Lessons from grad school

I am currently 3 months into year 3 of a STEM master’s program. Earlier in January of this year, I thought I would be graduating in August (two years is typically the length of the program, but your PI (supervisor) can basically fund you indefinitely). Somewhere around March or April, my PI informed me that he was receiving a new dataset that would fit in very well with the narrative that I was presenting for my research project, the analysis would be quick, and I would get an extra chapter in my thesis. At the time, to be honest, I was not ready for the grind of writing a thesis, I had taken two short (3–5 days) vacations that year, I wanted a social life, I wanted to spend weekends nurturing my hobbies, and overall live a balanced lifestyle. The dataset hadn’t arrived yet, which meant I would get a couple extra months of work and salary (for my well-balanced lifestyle). I was feeling insecure about the little work I had done anyways (although looking back now I know I’ve done more than enough for a thesis), and wanted to buff up my results section. So of course, I said yes without a second thought.

My last committee meeting rolls around, where I was supposed to present all of my results and ask for “permission to write” from my committee members. If permission was granted I was supposed to dedicate the next four months to writing my thesis; this is to protect the student from unfairly given extra work after their supervisor has agreed to let the student hold the final meeting, and to ensure the student graduate on time. However, this rule was not very strictly implemented; you can actually get “permission” up to 3 months after the final meeting, and you can still be conducting new/re-doing old analyses when you are only supposed to be writing. In June, one week before my final meeting, only half of the dataset I had been waiting for arrived. I cobbled something together, cried myself to sleep a couple nights leading up to the presentation, presented, and heaved a huge sigh of relief. Although I didn’t get permission to write, I didn’t have to hold another meeting, I was told that once the second half of my dataset arrived, I would just have to get the signatures required for the appropriate forms.

At the time, I was starting to worry about the delay in getting data, but my PI assured me that I would get the data long before August. Feeling reassured, I figured I could take it easy for the next couple of months, this arrangement actually gives me more time to write my thesis because my official “4 months countdown” don’t start until my permission to write form is signed. A couple months pass and I’m informed the machine used to generate the data was broken, on September 5th, I finally get my dataset. I’m ecstatic, I get my form signed, thinking the timing was perfect for me to finish before Christmas and have the best holiday of my life.

It was somewhere mid October when I realized that I was still conducting analysis, still generating figures, still haven’t written 60 % of my thesis. I do the math backwards in my head and thought I might be able to defend on Dec. 17th, the last day to hold a defense in 2017. I go to tell my PI of my plans and was knocked back with a cold hard reality check. He told me that it was basically impossible to finish analysis, revisions, and have all my committee members be available the week before Christmas. I was now set to defend in January. As someone who loves the holidays and rearranges their entire schedule to maximize Christmas caroling, baking, shopping, and movie-watching, this was devastating news to me. I moped around for a week, and by moping I meant write the remainder of my thesis extremely sleep deprived and cried in the early hours of the morning.

Around the same time, my parents, who were assuming that I would be graduating by November, planned a family trip in December because it was supposed to be the best schedule for everyone. I didn’t want to say no because my mom had been overworked and desperately needed this vacation. This meant that I had to work during our family vacation, but keep the stress to a minimum so as to not ruin the vacation for my parents. At first, I thought to myself “you deserve this, you didn’t get your shit together, and now you have to work for longer”. But self-punishment for lack of productivity was probably something a lot of grad students are familiar with and can adequately cope with, it turns out punishing myself was was not the root of my frustration.

Turns out, this was the beginning of me learning about the Pacific-ocean-sized disconnect between who I thought I was and who I actually am. I have been fairly academically inclined throughout my very young life, which is probably how I ended up in grad school. As a result, my parents sent me off to undergrad confident they had done their part in raising a motivated, driven, ambitious daughter who was ready to tackle all academic hurdles. This was probably true when I left high school. However, sometime during undergrad, I had lost a little bit of drive, a little bit of discipline, and a whole lot of the razor-sharp focus that I seem to remember possessing in high school. You can blame it on social media, on more challenging material, on having to juggle adult things like laundry and cooking and grocery shopping. But it didn’t matter in the end, what did matter was that I felt like a lesser version of my high school self. It takes a titanic effort to get me to stop procrastinating and focus on something for longer than half an hour. I can’t seem to adhere to a schedule no matter how many fancy alarm apps I download on my phone. Sometimes, I write a to-do list and at the end of the day I might only cross off one thing. I struggle a lot more falling a sleep now, because I feel so unfulfilled and unaccomplished during the day. Sometimes I think I should just stop trying to sleep and get some work done, but then if I work late that completely ruins my schedule and productivity for the following day.

