Grad school can suck the life out of you.

Sure, it seems like a good idea in theory I mean, you can never go wrong with more education…right!!

I don’t regret going to grad school, I can say that now because I’m done. If you asked me a few years ago while I was juggling my thesis, project work, teaching responsibilities, conferences, publications and some semblance of a personal life, I would have told you a different story (with a lot of swearing and angry hand gestures).

In all seriousness, grad school is a big commitment and in order to make your experience the best that it can be you should consider the following:

Find the right supervisor. I was given this advice when I was applying to grad school and I wish I had taken it more seriously. Take the time to research potential supervisors at your schools of choice. Email previous students to ask their honest opinions on the supervisor.

You obviously want your research interests to align with your advisors but you should also consider their mentoring style. Are you very independent and just looking for someone to review your thesis and provide feedback once every few months? Or, are you looking for weekly meetings and a close working relationship?

Don’t settle just because you feel like you NEED to find a supervisor. Grad school is two years of your life, maybe longer, and a negative relationship with your supervisor can make it feel like two years of never-ending hell.

Stay true to your research interests. This fits with the last comment. Don’t significantly alter your research interests just to find an easy fit with a supervisor. If you are going to spend the time and money on grad school make sure you are researching a topic you really care about.

Pick a thesis topic that will help get you a job. Have you ever asked a graduate student what their thesis is about? If you haven’t, then don’t. You will get some crazy detailed, super specific topic that no on has ever heard of before like:

“Parent-reported and Child Self-reported Symptoms of Psychiatric Disorder and their Relationships to Independent Living Skills in a Clinical Sample of Perinatally HIV-infected and Perinatally HIV-exposed but Uninfected Adolescents: An Exploratory Analysis”

….ummmm, what???

Most graduate students can talk your ears off when it comes to their thesis topics and this is great, it’s really important to be passionate about what you’re studying. However, if you are going to invest two years of your life into research you want to make sure that it is going to be useful in the real world.

Academia is not the real world. Academia supports slow timelines, rigorous research and complicated statistics. The real world is more about budgets, deadlines and information that is easy to digest. So, if you see a life outside of academia once you graduate then try to align your thesis with a job you want in the real world.   

Take a tour of the research lab/campus/city you will be studying in. I went to grad school in  my home town so I was very familiar with the university and city. However, if you are moving to a new location for school try to check it out before you make the move.

Learn to budget. Unless you have some very generous parents or have received a substantial amount of funding/scholarships then you should be prepared to budget. School is expensive and some programs won’t allow you to work outside of the program if you are receiving funding. You can rack up a lot of debt in two years, debt that can take a considerable amount of time to pay off. When you finally graduate and start to make a solid paycheque you don’t want all of it going to your student loans.

Be prepared to work really hard. Grad school is no cake walk. It takes a lot of motivation and personal discipline to get through it in a timely fashion. For me, it also meant giving up some most of my social life. I had to study a lot in order to grasp certain concepts and to get A’s in all of  my classes. While my friends were out partying I was holed up in a windowless basement lab.

Ohhh, how I miss it!!!