life and society | graduate school

Sixth on the guest list is my Ecuadorian friend Alejandro whom I met at the University of Arizona almost two years ago. As with every guest, it's a privilege to have Alejandro take out time from his hectic and intense schedule to write for "life and society".

For this series, he gives insight on being a PhD student - something that most of us do not go through - that graduate school goes beyond grades to a more advanced exchange and dialogue of ideas. But it can also involve tension between people as well as the stress of institutional expectations.

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Graduate School
Alejandro Proaño

The last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about what to write for this posting. I was considering a wide range of topics from the beauty of Math to inter-cultural relationships. However, all my duties as a grad student kept me extremely busy for the last few days and didn’t have much time to develop one of those interesting topics, and have decided to talk about my experience as a PhD student. 

Seven years ago, as a college student in Ecuador is the first time that I wonder about graduate school. I was inspired with my professors. Brilliant minds with PhD degrees in Physics, Math, Engineering and Philosophy. These guys seemed very passionate about their careers. In my conversation with them, we would get to very interesting points in whatever topic we discuss (as a 20 year old kid, my favorite discussions were about women). Anyways, since that time I remember I wanted to pursue a PhD. I thought in graduate school, I would satisfy my intellectual curiosity while getting professional advancement. 

Now, after three years in graduate school I realized that this is not how it looked like. The first and most shocking reality I faced was to realize that grad school is not a continuation of your undergraduate studies. Let me explain. When I was an undergraduate, of course I studied hard and several times a semester there was those endless nights when you have to finish any kind of assignment. However, I always had time for fun without having to worry about any serious stuff; the only responsibility was to obtain good grades. In grad school there is a different reality. You still care about your grades, even though most of professors would give you a B even if you do terribly in the class. Moreover, you care about respect. When you talk to your professors (no more talks about women), you are treated as a peer, and are expected to have brilliant ideas and contribute to the continuous development of your field of interest. The relationship with your peers (classmates and labmates), it might not be as innocent and friendly as when you are in high school and college. These guys become your competitors. Every year you have to compete for getting funding (teaching assistantships, research assistantships, fellowships, travel grants, etc), specially in these times when university budgets are tight. When you graduate, you will compete with the very same people for jobs, internships and postdocs. Note that, there are many people that don’t manage competiveness in a healthy way, and may be willing to do crazy things to take over you. 

What about money? Well graduate school is not cheap. Several people come with multiple student loans. The lucky ones get a fellowship or an assistantship. With a fellowship you are in a great position, you can focus on your interests and advance at your own pace. However, assistantships can be a nightmare. Let’s talk about teaching assistants. These poor guys usually are university slaves that have to deal with more than 50 students each semester. And we all know that undergrads don’t really care about learning, they care about the grade (If you are one, no offense, I was one too). This comic illustrates my point.



On the other hand, we have the research assistants. These guys are those who were chosen by their advisors to be funded and guided in research. Translation: Other type of slaves that will be doing whatever their advisor ask them to do. Of course, this comes with a lot of frustration, which reminds me of my current situation. The last three months I’ve been working in a paper to submit it to a conference. However, the day before the deadline, after a horrible weekend of running experiments and writing the report, my advisor decided that we don’t have time to meet this deadline, and maybe we can submit for a different conference. This comic perfectly describe the moment when I asked him if he went over my paper.



Or,

Is it that bad? Well no. Graduates students have a lot of free time. Well, kind of… In reality, the life of a graduate student is sustained by procrastination. Everything is about deadlines, and of course, why to start working early when you can finish it the last few days before the deadline. So just have fun until the time comes…

All the comics are from Piled Higher and Deeper (www.phdcomics.com)

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"life and society" will feature various people from different walks of life and various parts of the world. New posts are up every Monday and Thursday at 6pm (GMT +8 / Singapore time) through the first week of 2012. On Monday (Dec 19), I'll be featuring Jonathan Sng, a friend from my community of people who follow Jesus.