Subconsciously, I must’ve thought grad school would be my redemption, I would put myself back out there and participate in extra-curricular activities, cultivate my hobbies, rediscover my passions. Defending my thesis would’ve earned me a long vacation, where I celebrate the rediscovery of my motivated former self.

What actually happened, and I realize that now, was that I had pined and glorified the end goal of a 2017 graduation, without taking concrete steps to make that goal a reality. I liken myself to the frog who sat in a pot of increasingly warmer water. Now, in mid November, mid revision, I was the frog who suddenly realized they had no concrete end date because their PI is bombarded with multiple commitments at once and no longer has time to devote all of their attention to your thesis. Although I am close to finishing writing, I am no longer in control of when I graduate because it depends on the amount of time my PI can dedicate to looking over my thesis, it depends on when my school can fit in my defense date, when my committee members, who have notoriously busy schedules, are available in January. What is worse is that I will have to cut short the time I spent with my parents and those close to me during the holidays, who have already sacrificed a lot and waited patiently for me to graduate. Having to do extra work is fine, but having to still work because I had failed myself and those who have supported me, especially when this failure was preventable to begin with, really sucks. I still cry a lot after I come home at 2 am, sometimes because I want to have a pity party for myself other times because I am so goddamn tired and frustrated.

So here are somethings I’ve learned about independent research projects to make sure this type of thing doesn’t happen in the future:

1. Agree on a timeline with your superior, remind him/her often of the timeline. Make known that meeting the timeline is important to you, so they can tell you if it’s unrealistic, and more importantly they will rearrange their schedule to help you meet the deadline. In my case, I actually sent him a chapter of my thesis early in September. He didn’t read it, because he thought he could just wait for the other chapters to arrive so he can read them all at once. He never rushed me, and when the other chapters did arrive, he was knee deep in chapters other people have sent him as well.
2. Know when to say no. When I asked my PI when the second half of the dataset would arrive, he said long before August. It arrived in September, when I was supposed to be dedicating my time exclusively to writing only. I should have held him accountable, and reminded him that it was not fair to expect me to do this analysis so close to my graduation. At the time, I was afraid that I hadn’t done enough work, even though later my PI said I was taking on work that was for PhDs. But even if I doubted my own work, I should have at least had a discussion with him about the possibility of not analyzing the dataset. That way, if he convinced me to analyze it, he would’ve known my urgency, and tried to adhere to a timeline.
3. Take full responsibility. Up until now it might sound like my PI is this evil, scheming, publication-hungry academic forcing analysis after analysis on me. In truth, he just asked me politely and each time I said yes. He didn’t know that I was desperate to graduate. Of course, he should have managed my project a little better, but in his mind he probably thought I was happy to take on more work because I wanted to contribute to research, because I was an eager, well-balanced student who did not feel overwhelmed or overworked. Also, between June and August, I could have cranked out half of my thesis and sent it to him for revision, but I didn’t. I can’t control how my PI managed me, but I could have had a greater say in the outcome.
4. Forgive yourself. This is something I’m still struggling with. Like I said, I no longer have control over my graduation date. What’s done is done, the best way forward is to retain a positive mindset and write the best thesis I can to minimize revision time. Having said that, I am still constantly over caffeinated and on the verge of tears. I still feel like a piece of shit that someone who my parents, bless them, still consider to be the ultimate time-management and academic guru is losing productivity fast and spending 12 hour days on a computer instead of living a balanced lifestyle like they thought I did. The overwhelming anxiety has affected my sleep, which in turn drives down my productivity, which feeds into my guilt, which keeps me up at night; I am basically snowballing into self-destruction. I rarely call my parents now, because I’m afraid my anxiety and lack of having-my-shit-together will leak through and they’ll finally be disappointed in me. The last time I went home, it was exhausting to be upbeat for an entire weekend, especially when my current lifestyle just switches between curled up on my bed paralyzed by the crushing weight of responsibility, microwaving oatmeal, and in front of a computer trying to be productive.

In any case, I am not writing this article from the other side, I have not survived grad school yet. I am writing because I still can’t sleep at 5 am and after full on sobbing for a while, I had a brief moment of clarity and felt compelled to vomit out my self-loathing (or maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and realize this was all nonsensical babble).