Mr. Epidemiology, a PhD student who blogs at mrepid.wordpress.com, has put together a great round-table where he asks open-ended questions about grad school and collects answers from a variety of Masters and PhD students from across mostly related fields. A little about the roundtable and its respondents is here. Questions covered so far include:
- Why did you go to graduate school?
- What is important when picking your adviser/committee?
- How do you deal with criticism?
- Are there tips for fighting impostor syndrome?
- What if things aren't going so well?
I thought the piece on impostor syndrome was particularly helpful. Although not exactly the impostor syndrome (which also hits me often), this is somewhat related: While blogging and going to school concurrently I've had difficulty writing about certain subjects that I've studied more intensively. The more I study, the more I realize my lack of expertise and hesitate to say anything definitive without endless qualifiers and references. For instance, I TA'ed a class on on malnutrition, infection, and immunity, and spent a summer researching lead poisoning in New York City -- but those are two of the more difficult subjects for me to write about for a popular audience. I know PhD students and true scholars must feel this more intensely, but at the same time it's probably even more important for those with more time invested in a subject to weigh in on it.
Update: the latest addition to the series is What has surprised you the most so far?