With greater degrees comes greater responsibility

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be in a big lab. One that had a lot of grad students and lots of undergrads running around all the time. Lots of action...very social. I have wondered that a lot lately, as I sit day after day by myself in the lab, I wonder even more what it would be like.

And then I remember that maybe being the only grad student in the lab, with only one undergrad isn't that bad after all. The bigger a lab gets, the more that Supervisors start to push off the undergrads onto the graduate students (especially the PhD students), and it becomes their responsibility to help them. In the past, during my MSc, I did help some of the Honours thesis students when they needed it, by editing things, showing them stats programs, explaining concepts. But I have never had to actually supervise one, and although I bet the experience is valuable, I doubt that I'd want to. That being said, I am meeting with my Supervisor and the thesis student on Thursday to go over some stuff. I am actually SO excited to see how her project turns out, because it uses the data from my MSc and will be super-interesting.

As a PhD student now I notice some differences from my MSc:

1) There is a lot of talk of publications. And I mean a lot. Everything I do is done with the intent of being published. Even the preliminary reading I am doing about competitive abilities (simply for project ideas and inspiration) is done with the aim of getting published. And I do understand why. It's because when it comes to getting hired, post-doc, it really matters how much you have published. They want productive, successful researchers that have published in journals with a high impact factor. I guess I have some work to do...

2) It's even more independence then before. My supervisor has ALWAYS had a "you do what you need to do, I don't care when, how" attitude. And that hasn't changed at all.

I am however finding it very difficult to balance things. I did MORE stuff (I think), at least school-related stuff, in my MSc, but it was a lot more structured. I had actual classes to attend, concrete due date, and overall I was just more of an anxious wreck back then, simply because I wanted to be done, and be done in time. Now that I know what completely a post-grad degree is like, I think I am less nervous. This isn't working in my favour however.

3) I am A LOT more involved in the biograds community now than I was before. I think in the first week of my PhD I was already more involved then ever before and this is a great thing. Even though I am the only student in my lab, it doesn't feel like that a lot of the time, because I often have someone coming in to talk about something related to the Biograds committee, and I like that. I really regret not getting involved in the committee in the previous years.

Anyways, back to work for me. That's my rant for the day.