Grad School Is Real Life

"Instead, you get a stipend, and sometimes, if you play your cards right, you get a grant. Sometimes you get funding to go on a "quest," like a trip to a conference, an archive, or an archeological site. You work many hours every week, but no one knows how many hours you are supposed to be working. You can take random days off, but you often work on weekends."

"Yes, it is tempting to look at grad school this way, but that would be a mistake, because the truth is that grad school, no matter how uncanny it might be, is your real life. That means that whatever poor habit you acquire in grad school, you acquire it in real life, and whatever values and life goals you neglect while in grad school, you neglect them for real."

"Looking at it from the opposite direction, if you have a goal, a vision for how you would like your life to look, the clock on that is not going to start when grad school is over; it is ticking now. Allow me to illustrate: The graduate students I work with often report that their ideal life includes a partner, maybe a family, and that in that ideal future, they"

Graduate school often provides stipends, occasional grants, and funding for trips, while lacking a clear salary structure. Work hours are extensive and undefined, with frequent weekends and sporadic days off. Roles fluctuate between feeling subordinate to an advisor and feeling like an adventurous hero, with occasional moments of witnessing important discoveries. Treating graduate school as an unreal, temporary phase is risky because habits and neglected values formed during this period carry into long-term life. Decisions about relationships, family, and lifestyle should begin during graduate school since the opportunity to shape them is already underway.

Read at Psychology Today