re doing very well – and you’ve taken enough time to do the job right."

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Now responding to Professor Stearns comments, Professor Robert J. Full (Professor, Department of Integrative Biology, UC Berkley) depicted his view as follows:"

Some acynical advice for graduate students:

Initial Premise

Graduate school provides an opportunity for you to choose from being someone who reads to someone who is read. That is a major metamorphosis, indeed. Not surprisingly, it presents challenges as well as opportunities.

Always Expect the Best

If you anticipate the worst, you are likely to experience it. Instead, develop a positive attitude, decide what you want (T.A. position, research funds. etc.), and then get it. Go outside your university whenever possible for advice and for funds. Don’t merely rely on your department or your major professor. In short, be active and independent, not passive and dependent.

Some People Do Care

People are more likely to care about you if you act like a professional (see below) and if you make yourself valuable. Obtain a skill (multivariate statistics, electrophoresis) that you can share. (and of course use yourself). Avoid being used, however.

Seek out and collaborate with fellow graduate students, especially ones who are doing interesting work and who are enjoying it. You are likely to learn far more from graduate students than from your advisor, if only because you have more in common and spend more time with them. In short, use these interactions as an opportunity to be introduced to different viewpoints and techniques and to become excited about your career.

Seek out emeritus or near-emeritus professors, at least ones who are still active. They have a wealth of knowledge and experience, and often have the time and interest to share it. Moreover, they can give you a personal appreciation for the history of your field. Science is a historical activity, and progress in science is often enhanced by an understanding of the past.

On “Exhaustive” Thinking

Thinking “widely and exhaustively” can be mentally exhausting if you aren’t academically and emotionally prepared. You may instead make better use of your first year by making up deficiencies in your course background (do so as quickly as possible!). Moreover, some people simply need time before they are ready to think independently. That maturation process can sometimes be accelerated by starting your research with a problem that your advisor “hands you.”

Ultimately, however, you must begin to think and do research independently, and you must understand why you are doing a particular project.

On Psychological Problems

Expect them. Everyone will go through periods of intellectual insecurity or stress, most likely in the first year or two. You can often minimize those problems with some simple tricks.

1) Get requirements out of the way as soon as possible. You will be surprised at how much your attitude toward graduate school and your research will improve once you pass all language requirements and qualifying exams. Keep in mind that faculty are inevitably impressed by students who aren’t intimidated or slowed down by academic hurdles.

2) Some people simply need time to mature academically. So, fight directives and pressure to complete your Ph.D. in 4 years. You may need to take some extra time or even take a leave of absence. Changing schools or advisors sometimes helps, especially if you can first obtain a Master’s degree.

Becoming a Professional

Think of yourself as a professional, someone who will be a biologist for the rest of your life. Start to accumulate a library and reprint collection, develop a computerized list of references and of addresses, attend meetings, meet with visiting seminar speakers, correspond with people working on related problems, send out copies of your articles as they are published, etc.

Treat each project (even a literature review) as if it is potentially publishable.

Faculty are more likely to treat you as a professional if you act like one. They are a good source of suggestions in this regard. Ask their advice on efficient ways to organize your reprints and reference files, or ask them to recommend key papers (their own, or those of others) that influenced their thinking and careers. Read those papers, then go back and discuss them with the professor. (Note: Many graduate students have not read most of their advisor’s papers, or those of other relevant faculty in their department.)

Despite your best efforts (and theirs), the faculty may have a difficult time treating you as a colleague rather than as a student. Therefore, develop contacts outside the department and the university, thereby gaining a new perspective on biology and on your own work. Go on a tour of other universities, meet with faculty and students working in your area, volunteer (if appropriate) to give an informal seminar of your thesis work. If possible, spend a term and take courses at another university (or a field station), especially if a course is special and especially if you are spending your graduate career at one university. These outside contacts not only broaden your perspectives but may also increase your chances for a collaborative research project, a postdoc, or even a job.

Join appropriate scientific societies, attend their yearly meetings, give papers or posters, get to know your future colleagues. Meetings can be exciting and a chance to find out what is new. Moreover, you get practice at speaking in front of a “foreign’ (e.g., non-sympathetic) audience.

On Courses

Never pass up a lecture course from a great professor, even if it is somewhat outside your main area. Seek courses that challenge you to think rather than to memorize. Auditing courses can often be an efficient way to get an overview of a field, at least if you are self-disciplined.

Take short courses that can save you time over the years. Many libraries give instruction on efficient literature searches (see also Smith’s book, cited by Steve); and most universities offer introductions to computers, statistical packages, etc. If you don’t know these crucial skills already, immediately learn speed typing and word-processing.

On Proposals and Grants

Grant writing is a key skill. Ask professors for copies of their successful grant proposals (perhaps ask them for unsuccessful ones as well!). In other words, find out what makes a good proposal before you start writing; don’t waste time ‘reinventing the wheel.”

