It is important to realize that graduate school is not just about technical matters, there are a lot more involved which are equally important for graduate study and career. Among them, in my opinion, character traits and social skills are the most important, like self-motivation, good communication in both oral and writing, persistence and initiative. We need to balance these factors to get the most success in graduate school.
To have a clear goal for graduate school and future career is essential. What is our goal in graduate school, what research directions are we interested in and plan to work on, what academic result do we plan to get during graduate school. And the most important thing is to figure out why do we want the Ph.D. degree. Do we really want to do research or we just want to find a good job with Ph.D. degree? If the answer is the latter one, we should really think about if it worth it, after the long time working on new theories or algorithms with tiredness, loneliness and maybe a lot of failures. But on the other way, research can be interesting to explore those new things, especially when you enjoy the results you have found. And for some technical persons, it is more boring to do coding than research. So if we have the clear goal to gain the Ph.D. degree, and we are determined to do that, we will enjoy our graduate study.
After we have the clear goal, the rest thing is to work hard and work with skills. Gaining Ph.D. degree is a long journey. During the five years, we may waste our time doing something non-academic for the simple reason of lazy or just because we think we still have plenty of time. And it will be too late years later when we find out that we have fell behind and so little work we have done. Also, we have to work with skills, that means we should follow up the newest trend, get the useful information and tools and so on.
Another important thing is to enjoy life in graduate school. Don't tire yourself out because you will find graduate school is so boring and gradually you will lose your passion and interest. And don't make graduate school feel like in jail and just think about how to get out. This is the decision we make, and graduate school is also a part of life, try to enjoy it and do out best.
To sum up, in order to flourish in graduate school, we should have a clear goal, work hard and develop with those non-academic skills.
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