Grad School Tips

I've just put a link to Fabio Rojas' "Grad Skool Rules" on my resources page, and have also seen Matthew Pearson’s (UC Davis) guide to Surviving the First-Year of grad school.pdf (via Gabriel). A nice quote:

Thriving during your first year is highly correlated with passing your prelims. And as such, the sage advice herein is designed to help you become the best grad student you can be, to get the most out of your classes, to develop your intuition, to master the core theory, and most of all, to pass your prelims, all the while maintaining a loose grip on your sanity.

My advice for grad students is more straightforward:

1. Study
2. Sleep
3. Social life

Pick two

I'm still not sure how I managed to complete my PhD in 4 years and get married in that time, but it must come down to:

• Pick the right school - I was immensely fortunate to go to the dynamite George Mason (that dares to be different), and it meant that I was surrounded by knowledgeable people who shared my passions. If you study in an environment like that, you can't go wrong
• Preparing well - find out the textbooks for the core subjects and read them before you start
• Find/create a good study group and stick with it - I find that learning is a social process and therefore a stable group of close colleagues is gold dust
• Have realistic expectations - for me the first year was about survival. I'm consistently told that ambition and aspiration should exceed merely "survival" but for me it works
• Drink productively^
• Love what you do - my PhD mattered to me. I was willing to sacrifice a great deal. If it's a chore then it's a struggle, but I never grew tired of my subject and still want to discuss and develop the ideas I pursued.
• Change the title at the last minute - without trying to contradict the previous advice, in the final few months of intense writing/rewriting of my dissertation I changed the title. As the formatting requirements began to take priority over the content, you begin to question everything. At about 4am I had a revelation and rewrote the abstract and changed the title. It was a good decision - not only was it a more accurate title, but it reinvigorated me and breathed new life into the project
• Endure - it is a test of stamina. Pete Boettke likes to recite James Buchanan's advice of keeping your arse in the chair. I believe that most academics are lazy, and if you work hard you will succeed. All writing is work and all work is work in progress. Just get it down and keep moving forward. If you go straight to grad school from undergrad you'll realise that you're open all hours. You can have a healthy work/life balance by realising that:
  • your life is your work and your work is your life
  • you're not working 9-5. whenever you're awake, you're working.

Bottom line is that ideas matter.