Your PI will always tell you to do more work. He will always tell you to show more data, give more talks and publish more papers. This is independent of the actual amount of work you can accomplish in a week. His job is to be the voice that pushes you forward. Not his only job though, but this will be explored in greater detail later on. Today I want to talk to you about work in a broader sense of the process, a meta-work if you will.
As slices of the work pie go, setting up experiments and gathering data is a surprisingly small one. This is what makes academia so appealing and at times so stressful. The daily tasks do not just boil down into a few routine moves. Graduate students are craftsmen of information. Your job is to take knowledge and figure out what is missing. You are not just a data-monkey; this makes your job a creative endeavor.
Experimental elegance comes form its mechanics, even though results are often in the spotlight. During the first few years of grad school, we tend to focus on results as well. Before every experiment there is reading, and there is thinking and revising and lots more reading. This process of cultivating questions is the stuff of research. I think all of us eventually find our own paths that take us from information-absorption to idea-testing. I also think there are several general trends.
With reading volume definitely trumps quality, at least at first. The good news is that reading can be done almost anywhere, and in these early stages you do not have to take copious notes. In fact I would discourage note-taking all together. You are after general patterns here, not grizzly details and tedious particulars. Think broad strokes. You must get the general idea, a scent of the problem. In the future you will look back on this process as almost relaxing, a sort of front-loading for the next step.
Once you have some sense of the problem, your work turns to coming up with a question. Much has been said about the importance of a good hypothesis, so I will not repeat it except for this one thing. This quote is something that I recently heard from one of my academic colleagues: " good hypothesis are not forgotten until they are disproved". Writing a good question remains your task forever.
- Good news is: you are always challenged to word your questions better. Every time someone asks " and what do you do?" is another opportunity to refine your question. Sometimes during my morning bus ride I’ll just bounce words around my head, words that describe some science. Some of these are old and overused, most are just rubbish. Now you expect me to say that this process leads to a few descriptors that stick, nope it just highlights the bad ones so later I am not distracted by them.
- Bad news: you are unlikely to be satisfied until the very end, until you put ink to paper. If you come up with something good today, tomorrow you are one day wiser and whatever you wrote yesterday is shit.
Besides reading and coming up with a good question to answer, your work is to talk. Collaborative communication is the fuel that makes the process exciting. Inevitably while grinding away at the details of experimental design, you will lose some enthusiasm. Talking about your science, or listening to that of others will be that mid-afternoon snack that keeps you going. In fact your PI likes nothing more then procrastinated by talking about science with their students and colleagues. It's all the fun with none of the responsibility of trying to ensure success. Often your peers will guide you into a new territory, your PI will ensure rigor and marketability.
- Good news is: people are busy, so it's unlikely that these conversations will eat up loads of your time.
- Bad news is: "chatting about science" is not a good answer when your PI asks for the week's progress.
Reading, writing, and talking, already your day has been filled up with a verity of tasks. Add to these weekly meetings and lectures along with bureaucratic hustle and you will form an accurate picture of graduate work. In line with these are coffee runs and bathroom breaks, 3-minute yoga by the office windows and beer. Happy hour still remains an unbroken and violently upheld graduate tradition; it is a fitting forum for both science and frivolity.
- Good news is: wine and beer, also boss-man is paying.
- Bad news is: weekends are for lab-work.
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