The Ten Commandments of Graduate
School
These were not handed down to me
on stone tablets by God, but the following short pieces of advice will serve
you well for a successful stint in graduate school. A few commandments have corollaries, which is
a useful feature that was not used in the original Ten Commandments.
1. Focus on your research, even at
the expense of your classroom performance.
Employers will care most about your research accomplishments and not
your GPA.
Put a very high priority upon getting
your journal manuscripts into a state of completion
2. Come well-prepared for all
meetings with your advisor and to group meetings. Be ready to show your data and have some
ideas in mind for the next steps.
3. Treat your research as you would
treat a full-time job. Show up at lab
every morning, and consistently put in a full day.
Try not to work from home very
often. Nobody can interact with you
there. Save your time at home for
recreation and homework.
4. Share all your results with your advisor – both the experiments that went
as expected, and also the areas that are giving you problems. Your advisor cannot give advice if you hide
the things that did not go well.
5. Work hard at developing your
writing and speaking skills. Lack of
these skills will hold back your career if you do not improve them now. Practice is the key.
6. Be respectful of University staff
people (laboratory engineers, grants/contracts personnel, administrative
assistants, purchasing agents). The way
you treat them gets back to your advisor and other faculty, who will write
recommendation letters based on their knowledge of your interpersonal behavior.
7. Make an effort to get to know
faculty besides your advisor through co-advising arrangements, your classes,
and informal discussions.
8. Make an effort to be on excellent
terms with the other members of your research group. Be willing to be mentored by the senior
students, and be ready to serve as an excellent teacher for new students in the
group.
Seek out discussions with other
students (outside your group too. Listen
to their ideas and respect their views.
Do not be condescending or dismissive of others.
9. Do not ever find yourself with
nothing to work on. Always have a side
project or two to work on, should another project become stalled.
Be self-motivated. Actively seek out solutions to your problems,
rather than expect your advisor to always tell you what to do.
10. Set aside time every day to read
journal articles, selected based on your own personal interests, even if the
reading is outside your thesis topic.
