User blog:BeanieB/Undergraduate vs. Graduate School (from the life of a scientist)

Disclaimer: This post is specific to the life science field. Although there may be parallels between my field and others, I haven't experienced those fields, so I can't make any conclusions!

When people decide to go back to school to obtain a graduate degree, they are usually thinking of how many more doors will open with an additional degree. However, incoming graduate students are not always prepared for the trials and tribulations that graduate school brings.

In college/university, the point of your education is to get a background on the many different subfields within biology, biochemistry, cell biology, etc. Your primary education comes through textbooks - summaries of the literature in a factual and schematical layout. However, rarely (although great professors break this paradigm) do students understand why we know what we know and the decades of research that have contributed to those textbooks. You're developing some critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, and learning the basics. You take tests that are designed to test your understanding and application of the material taught in class.

However, in graduate school, your aim is to go beyond the textbooks, to make a contribution of new knowledge to your field through research. In a master's program, you may still be taking courses, but these courses are often more field specific and rely on the critical reading of primary literature (scientific articles). In a PhD program, you only take courses in your first couple years of the program; then you are let loose in the lab to start trying to find a new piece of the story yourself.

Trying to contribute new knowledge takes a lot of steps. You have to (1) understand what IS known, (2) understand the gaps/inconsistencies in the field, and (3) understand what types of experiments, models, and paradigms you can use to fill/solve those gaps/inconsistencies. These steps require one major skill: critical reading of primary literature. You need to be able to look at publications of other people's research, decide whether their data support their conclusions, and understand if there is any other data in the field that also supports/rejects their conclusions.

Once you have identified a gap, you have to create a hypothesis based on what is already known. Only then can you start testing and experimenting. However, experimenting is never as straight forward as you would like it to be. Similarly to baking a cake, each experiment takes time, patience, the right reagents, and full attention. Even then, they often don't work. To pour your soul and spirit into answering a question only to find your tests not working, or your hypothesis wrong, is an extremely common let down for graduate students.

To survive and successfully complete graduate school, you have to develop true grit. You have to perservere through countless research articles. You have to perservere through failed experiments. You have to perservere through harsh criticism of the work you have spent so much time compiling. You have to perservere through presentations, dissertations, and the peer review process. You have to perservere through qualifying exams/preliminary exams which are designed to bring you to your breaking point of knowledge. You have to preservere through graduate school, where the further you push, the more you realize you don't know.

A common saying is that a PhD is a marathon, not a sprint...in the US, a PhD in Biology will run on average 5 years. "On average" - note that this is not a defined time. In undergraduate or even with master's programs, the programs have a set time: 2 years, 4 years, etc. With a PhD, you don't have a defined limit. You graduate once your research committee has decided that you have put together enough data to write and publish your dissertation. For some, this may be as early as 4 years. For others, you may still be trying to get that approval after 7 years.

You will hit a wall at some point. Your productivity will ebb and flow. You will have good science days and bad science days. You will change projects. You will wonder why you're even doing this. You may have mentor conflicts. You may have conflicts with other colleagues/students. You may get imposter's syndrome. All of these things, combined with the ever looming question of "when will this end?", can contribute to the hardships and mental health status of graduate students.

It is important that graduate students explore non-traditional/non-academic careers. Having a career outlook can help provide a source of motivation and perserverance. It is important that graduate students talk about their struggles with and support other students. It's easy to think that everyone else knows what they're doing and has everything under control. Usually, what's on the surface doesn't accurately reflect what people are thinking and how they're performing.

This is a big reason for the existance of the Graduate Student Guild. In the guild, we can motivate each other in tough times, celebrate little (or big) victories, answer questions with experience, and help provide resources in areas where others are struggling.