Grad School Superheroes

I probably cannot blame my advisor completely for this, but every time I have something unrelated to my project to talk to him, especially something I know potentially would raise the tension between us, I feel the need to show him some good data (Wait! It sounds familiar. Doesn’t everyone do the same thing?)

Thinking rationally, I feel it is absolutely ridiculous to feel that way. I mean, does he really have the right to expect me to do nothing but work? I have to live, get health issues once in a while, get bombarded by random things just like he does. I am just a human! Yet I just can’t justify myself to ask him to reimburse my money for a poster with data that don’t really tell anyone anything.

The past couple weeks have been stressful. I worked long hours (just like a typical grad student), still have not got any good results (just like a typical grad student), tried to deal with my advisor and coworkers (just like a typical grad student), and nothing in the future seems certain (just like a typical grad student). So what is wrong with being a typical grad student? As many ambitious young scientists understand- who on earth comes in the program just wanting to be a typical grad student?

We want to be better than that. I know every PhD student agrees with me.

I went to a seminar on grad students in science yesterday by Peter Fiske. It was an excellent talk. There I realized one thing: when extra-ambitious people enter grad school, we visualize ourself, like superheroes, destroy obstacles and accomplish great things. But obstacles rarely come in the form of a fireball-spitting, giantic monster but instead, a much more humble form. Such as: your advisor not trusting you 100%. You wouldn’t think it is a problem until you face it. To anyone with big ego, constant lack of trust from your advisor can be frustrating.

So what do we do? I think it is healthy to realize that obstacles come in different forms. The real challenge of grad school is learning to manage everything simultaneously, to prioritize, and to know what to let go (Have to choose our battles!). We can only accomplish great things when the trivial ones do not constantly take up a enormous part of our brain. That does not mean we pretend those things aren’t there or hold the wishful thinking of them never occurring to us.

We can just try to be willing to learn from mistakes and get used to constant disturbance. Once we get pass that, I think we would be closer to success.