Adventures in grad school

“Okay, time to start writing that dissertation.”

*stares at blank word document with a growing sense of alarm and confusion*

His response: “I know how you feel. The person who starts writing the paper is never the same as the person who finishes it. And I’m always disappointed in that first guy. But that’s okay because it means you’ve grown since then.”

When you look at the word count and it’s barely 100 words:

When you re-read and realize it’s utter nonsense:

On average how long does a (Masters/PhD) student in your lab take to graduate?

Do you, the PI, do lab work still?

Did any of your students receive fellowships/scholarships/grants that they applied for?

What’s the structure of your lab meetings?

What’s the structure of your individual meetings with students?

Do you travel a lot for conferences?

Do you work from home a lot? (My PI does this a lot and I kinda wish I had known this beforehand, just as a head’s up)

Do you have other responsibilities that remove you from the lab? (ie. if they run a company, do clinical work, teach, etc)

What percentage of your time/resources do you aliquot per project? (Some PIs may spend more time on one project than others)

What are your expectations of students in terms of how long they’re in the lab each day? Do you expect students to work evenings, weekends, and/or holidays?

What are your holiday and sick days policies?

Do you allow students to read papers/do their writing while in lab? (I know one PI in my program who doesn’t allow their students to read papers while in the lab, because lab time is for lab time)

Who will my immediate mentor be in terms of research questions (ie. another graduate student, a post-doc, or the PI themselves)?

Are you familiar with the requirements of my graduate program (ie. committee meeting structures, qualifying exam structure if applicable, how the thesis should be formatted, etc)

This one you may want to ask the current personnel in the lab: Are there any labs/PIs that this current PI isn’t on good terms with? (This is something you may need to know when setting up your committee, for example, or collaborators). 

How do you determine the authorship on papers? (ie. How much work should I do for a project for my name to be on it?)

How many papers do you publish per year? 

How many papers do you expect your graduate students to publish during their time here?

How often do your students go to conferences/present at meetings?

Do you allow your students to have other engagements (like TAing, internships, etc)?

And in general, if you have a huge life event coming up, ask them what the process on that would be. For example, if you’re getting married, or planning on having a child, or have a family member who’s gravely ill, ask them how much time you can take off, etc. If the PI seems really hesitant or put-off by that, that’s something to consider. 

That’s all I can think of.. I’m sure there’s more if anyone else has anything to add.