Grad School- the first couple of years

Going to grad school seemed like such a good idea. I had done an internship in industry and hadn’t liked the fact that although I was hired for a particular skill, my expertise was ignored because I lacked 3 little letters after my name. I want to make it clear from the outset that I never wanted to be a professor- I just don’t have the patience necessary to motivate students to want to learn. However, I carefully kept this preference to myself once I figured out that the objective of grad school is for professors to turn you into little clones of themselves. Not that I didn't like my professors- I just wanted something different in the career department.

The first 2 years were spent in boring classes. Boring because all but 2 of the classes were a rehash of material I learned as an undergrad. Seriously, if it wasn’t for some of the really cool people I met and became friends with, I really think I would have walked away from sheer boredom.

My first choice of lab was less than ideal. I chose the lab because I worked really well with the 2 senior students and the lab was doing research I found interesting. In hindsight, this is the second worst possible reason to choose a lab. The worst being because you think you’ll graduate “on time,” whatever that is! “On time” for what? Dinner? A movie? Christmas? The Great Pumpkin? My advisor in that lab was a clinician. While he was a great clinician, he often appeared bored by his own research, never a good combo. After a summer of helping to supervise a rotating med student and an undergrad interning in the lab (and really just having lab-wide competitions playing Text Twist), I decided that I needed to move to a new lab. Strangely enough, one of the senior students made the same decision about a month after I left. I guess Text Twist just wasn’t the same without me.

I chose my new lab after rotating through a couple of labs that had been unavailable when I initially arrived at grad school. My new advisor, whom I will subsequently refer to as Prof. Sunshine (obviously not his real name, but oh so bright and cheery), was a great boss. I enjoyed learning new techniques and developed the ability to talk about dissecting mice while eating lunch. You know its bad when your lunch conversation in the hospital cafeteria grosses a bunch of surgical interns out!