Things I wish I hadn’t done in grad school or… an open letter of apology (filled with sheepishness) to my advisor, dissertation committee members, director of graduate studies, and assorted others

It seems to me that the first year out of graduate school is characterized by much reflection on what you would do differently, if given the chance.* Many of the things that I now notice that students should NOT do also apply to new assistant professors. NOTE: I’m not talking about this with respect to any particular student in my department, many of these observations are based on conversations with friends that are still in grad school or reflections on my own behavior in grad school.

So, here are my thoughts. I haven’t the expertise to call them ‘rulz,’ of course, and I’m still working on all of them (with varying success).

1. Don’t complain about how busy you are in the same meeting where you ask if we can meet next time at 11am because 9am is too early. I thought I was pretty busy in grad school. And, I was. I had a baby, very little child care, at one point my husband and I lived 4 hours apart and commuted, and I finished an ambitious dissertation that, in my advisor’s words, would take “superhuman and heroic effort” to finish on time.** This is nothing compared to how busy I am now. And, how busy I am now is nothing compared to the obligations of the more senior faculty. Sure, they have tenure but they also have more students, more service obligations (within and outside of the department and university), and big research projects that involve managing lots of people. some of them are also directing centers, managing the graduate program, or editing prestigious journals — i am continually astounded by all that they get done. It’s one thing to talk to them about all the new course preps being overwhelming or navigating the new bureaucracy, it’s quite another to go on and on about how busy you are.

2. The hyper-critical dogmatic/ideological grad student is sooooo OUT. I was always a little weirded out by first-year grad students who had it all figured out, trashed everything, and subscribed to a particular strain of thought to the exclusion of everything else. I think this applies to junior faculty as well. There’s nothing worse than a bitter, grizzled, contrary newbie. I, of course, define myself and my work much more concretely now relative to my first year of grad school but, honestly, isn’t being open to new ideas a good thing? Be a pollyanna, be enthusiastic, appreciate new things, delight in offering your expertise but delight as well in learning from others. Be confident about what you know but be open to the lessons you can learn from others and how they can improve your own work.

3. The first-author thing. Scatterplot and orgtheory have written great posts about how to negotiate co-authoring in grad school and beyond. They said it best so I’ll not add more — the discussion reminded me, however, that grad students tend to underestimate the amount of work their mentors and co-authors put into them. Co-authoring for me worked well (arguably, too well) and, with my paltry publication record, I’ve never been in a situation where the order of authorship was questioned. That said, appreciate the amount of work your mentors put into you, and concede that first authorship is not related to the amount of grunt work you do. By the same token, if the paper was your idea and you wrote most of it, would it be what it is without your second author? Recognize this. Did your mentors spend years collecting data and generously allow you to use it? Did they teach you to navigate the publishing world? Did they spend hours teaching you how to write, how to structure a paper, and how to present material? Appreciate this. At the same time, negotiate authorship early — and follow through with the obligations decided upon during those negotiations.

4. Appreciate the staff. Your happiness as a grad student and new faculty member is highly dependent on the staff in your department. Be a jerk and pay the price for years to follow.

5. Listen. I’m chatty, I have trouble with this one. I’m working on it. Related to #2 above, you don’t have to take everyone’s advice but you ought to listen. Most people are trying to help you.

6. Some of us have sparkle, some of us are charming, but in the end, it’s all about the work. I tended to overestimate the power of personality in grad school. Charm is important and those with good social skills have advantages. At the same time, many of us work with people we don’t like and it’s not about playing favorites. If another student consistently gets things you want, before you assume it’s because they are Professor X’s ‘favorite’ and before you begin casting aspersions on them, really ask yourself what you haven’t done.

7. Don’t begrudge others their success and don’t judge your worth in comparison to others. It’s a competitive profession. The fact of the matter is, however, that even if your most successful colleagues or comrade graduate students drop out or stop writing altogether, it doesn’t increase the chances of your article getting accepted by ASR one bit. We all have different strengths; recognize yours and learn from others as you try to strengthen and expand your toolkit. Don’t waste time comparing yourself to others — it’s an emotional trap and it will never end well. Having a good sense of what is expected and what the ’stars’ are doing is good — obsessing over the ’stars’ and their CVs is not.

8. Branch out. Talking and working with people who are similar to you in terms of disciplinary training, method, or substantive topic is good. Branching out once you’ve got the basics covered is also good. Wander over to the economics department/child development center/business school/law school/whatever on a regular basis. You may not see it right away, but your work will be better for getting outside of your discipline or substantive topic on a regular basis. After all, I can almost guarantee that most of the people who make the decision to hire you or award you tenure will NOT be experts in what you study so you need to make your work relevant and understandable to a wide audience. And, if you ever bump up against a troublesome committee member, a crazy colleague, or some other rare but terrible situation, it’s good to have a lot of people to turn to for help.

*I guess I could go back and get that biology PhD I’ve always wanted but I’ve spent a LOT of time in school and, in my father’s words, it’s time to “get out there and mix it up.”

**I’d like to point out that I now believe he says things like this only to me (and students like me) because we respond to challenges like this — I had a lot to finish in a short period of time but I think it also reflected the kind of student I was. Sneaky guy… but the fact that I remember the words verbatim is telling. I’d also like to point out that my committee had an approved and solid dissertation a full 2 months before the defense.