Preview of Grad Life
As someone who has known she was about to embark on her graduate school life, I have looked to the graduate student who works in my lab for - advice on what schools to look into, tips on taking the GRE, in general what I will need to accomplish as a graduate student, and what terrors I might have to endure during that time. Today one of the worst things I can think of happened to her.
We had a seminar with a candidate for a new faculty position the center is hiring for. During his talk he mentioned something that is part of the graduate student’s thesis project. She was shocked, along with many others who know about her project. We were all wondering what was going to happen…a graduate student cannot compete with someone at the instructor level on research. We all thought she might have to start a completely new project - to have to start over after investing years on a project is one of the worst things that can happen to a graduate student, and unfortunately a realistic one.
She’s lucky that she’s only a year and a half into her project, but still. Another interesting factor that I found out later is that the speaker’s boss is part of the grad student’s advisory committee. He’s also a friend/collaborator with our boss. I can’t believe he would not have said something to either one of them, or compete with a collaborator.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen now, but it’s something that could happen to me. It’s kind of scary, but I guess I can’t worry about it too much yet.
