Moving from Classwork to Research
Faculty Comments
What steps can you recommend for students who don’t wish to get “lost” in the transition from classes to research? What are some of the pitfalls, and how might students circumvent them?
Houston Baker
Professor, English
I think the “mediating” agency is, in fact, the “classroom.” Students do not just proceed, as you know, from full-time class work into full-time research. They usually have the intermediary of classroom teaching. I believe that formulating a course, crafting its syl- labus, and entering into dialogue with undergraduate students on one’s chosen topic of research is a wonderful way to make the transition from “student” to “professor invested in research.” Teaching brings the necessity for putting the classroom work to practical applications of knowledge formation. Teaching also brings surprising challenges to one’s perspectives on any given topic. Teaching commences a special type of conversation with those who share the general field of knowledge in which one’s research is proceeding. It seems to me that the “community” among one’s graduate student peers that is fostered by the common enterprise of teaching can help one stay “connected” to the larger institutional mission and in touch with what might be called the “professional community at large.”
Blanche Capel
Associate Professor, Cell Biology
Students beginning graduate school should view the curriculum as a smorgasbord from which they have the privilege of choosing offerings that fill gaps in their knowledge or open new horizons. Graduate school is not about requirements; it is about training yourself for the pleasure of a life of learning and exploration.
Jehanne Gheith
Associate Professor, Slavic Studies
One thing that helps in not getting “lost” is to establish a writing group (one person presents informally or formally—you can give people stuff to read ahead of time and then present). Some faculty members are willing to help form such groups. Other useful tricks include: meeting in pairs or small groups on a regular basis to discuss research; getting lots of exercise; making a shelf that will be just for research notes, then your dissertation proposal, and then chapters (there are few external markers of your progress and it really helps to have something tangible like this).
Try to organize your day so that you have something to do in the midst of it; this can help you to be more productive. It’s counterintuitive, but most people get less done when they have “all day” to work in. Finally, you can expect to fight demons as you write; there is often lots of insecurity in this process. It really helps if you can find someone to talk to about it—most people go through awful insecurities and most of us never talk about it, so we think we are alone.
Rob Jackson
Associate Professor, Biology
Our department has a bunch of online resources for this issue. See various links in http://www.biology.duke.edu/jackson/ecophys.
Erich D. Jarvis
Assistant Professor, Neurobiology
The first things that helped me make the transition from class work to laboratory research were: realizing that the two are very different in that the research needs constant attention, not just several hours here and there within the week; realizing that what we learn in textbooks is 50% wrong and that is actually one of the reasons why we continue doing research; and realizing that to accomplish highly successful research, you need to find a new work load and intellectual limits for yourself that is not possible to find in the class room.
Jean Jonassaint
Assistant Professor, Romance Studies
First of all, we must be sure that our Ph.D. project really counts for us. Today’s promising field of study might not be popular once we get onto the job market. Hence, we must choose a field of study or research that really interests us, for it will be our main source of learning and teaching for more than one decade.
A second piece of advice: after the dissertation exam, we must take into account the comments and suggestions of our dissertation committee to review, and reformulate our dissertation proposal if it is necessary. But, above all, we must be sure that it is really what we want to do, regarding difficulties and career opportunities. The different, even opposing, views of our committee members are very useful. Of course, we must understand the perspective of everyone to better evaluate his or her comments and suggestions.
Also, at this stage, it seems to me important to establish a clear outline and schedule of research and writing regarding the availability of the needed material, the scope of our project, our ability and availability to realize it.
Finally, I think we must absolutely avoid underestimating the work to be done, and overestimating our ability and availability to do it. A research project like a dissertation always brings some wonderful and awful surprises. Do not panic. It is this aspect of the unexpected which makes research challenging. We must fully take advantage of it.
Dan Richter
Professor, Ecology
Try to form productive alliances with a lab or professor, and start research as early as possible in your career as a student. Select only coursework that is most central to your interests and that will most greatly expand your perspectives. In general try to take a good quantitative course each semester.
Monty Reichert
Professor, Biomedical Engineering
This transition is really an individual thing. Some students come in and hit the ground running and there is no transition to speak of. These, you just keep them headed in the right direction. Many of these people have worked out in industry before, come in with an M.S., or had significant undergrad research experience. Others are more tentative, so you give them a more specific tool to develop that they can elaborate upon later when they become more intellectually nimble.
From the student perspective, it boils down to not being afraid to fail and taking intellectual ownership of your thesis project. Ultimately, it is up to the student to get the project to work. Taking classes is straightforward, while research is more ill-defined and can be messy. Many times students have to build their own structure out of the apparent chaos of being given an intellectual challenge. So what if the first set of experiments doesn’t work out? You make the necessary adjustments and move on.
Herman Staats
Assistant Research Professor, Medicine, Immunology, and Pathology
To avoid getting lost in the transition from classes to research, set goals and set a schedule. When a student has classes, she has a daily schedule of classes, homework, and exams.
When a student’s class work is completed, it is sometimes easy to get off a daily schedule. Without a daily schedule, it is difficult to make progress in research.
Although different areas of research involve different types of experiments that require different time commitments for completion, the student should set a goal of completing a given number of experiments in a given amount of time and set a schedule that will allow that goal to be achieved.
