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Modest Advice | Stearns Lab

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Some of the greatest catastrophes in graduate education could have been avoided by a little intelligent foresight. Be cynical. Assume that your proposed research might not work, and that one of your faculty advisers might become unsupportive - or even hostile. Plan for alternatives. Nobody cares about you. In fact, some professors care about you and some don’t. Most probably do, but all are busy, which means in practice they cannot care about you because they don’t have the time. You are on your own, and you had better get used to it. This has a lot of implications. Here are two important ones: You Must Know Why Your Work is Important. When you first arrive, read and think widely and exhaustively for a year. Assume that everything you read is bullshit until the author manages to convince you that it isn’t. If you do not understand something, don’t feel bad - it’s not your fault, it’s the author’s. He didn’t write clearly enough. If some authority figure tells you that you aren’t accomp

Some Modest Advice for Graduate Students by Stephen C. Stearns Always Prepare for the Worst. Some of the greatest catastrophes in graduate education could have been avoided by a little intelligent foresight. Be cynical. Assume that your proposed research might not work, and that one of your faculty advisers might become unsupportive - or even hostile. Plan for alternatives. Nobody cares about you. In fact, some professors care about you and some don’t. Most probably do, but all are busy, which means in practice they cannot care about you because they don’t have the time. You are on

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