Here’s the real scoop on what no one is going to tell you before you start your PhD.
Picture yourself a first year grad student, all starry eyed and naive and thinking that you’re going to do experiments! And they’re going to work!! And you’re totally going to find a cure for {cancer/diabetes/Alzheimer’s/lupus}!!! And it’s going to be SO.AWESOME.!!!!
Then you start this seemingly endless task of doing experiments that don’t work or trying to repeat other people’s work (only to realize that no one in science actually does good science and so those experiments don’t work either), all with the hope that someday, this elusive someday, everything will come together and you’ll actually contribute something to the field that you can point to and say, “Yeah, I did that” and then brush your shoulders off. Just a little. Jay Z-style. No biggie.
And about one and a half years in, someone will come to you and say, “Hey! You need to take a qualifying exam to see if we’ll give you the privilege of doing this to yourself for the next 3-5 years.”
Uhhhh, what now?
And of course, somewhere inside that hardened, jaded shell of yours, is still that naive first year who hopes that she’s going to change the world. And so, against all odds and rational thought, you say YES. Of course I’ll spend a whole week making a powerpoint presentation and worrying endlessly and will just speak to myself for 48 hours straight about Rab proteins and GLUT4 translocation and the insulin signaling pathway even though my voice is already sore from {still} trying to hack up a lung every hour.” And then, as a last minute resort, you may or may not stay up until midnight baking brown butter snickerdoodles to bribe sweet-talk thank your committee with.
Yup, that’s where I’m at right now. It’s not pretty.