The schedule should include time for designing experiments, time for performing experiments, time for analyzing and interpreting the data, and time for reviewing the literature.
Student Comments
When you made the transition from taking classes to doing research, what three things helped you adjust your frame of mind and working habits?
Sining Chen, Statistics
My experience to share: I didn’t make the transition too well. Even getting up every morning before 11:00 a.m. was a challenge to me. Then I took a foreign language class that met every morning; it only took 50 minutes of my time every day, but I felt a lot more energized and organized throughout the whole day. And now I know Italian!
Hong Leng Chuah, Economics
First, your research work is like a job. Keep a schedule. Set your own targets and deadlines. It’s very easy to slack off if there are no externally imposed targets and deadlines. Second, keep your eyes and ears open for research ideas. Go to any seminar or talk that you think might be interesting. Listen carefully to the comments and suggestions that faculty or other students make—there can be research ideas in them. And finally, try to talk as much as you can to faculty and senior students in the areas you’re interested in. But be sure to do your homework so you give others the impression that you are seriously interested in the area and are making an effort to understand stuff.
Craig DeAlmeida, Music
I’m finishing up my third year towards a Ph.D. in Music Composition and made the transition away from classes this past semester. By far the most important thing to help me make this transition was preparing my schedule so that I had to be physically in my building every weekday. To do this, I volunteered to accompany an undergraduate conducting course on days I didn’t teach. Coming into Biddle each day forced me to assess what I needed to get done, instead of conveniently forgetting about these things while working at home.
The second strategy has been replacing class deadlines with other external deadlines. For me, this has included preparing compositions for competition deadlines and preparing a paper to present at an out-of-town conference, and now deadlines for prelims loom. Even with these deadlines, I have probably had more unproductive weeks than any semester I’ve been here.
The third is simply talking with colleagues deep into or done with their dissertations. They have developed strategies for managing their time while doing similar work, and so their suggestions are most fruitful. It was through these conversations that I resolved to follow these first two strategies.
Dustin Ellington, Religion
Regular research updates for my advisor; a regular and somewhat rigid work schedule; and the everyday practice of breaking large research tasks and problems into small, manageable, and results-oriented ones.
Laura Gunn, Statistics
This is one of the hardest aspects of graduate school, in my opinion; it takes some time to get used to the no-class frame of mind. Taking classes is one thing, because you have a regular schedule with assignments to complete. When you’re not taking classes, it’s often difficult to stay “on task,” because there are no “assignments” per se to keep you on top of things.
Therefore, I have found it very helpful to make your own goals each day or week. For example, I make a checklist of all “items” I’d like to get done that day: “I need to edit and run my program, write a summary of the article I’m reading, make an outline of the questions I need to ask my advisor/committee member at tomorrow’s meeting, etc.” This leads to a second important idea: set deadlines for yourself. You have to keep yourself working toward something—some part of your project needs to be completed by a certain date, for example— that’ll keep you working as effectively as if you’re working toward deadlines for a course! Finally, I believe that keeping a “regular” work schedule helps keep you focused on your work.
Jeff Marcus, Zoology and Genetics
First, keep reading—just because there aren’t assignments doesn’t mean that you can give up on keeping up with the literature; second, keep waking up in the morning—the easiest way to run out of working hours in a day is to get a late start; third, just do it—it is really easy to put off complicated projects, but if you keep on procrastinating, you will never get anything done.
Cybelle McFadden, Romance Studies
I keep myself working by going to the library for eight hours a day (complete with a lunch break and a coffee break, just like a real job); enjoying the time to delve into the project; and changing the angle of research frequently enough to stay really interested in the topic.
Andrew Miller, Romance Studies
Starting research papers and projects early; working out a coherent description of the project (maybe one page) in advance, starting with something that grabs the reader’s attention, if possible; and having a solid reference program (I’m thinking of software such as Endnote).
Robyn Reed, Cell Biology
Remember that in the lab, the number of hours you work does not correlate with the number of results you get. Excessive work won’t get you more results or faster results. Unfortunately, neither will excessive leisure. Ask for help when you need it. Suffering in silence or not knowing what to do doesn’t help you. Other grad students and postdocs probably know amazing amounts about the techniques you’re using.
If you start out slow (no results, technical difficulties), remember that the majority of grad students complete most of their dissertation work in the final six months of grad school.
Jennifer Talarico, Psychology
Set specific times for specific activities, especially for big, long- term projects; set deadlines for steps in the research process and think of them like exam dates; and make time for things you enjoy. There aren’t natural slow/busy times in research as there are in a class schedule so you have to make sure that you take a vacation every now and then so that you don’t burn out.
Lisa Triche Breaux, Liberal Studies
One of the things that has proven to be very helpful to me this semester while I work on my research is to have audited a class related to my research. It keeps me up with the intellectual lifestyle in that I am still having stimulating discussions about my topic and it provides a regularity to my research that would have been more difficult to self-impose.
Kirk White, Economics
I schedule myself for workshop presentations and submit my abstract to conferences. This way I have to have something presentable for the workshop or conference. Having deadlines enforced by someone else helps.
I also try to avoid TA jobs as much as possible. If you’re not making progress on your dissertation, it’s easy to spend too much time doing TA work—it’s easier to spend more time preparing to teach a section than it is to spend the time trying to solve a tough problem in your dissertation.