Three things that you would give up for Grad School

In order to orient new graduate students, the Graduate School arranges a panel of speakers from experienced students to share their opinions about graduate school life. The panel includes students pursuing degrees in diverse disciplines and at different phases of their degrees, as in near completion or initial stages. It was a real pleasure and privilege to be part of such an elite panel. Of the twelve questions, the one that set my thought process racing was “What are the three things that you would give up for Grad School?”

Serving on the panel for the first time, my answer to that question was very vague and was not even worth remembering the answers. However, the second time around, the question seemed like the one that I need to address myself. So I set about keeping a rough tab of how I spend my day and what would it be other than research that takes the most of the time. To my complete disbelief the first item on the list was “internet browsing” followed by "sleep time". These were the tangibles, the one that was intangible was my own “Ego”. It was my own unwillingness to accept new ideas and lack of vision to see equality in fellow researchers.

First things first, my thoughts about the biggest distraction of all is “internet browsing”. This addiction started as a pastime with viewing few sites of interest like BBC, blogging, mail check and social networking sites. For the news feed sites, an inquisitive mind and the unstable thought imposed an imaginary ‘responsibility’ of reading an entire site followed by comments. Considering that average reading speed is about 250 wpm, it would take anywhere from 5-10 minutes to read an entire article on web. However, this one article could be biased, so to find the truth I went about reading 2-3 articles from other authors about the same story. Effectively (may be not) utilizing 30 minutes of research time (without counting the loading speed and other distractions). Well this is only one topic. As the time progressed my curiosity increased and sometimes ended up reading about 20 other important happenings around the world. To be brutally honest, after updating my universal knowledge I went about refreshing short term memories by visiting social networking sites. Thanks to the wonderful web developers, we get to know about all the action in our friends lives in a live feed. As per my observations, a student with 150 or more friends in his network and with 5 of them online spends at least about an hour on networking site. Not but not the least the minor ingredients of browsing include blogging, mail checking and picture uploading. All together we are looking at sometime between 3-4 hours, just to satisfy our social urges. Assuming that a grad student starts his lab hours at 8am, browsing alone will bring the time closer to lunch. Like any other addiction it takes meticulous and conscious effort to carry out the action. And this would be my number one and relatively easier one to give up.

The second biggest factor that I would give up is “sleep time”. The term sleep doesn’t pertain to necessary sleep time, but is loosely used for all the times that you are thinking that you should be more productive, that you are lazy, when you are thinking about how to postpone the experiment for another day, about the time when you start thinking about lunch and other social events, hours prior to the actual events. This sleep time accounts for about 1-2 hours of your research time. Personally tried and tested approach to this problem is rather eloborate, however for simplicity it can be considered as a three teir approach. First, think about the experiments in hand atleast 6-8 hours prior to the experiment. May seem odd at first but works like a charm later on. Second, try to collaborate with fellow researchers to work on experiments. Thirdly, write a check list and meticulously keep track of progress. I guess prioritizing will greatly help, but the whole topic about priorities is not clearly understood by me (yet) and for simplicity and integrity of blog will leave it out of discussion. However, once you start following the three tier process the results will speak for themselves. Note: I strongly recommend at least 6 hours of sleep on a regular schedule. If you can’t do this on a 5 day work schedule, you better get some help from experts.

Thirdly and the most important of all it’s the EGO. This is not as tangible as others, is not easily understood by lesser mortals and worse yet not realized by majority of the students. But yet it is the single most important factor that puts us behind the curtain and isolates us from world around us. It is the ‘one thing’ that makes you deaf to others suggestions, blind to others work, mute to offer constructive criticism and disabled to employ help. Put together you get the picture……..you have arrested development. I’m not an expert to advice on how to deal with problems related to EGO, but being on the same boat can definitely see its intricate and subtle nature. It is winded into each and every action of mine, into every word I speak. There is no remedy since its part of me, and in broader sense it ME. The very thought of eliminating it leaves ME with no identity. The solution then, as it appears to me, is through proper education. It’s only through education that you can train your mind to hear and anticipate greater good. The thought that we are not alone in this world and only when all these souls work together can greater good be achieved. It’s through education that we learn it’s not through mere submission to others ideas but inquisitiveness to hear the idea.

If the question was what are the three things that you would give up……..then the answers are above. But the question is much deeper than that…..it is how open you are to learning and exploring yourself, it’s about how you can educate yourself to solve a puzzle larger than life. Then graduate school is just a phase of life, where we can invest quality time in ourselves. Welcome to Graduate School!!!