Middle-of-Grad-School Slump, I
I noted before that I was feeling the middle of graduate school slump, and I'd like to write a bit about some of the reasons for this slump, and some of the ways I'm trying to pull out of it, which I think worked pretty well this last week.
Some of the reasons are quite general to graduate school, or to any big project. Hours-wise, my current lab work is already probably the biggest single project I've ever undertaken, and I'm not even half done with it yet.
For one, I'm done with classes now, so I no longer have the structure that comes with regular meetings and weekly homework sets. Homework sets also provide a short-term sense of accomplishment that can be lacking in lab work, and finishing a class is a nice medium-term goal. For an extrovert like me, classes also provide important human contact and camaraderie.
Another daunting thing about being in the middle of a big project is seeing all your mistakes. When things are relatively short-term, and you finish a project, then leave it, it's easier to leave behind a mistake, too. But on a long project, small mistakes can matter months or years later, and it's easy for me to get discouraged by problems I feel like I shouldn't have spent so much time on. Also, in the beginning of graduate school, it is good enough to be merely promising, but at some point, you need to be actually productive. The data need to be collected, the paper needs to get written, and so on. It's easy to have a crisis of confidence here: What if all those people who thought I was promising were wrong, and I don't actually produce anything?
A final reason for the slump is the ongoing transition to being a more independent researcher. As a junior student, it's okay to simply do projects given to you by your advisor, or follow the lead of the senior students and post-docs. But a more senior student should be thinking critically about the work and making decisions about its direction. This requires stepping up to the plate and becoming a real expert in the field, and it's a responsibility that can be a bit scary: What if I choose a path for my research that nobody cares about, or it turns out to be impossible?
That's all for now. I'll try to write more about some of my strategies and how they are working later.
Some of the reasons are quite general to graduate school, or to any big project. Hours-wise, my current lab work is already probably the biggest single project I've ever undertaken, and I'm not even half done with it yet.
For one, I'm done with classes now, so I no longer have the structure that comes with regular meetings and weekly homework sets. Homework sets also provide a short-term sense of accomplishment that can be lacking in lab work, and finishing a class is a nice medium-term goal. For an extrovert like me, classes also provide important human contact and camaraderie.
Another daunting thing about being in the middle of a big project is seeing all your mistakes. When things are relatively short-term, and you finish a project, then leave it, it's easier to leave behind a mistake, too. But on a long project, small mistakes can matter months or years later, and it's easy for me to get discouraged by problems I feel like I shouldn't have spent so much time on. Also, in the beginning of graduate school, it is good enough to be merely promising, but at some point, you need to be actually productive. The data need to be collected, the paper needs to get written, and so on. It's easy to have a crisis of confidence here: What if all those people who thought I was promising were wrong, and I don't actually produce anything?
A final reason for the slump is the ongoing transition to being a more independent researcher. As a junior student, it's okay to simply do projects given to you by your advisor, or follow the lead of the senior students and post-docs. But a more senior student should be thinking critically about the work and making decisions about its direction. This requires stepping up to the plate and becoming a real expert in the field, and it's a responsibility that can be a bit scary: What if I choose a path for my research that nobody cares about, or it turns out to be impossible?
That's all for now. I'll try to write more about some of my strategies and how they are working later.