10 Mistakes Graduate Students Should Avoid
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#5: Piling Up ‘Incompletes’ on Your Transcripts and/or Taking Too Long to Complete Your WorkBefore you enter a graduate program you should know what the average length of time it takes to complete the program. Generally, the more structured the program the less time it takes. Unlike professional graduate programs such as law, medicine, and business, no degree is guaranteed at the end of several years of coursework. Traditional graduate degree programs with a required thesis or dissertation component have been characterized by less structure, fewer formal classes, more self-motivation and independence. |
In spite of an academic environment with less direction and more responsibility, your goal from the very first day of graduate school is to build a professional career. In graduate school your measure of success is not grades; getting all As doesn’t mean anything if you have not developed excellent research skills.
First and foremost, the PhD is a research degree—as a good graduate student you are responsible for conducting your own research (in conjunction with your advisor), presenting your work at professional meetings, writing grants to fund your research, and publishing your research results in a timely manner.
Are you a workaholic who is never satisfied with the quality of work you are able to produce within the timeframe of a semester? If so, have you piled up a number of “incompletes” so that you could take the time to improve your work before turning it in? If this describes you, stop now! Taking too long to complete your coursework is frowned upon in academia, and in the eyes of most faculty, a “B” is a much preferable mark to an “Incomplete.” Moreover, a build-up of “Incompletes” may be viewed as a harbinger of things to come … and prospective advisors or committee members may be reluctant to take on that kind of risk.
Piling up a number of incompletes signals to professors that you cannot finish what you start. If you cannot complete your assignments within a semester, professors become leery that you will ever be able to finish your degree within a reasonable amount of time given that you have to set your own deadline.
The six burner stove approach
While you should definitely aspire to turn in your best work all the time, don’t get tripped up and slowed down by always trying to achieve perfection. Andy Spencer on Science Career Forum website (www.ScienceCareers.org ) suggests that you not spend weeks getting ready to do “The Big, Enlightening Experiment” when six little experiments would be far more efficient. Some refer to this as creating an excuse for putting off an experiment until all of the pieces are in place, similar to gathering wood to build a campfire. It’s important to realize that “Science isn’t a campfire; it’s a six-burner stove.”
At TADA we believe in the “six-burner stove” method; you should be able to still move your Master’s thesis or dissertation forward even if you are experiencing writer’s block. Is your cover page, acknowledgement page, signature page, etc., done? Keep working even if you don’t feel like writing. Recently, a mechanical engineering graduate student took my advice and made sure everything else on his thesis was done even before all of his experiments were completed. When his experiments were done all he had to do was to put the results into the tables he had previously created. See his comments in the “congratulations section below.”
Networking and sharing the workload
In graduate school expect your workload to be substantially more than any one person could complete. The reading requirements can be sometimes overwhelming and burdensome. In addition to the required readings, in the syllabus you might find supplemental (recommended) readings as well. Don’t waste time complaining to the professor who assigned the reading; he/she fully expects you to come to class prepared to discuss the readings. Find creative ways to cover the reading materials for the course.
For example, in graduate school I was able to familiarize myself with all the readings by forming and participating in a class study group. We would divide the readings amongst ourselves and provide a summary for each reading. The summary included the abstract, the research question, the methodology, limitations, and the findings. Using this method allowed all of us to participate in the class discussion. In class it is always better to make any contribution on something than not to participate at all. Remember silence in class is viewed by professors as lack of knowledge–Sometimes class participation involves making a preemptive strike; raise your hand and volunteer an answer on something that you are prepared for before you are called upon to answer a question you don’t know the correct answer to.
