PhD Ponderings

Ponderings #15 - 7 Steps

Unlike AA, in graduate school, there are 7 major steps until you are ready for graduation. No matter what your thesis committee says (what do they know anyway?).

The steps, you might think, consist of increasing levels of frustration and anger, as you might have experienced in the last X number of years you've been in grad school (I won't ask). In reality, there are ups and downs in grad school life, as in anything. We suffer the same heartaches, headaches, and backaches as normal people. In some form or another, graduate students are people, too, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Let's examine those steps, which roughly correlate with years:

Year 1: Clueless Enthusiasm
The typical entering grad student has fifty million ideas on how to change the world. After passing through interviews declaring "I'll be the youngest Nobel prize winner ever," he is eager to unleash his unbridled optimism on professors, who eagerly take the unsuspecting fool into their cults of advisor-worship.

Year 2: Self-Delusion
Once the initial rush has faded, the student gets to work on a project that is unlikely to win her even a certificate, much less a prize of any kind. Still, she believes it will cure cancer and bring hope to the hopeless. She is unaware of experiments and research that don't work, and presents her data to her advisor, smiling. Anyone who tells her this project is a bad idea is greeted with a blank stare.

Year 3: Frustration
After gaining some meager skills and trying things, the student realizes that the plans that were once laid out so neatly are falling apart. Theories no longer hold up. Experiments give contradictory results. Data doesn't make sense, much less confirm or refute the hypothesis. In short, nothing is working at all. The student is frustrated and angry, and lashes out at anyone and anything who says there's anything wrong with the project or the work.

Year 4: Bargaining
This is the year that student believe they should graduate. After all, courses are over, research just waits to be complete (if it would work), and there are better options out there in the real world. A smart student will hint to his advisor that he is ready. He will suggest alternate experiments to those that he is currently performing. He will try to secure a project that is a "better deal" simply because, after all, he deserves it after four years! None of this will work, of course, and the poor guy is back where he started.

Year 5: Depression
You might think this is a characteristic of graduate students, but it really only sets in later in grad school. A graduate student will mope, hide when the advisor appears, and become a sullen recluse. This is the student who avoids eye contact when asked about a project. This is the student who breaks into sobs at the slightest criticism (slept in late again, huh?)

Year 6: Acceptance
After years of experiments that don't work, a wise graduate student will accept her fate. She will scope hallways for free food. She will play endless hours of Solitaire. She will stare into space for no reason. She will take naps as if she has never slept before (snoring included). Yes, she has finally, at this year, won that coveted role: the content graduate student.

Year 7: Graduation?
At this year, professors usually have one of two problems - they can no longer afford to support a student who does no work, or they just want them out because they get on their nerves. Usually both. They do everything in their power to remove students from their groups. They will even go so far as to bribe thesis committees.

The stupid ones, however, try to keep the students longer! They think that there is still hope, that the student will, in fact, produce some more (the last time this happened was year 2). In short, the professor, too, goes through the seven steps. Theirs are just longer. Seven years of clueless enthusiasm, and seven more of delusion. When the professor finally realizes the student is ready to graduate, it won't matter anymore. We'll all have moved on to industry or postdocs or just better things in life. After all, who wants to wait around for an advisor's frustration, barganing and depression?

By the time they get to their own graduation (tenure, or retirement, whichever comes first), many are dead. And for the poor graduate students who stay on that long, even Acceptance cannot save them.