Photo by Jim Purbrick

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During your first and second years as a Ph.D. student, your brain will be challenged to its maximum. You’ll be forced to learn new information faster than Neo in the Matrix when he was programmed to learn Kung Fu. In your classes, the subject matter that you are being presented with is probably somewhat familiar to you; however, you’ll be learning a lot more details. Furthermore, many of the details were not available in your college textbooks because now, you’ll be learning directly from peer-reviewed journal articles. Not only will you learn how the science works, but you’ll also learn the experiments that were used to prove such facts. Also, if you’re really insightful, you’ll begin to question the research, see what’s missing, and have some idea about what experiments should be done next. This is the biggest difference that I could see between college and graduate school. You’re not only expected to learn the material, but you’re also expected to learn how this material was discovered. This is the ultimate goal of Ph.D. training, to teach you to think critically and analytically, like a scientist, and learn how to solve scientific problems. That’s the career you are being prepared for…to be a scientific problem solver.

Lab work is yet another challenging feat that you are bombarded with upon entering graduate school. I know you’ve worked in a lab before, but not like this. No one’s gonna hold your hand this time. You’ll probably be given some keys to the dungeon and an older student’s lab notebook and told to get to work. Well, it probably won’t be that bad. Besides, there are several labs to choose from, and each one is different. However, you will be expected to function independently at some point during your graduate school years. You will have to learn many new techniques, some of which will take a few tries before you can grasp them. With that in mind, be prepared to do a lot of experiments that probably won’t work the way you want them to. Remember this, the faster you standardize these techniques, the faster you’ll graduate.

Here are 3 general tips to help you pass successfully through these stages:

1. Immerse yourself in graduate school
   This is going to be your life for the next few years so you must learn to love it. Try your best to enjoy being a student doing cutting edge research. Train yourself to love reading, writing, studying, and doing lab work.
2. Read as much as you can
   This cannot be overstated. For everyone in the world, reading is a good thing to do. But for scientists, it’s almost an obligation. If needed, go back to those old college textbooks to brush up on the basics. Also, and probably more importantly, you have to read journal articles. I know that upon first glance, most journal articles look terribly boring and tough to understand, and that’s normal, because if you don’t understand the paper, it’s probably not going to be very interesting. The more you read them, the better you’ll become at understanding them. One professor told me that I should read at least one article everyday.
3. Ask for help
   Most people aren’t jerks. If you need help, ask someone, and 9 times out of 10, they will help you. In your lab, when you need help on some technique, go to the friendly, smart post-doc. If you’re having trouble with a concept presented in class, go and visit the professor. It’s their job to help you.

This is definitely not an exhaustive list. If you have found other tips that were helpful to you, please post them in the comments.