Graduate Students : A Life of Choice: topic
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Grad school nightmare stories
Brandt Nature Levitt
Friday, 01 February 2008 20:30 UTC
I am interested in going to graduate school in a year and a half and I want to hear some horrible nightmare stories to temper my enthusiasm. Surely you guys have some?
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Replies
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Ummm…graduate school is great! Just make sure you’re doing something you like doing. You’ll be doing a lot of it. I seem to be lucky enough to find classes that fit together so well with each other and with my graduate project/thesis that it’s not as hard as some people say it is. It all just fits and makes sense. If you can achieve that graduate school will be a breeze.
Good luck!
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Hello Levitt,
There is not need to temper your enthusiasm, if you are interested in going to grad school.
I will just suggest that make sure that you go to good lab. And, check the folks working in the lab.
Most horror stories of the grad life are because of the research group chemistry. If you keep right set of company in the grad school, it will be fun.
Cheers
rahul -
I’m reposting a link here that was accidentally taken down. It’s for an article from Science called “Scientific misconduct: Truth and Consequences”.
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Thanks Ms. Corie for putting it back!!
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Graduate school horror stories? I had mostly a good time, until I was about to finish. Then my advisor harassed me and tried to manipulate me. After I left, he copied my work, “almost.” I say “almost,” because he changed words and put data together that wasn’t supposed to be, so it looked more scientifically distinguished than it was.
You can read my story here: http://www.plagiary.org/responses.htm
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I know more grad school horror stories than I have time to retell. I think most of them may be specific to my institution, which is not known for caring about people. I think the worst story I have in my arsenal is the one where a PI got a lucrative job offer from industry. He gave his lab members (including three grad students early in their research work) less than one week warning that the lab was going to be shut down. Then he left for good. That’s it. No warning, no consideration, just locked the doors and buh-bye. The students were absorbed into a neighboring lab, new advisor. If I were his student, I think I would have slashed his tires… if not worse. My own lab also shut down, but that was due to severe illness on the part of my advisor. Nothing to be angry about.
Really though, grad school is not going to be easy, and at times it is not going to be fun, but it feels so freakin’ good to be done. I would do it again.
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