November 2008 Archives

There has been a lot of advice about graduate school given in many different forums.  The three advice articles provided in class this week.  Each article took its own tack, but in all, it boils down to a few common themes.

Ron Azuma gives wonderful, thematic advice that really applies to any kind of graduate student.  The first question that you must pose is "Why the hell am I doing this?"  He's right in reminding us the if you don't know the answer to this question, you probably should stop wasting your time and go do something else.  See, graduate school does not fit into the pattern of education that everyone thinks that they understand. 

·         B.S. = Bull Sh*t

·         M.S. = More Sh*t

·         Ph.D. = Piled Higher and Deeper

The common thought is that you learn stuff in you r undergraduate career, then for your Masters Degree, you take more classes and learn more stuff.  Finally in the Ph.D., you learn the rest of the stuff and can be called an expert, or professor or magically be able to teach classes and do research.

The reality is that this is far from the truth.  There are two different kinds of Masters Degrees - one where you learn "more sh*t" and then go back out into the workforce and are able to do more than someone who just has a bachelor's degree (maybe).  The other kind is this academic masters as a stepping stone to (or from) a Ph.D.

Of course, this is all program dependant.  There are some Masters Degrees that are require d stepping stones for the Ph.D.  For instance, in many Engineering programs, a Masters Degree is required for admission to the Ph.D. Program.  Many others require students to complete a Masters Thesis and receive the degree as a matter of course halfway through their Ph.D. program.  However, some have a Masters as a bail-out option for those who won't be finishing the full program.

Looking at things in terms of earning degrees still doesn't give you the right picture.  Graduate education is not about being taught a certain body of knowledge, regurgitating this to pass classes and exams, but it's more about being able to ASK the right questions and discover those answers through the conduct of research.

How does one learn how to do that research?  You do it by performing the research.  You do it through apprenticeship.  You do that through the sheer effort of doing the work on your own.  Of course, that doesn't mean doing  it on your own all of the time.   You need help. You need advice.  You need your advisor/mentor and your peers.  You'll learn, though, by doing.

So, that brings me to three more resources that I found helpful and thought I'd share:

First is a podcast that I listen to.  Well, I don't listen to all of them, but this one caught my attention.  It's an interview with Dr. Ron Evans from the Salk Institute.  In the first half, Evans talks about science and graduate education, in a very pure sense.  Graduate education is not about learning more stuff.  It's about learning how to ASK and ANSWER questions.  The more you do that, the more potential you'll have for being able to ask the RIGHT questions.  About 25 minutes into the interview, it really gets to the point about asking the right questions.  Evans discusses his experience with Francis Crick (of Watson and Crick - the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA - yeah, those guys) - and how Crick had the ability and interest to find the good and right questions to ask.

The next item is  a book recommended to me by one of my favorite undergraduate professors, Dr. Chris Hoadley.  When I first talked with him about applying to graduate school, he recommended a book to me - Getting What You Came For.  This book is very helpful to the new graduate student- especially in the pivotal first year transition.

The last item that I'll recommend is a book that was recently recommended to me - The Craft of Research.  This is a wonderful book that is more about the "how" than the why.  The mechanics of doing the literature review, the concepts of how to figure out the right questions to ask and how to turn them into research and publish it.  I'm hoping that when I have time to finish this book that I'll have a better understanding of HOW to do the  work, not just the WHY.

So, what didn't I expect to see out of all of this advice?  There was a gem that caught me off guard.  Alice Dreger's article comments on travesties that happen during graduate school.  Her advice is to understand that it happens and is normal, but you need to overcome it, get past it, and get on to the business of doing the work that you're training to do.  Even if that means figuring out what to do if your advisor is having a relationship with one of your peers.  The implication in Dreger's article is that the relationship is inappropriate - well, duh!  But more importantly, you have to realize that your adviser is human as are your graduate student colleagues.  Even though there are rules against such behavior - it still happens.  It still affects other people - and if you are caught in the middle of such things - IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THE END OF YOUR ACADEMIC CAREER - especially if all you're doing is your graduate work and it's the other people with the inappropriate relationship.  Your career doesn't have to be collateral damage.  Don't let it be.

Today, I am going to tell you about one of the organizations that I am involved with and what we've done over the past couple of weeks.

See, I am a Boy Scout leader.  I serve as the Cubmaster for Pack 23 in Pleasant Gap.  Our most recent pack meeting, we had two presenters from Trout Unlimited come to talk to the boys about fly fishing.  The played a short movie about what it is like to tie flies, catch trout and release them back into the stream.  Of course, they showed the whole life cycle of the trout - from fertilization of the eggs, through each part of the life cycle.  It was really cool to see baby trout hatchlings come out of their eggs, and drag their yolk sacks along with them.   I had no idea.  Neither did the boys.  They thought it was great.  Of course, they really liked watching the part where the fisherman had the trout on the line and it fought and danced and jumped until he finally brought it in... where he could release it back into the stream.

As the Cubmaster, I play the role of the Master of Ceremonies for our pack meetings.  Once a month, I'm up front, leading our boys through the presentation of the flag, pledge of allegiance and other formalities.  I also get to present the boys with their awards they earned.  Whether it's a simple bead or belt loop or a big award like an advancement in rank, it's nice to see the pride on their faces when I call them up to the front to get their award in front of everyone.

This weekend, our older scouts - the Webelos Scouts (4^th and 5^th graders) will be going on a hike with the same aged boys from the pack in the next town over.  It will be a great time - I'm sure it will be cold, but for a couple of hours - there will be no video games, no T.V., no school, no messy house.  It will just be the kids and the parents, hiking along part of the Allegheny Front Trail.

Not all of our hikes are in the "Great Outdoors."  Just this past weekend, we completed the "Scouting for Food" drive to collect canned goods for our local food bank.  The week before, we put plastic bags on each door in our town.  There was a note inside, asking people to put the bag out the next Saturday for pickup - with a few canned goods or other non-perishable food items like pasta or mac and cheese - whatever they can spare.  Our boys collected these items and we took them to our food bank, right in town.  Our pack of cub scouts and our boy scout troop (boys ages 11-18) collected 3073 items for the food bank. This will help feed the 25 families (a total of 75 people) who seek assistance from the food bank for the next 2-3 months.  What's really cool is that scouts from all over the county did the same thing on the same days.  We helped to stock the food banks in State College, Bellefonte and surrounding communities.

So, what did that cost me?  Nothing, really.  It was just a few hours of my time on each of those days.  I got to spend that time with my son, Stephen, too.  He's a good kid and he likes to help our community.  It's good to see him grow and become a young leader.  He enjoys scouts and I know that these times will stick with him, as my years as a youth in scouts stuck with me.