Be a scholar. Showing that you know and understand the literature makes a good impression, and it gives you an awareness of the key issues in your field.

Use the working proposal Steve describes as a basis for a real grant proposal. Many societies, governmental agencies (NSF), and organizations give grants to graduate students – ask your major professor and other graduate students for the names of such organizations. Prod your department or advisor to start a permanent file on such grants.

Getting your own grant has important benefits beyond simply funding your research. (1) It gives you something to add to your C.V. (2) It helps establish your independence from your advisor and your department. (3) It really impresses your advisor and your committee!

Interactions with Your Advisors

Your advisory committee is there to help you. You can encourage this by taking their advice seriously. If they recommend a paper, read it. Not surprisingly, faculty will be disinclined to give you additional help (and write strong letters of recommendation) if you habitually ignore their advice. Moreover, practice reciprocal altruism – when they ask for your help (to review a paper or perhaps a proposal of theirs), give it. Seek a symbiotic rather than a parasitic relationship.

On Theses

(Tangent. Even after a decade, I can still hear Steve pontificating the first sentence in this section. His expression, “a baroque excrescence, ” is my fondest auditory memory of Berkeley.)

Onward. A thesis shouldn’t be the culmination of your research career, but its beginning. You probably never really had your creativity challenged as an undergraduate. Here is your opportunity. Push yourself – you’ll respect yourself more than if you are too cautious and try a no-risk project.

Remember that your future research directions need not be constrained by the topic of your thesis. In fact, your thesis experiences may convince you that your interests and talents are elsewhere. Use a Master’s-to-Ph.D. switch or a postdoc to change directions, if appropriate.

Publishing

Contrary to widespread opinion, writing and publishing can be fun. More important, the process of writing is a positive learning experience – my understanding of my own research is invariably enhanced while developing a paper or grant proposal.

Writing and publishing aren’t always fun, of course, but you can minimize problems by being careful, by organizing your thoughts before you write, by taking pride in crafting sentences carefully, and by having people critically review your papers before you submit them for publication. This review process should be sequential: First, give it at an “Ecolunch.” Second, write a draft and have your fellow graduate students and advisor review it critically. Third (optional, but advised), send it to one or a few experts in the field. Fourth, submit the manuscript.

(Having now been an editor of several journals and books, I would add several caveats. Make certain you follow the “Instructions to Authors” for the journal; if you use the wrong format, the editor will suspect that (1) your paper was previously rejected by another journal, or that (2) your work style is casual and not necessarily to be trusted. Also, carefully check the citations in the text against the literature cited section. Check text, tables, and figures for accuracy and neatness. (A paper that is neat and well designed is easy to read.) If you are writing an invited chapter for a book, do your very best to meet all deadlines. Editors cherish contributors who actually meet deadlines and follow instructions.)

Publishing is an important responsibility – you share your insights with others. It is also essential. People occasionally get good jobs or a grant despite a weak or nonexistent list of publications, but the odds, of this happening, are slim, indeed.

Although over publishing is a mistake (as Steve notes), don’t be embarrassed by writing one or a few minor papers – ample precedents exist. Moreover, we are often our own worst judge of what is truly significant (see Bartholomew, 1982). (After gaining the benefits of the experience, you can eventually obscure any truly trivial publications by using the following widely used technique -simply change your official “List of Publications” to a “Selected List of Publications” or to a list of “Publications Since 19xx!)

Miscellaneous

Watch for and take advantage of opportunities. If someone is organizing a special field trip, ask if you can go along and help. If there is a job search in your department, look through the applications, and learn first hand what makes a good C.V. and what makes a clear statement of research and teaching interests. (Note: Not all departments permit graduate students to read application files.) Find out your advisor’s opinion of the candidates’ job seminars. Thus when you start applying for jobs, you will have some idea of what works and what doesn’t.

Concluding Remarks

Appearances to the contrary, graduate students need not be oppressed. You actually have as much freedom as you will ever have (except perhaps as a postdoc or during a precious sabbatical), Be positive, not cynical.

 Postscript

“Ten years later,” I wish to emphasize one comment and then to make one addition. First, do spend time around students and faculty who are doing significant research and who are excited about their careers. In short, surround yourself with good people. Enthusiasm is contagious. Second, learn to respect and to practice the art of getting organized. Thus, be efficient and don’t waste time. This will almost certainly enhance your productivity and your enthusiasm for your career."

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Some Useful References

Day. R. A. 1983. How to write and publish a scientific paper. Second edition. ISI Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. 181 pp. Wise and witty.

Smith, R. V. 1984. Graduate research - a guide for students in the sciences. ISI press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. 182 pp. Complete and practical.

Strunk, W., Jr., and E. S. White. 1979. The elements of style. Third edition. Macmillan, New York, New York. USA. 92 pp. The paradigm of concision.

Thank you for reading this far. I really appreciate it. I hope this helps you to have a goodnight's sleep during this pandemic.

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