Rebranding your relationship with graduate school

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Erica Ward

Here is some advice I’ve gained prior to and during my first year of graduate school:

Choosing a PI/thesis advisor

  • Before I started my graduate studies, the single piece of advice that I heard the most was: “Finding a research advisor that you like is more important than the topic itself.” I’d like to make a slight modification to that statement, and say it’s a good idea to pick an advisor that you could see yourself working well with. You will be spending the better part of the next few years with this person so it’s quite the commitment. Of course, it’s also a good idea to stay in the general field you’re hoping to study. (E.g., I was extremely interested in mathematical and computational applications to neuroscience/cognitive science, and that led me to study the neural correlates of spatial navigation with an advisor who I have a great rapport with.)
  • Especially in programs that don’t require rotations throughout your first year, find advisors you think you’d like to work with and ask them to connect you with their current graduate students. Then, you can meet with them and find out everything you need to know. When you meet with the grad students, ask them to please be open and honest with you so you can ask the hard, nitty-gritty questions too, such as, “What’s your least favorite thing about the advisor/lab?” You’ll be surprised about what the happy and the miserable graduate students have to say. 

Make lots of friends

  • Befriend the students within your cohort, the older graduate students in your program, and definitely your program’s administrative coordinators. They will be the people that have your back when you’re stuck on a problem and/or when your whole life feels like it’s crashing down. Get their numbers and emails ready so you can reach out when you need to.
  • In the age of “Zoom University,” it’s been really helpful for my cohort to have our own Discord server. We’ve created separate channels for each class, planning (safe outdoor) gatherings, and of course, memes! These channels allowed us to post questions regarding specific assignments or general course material and also came in handy to reference later. We set weekly meeting times for each class to work on assignments together as well, so we could chat and solve problems in real-time instead of through text.
  • The more senior students and staff generally have a better idea about the in’s and out’s of the program–they’ve been in it longer. Let these people be a resource. Don’t be afraid to send them a brief email, or ask the students if they are available to meet with you for a 30-minute chat over some coffee. In my experience, everyone I’ve reached out to has been more than happy to help. Further, I’ve heard stories of program administrators refuting parking tickets for students. Now that’s just an example, but being friendly can literally pay off.

Prioritize your self-care

  • Seriously. I’ll openly admit that I’m still working on this, but ideally, you should prioritize your own self-care as much as (if not more than?!) prioritizing your research and/or classwork. Find a hobby like painting, hiking, or reading (for fun—put the textbooks down) and make plans to do these things with others if you’d like. Not only will this give you something to look forward to as the week goes on, but you can use this to incentivize yourself to quit procrastinating and finish your work. Think to yourself, “I’ll let myself watch an episode of You after I work on research for x amount of hours.”
  • Celebrate your small wins too! Treat yourself to ice cream after making it through a tough exam or submitting a grant proposal. Find little things that bring you joy and reward yourself after all of your hard work.
  • Self-care also includes: eating well and exercising. Increase your energy and get your cognitive juices flowing by taking care of yourself. You are not just a brain. You have a body too, and it’s important to take care of it.

Quit the competition

  • Drop the cutthroat competitive attitudes. You’re here; you’ve made it. Professors will think you’re even more impressive if you can work effectively with others (if that’s what you really care about). Find validation in your own accomplishments without comparing them to others’. It’s ironic that while math and science are progressively becoming more collaborative as fields, we (the students and professors) still hang on to this idea that “we have to be the best.” Whatever that means. The difference in a class grade of 96% and  94% is 2%, but guess what, both end up as A’s on each of your transcripts. You’ll get much further in life by making allies instead of competing against foes.

Asking for help is a skill in and of itself

  • Embrace your own humility. The worst thing that can happen is you ask someone a question, and they don’t know the answer. Then, you can either: figure it out together, or you can continue asking around to find the answer. Either way, you’re closer to the solution than you were initially.
  • The questions you have are quite likely to be burning a hole in someone else’s brain too. Be brave and ask. If someone has a condescending response, that’s their issue, not yours. Keep your head held high. (Which brings me to my last point…)

Have confidence in yourself

  • You must be doing something right to have gotten this far. Remind yourself of your wins when you’re feeling down, and know that if you’re doing the best you can, that you should be proud of the end result, regardless. You don’t have to always know the correct answer; in fact, learning from your mistakes is even more effective. Try not to feel too embarrassed if you say the wrong thing. Do your best to just laugh it off, and know it happens to everyone. There is much more value in contributing anything to the conversation compared to being too timid to contribute at all. 

Remember that we are all human (professors too, haha), and as humans, we’re bound to make mistakes. What is science, if not a compilation of mistakes that we call “experience?” Collectively, we have an underlying responsibility to define the culture in each academic setting. Let’s lead it in the right direction, shall we?

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Challenges as a First-Generation Graduate Student

Posted on October 22, 2021 by Victoria Uribe

The following list is non-exhaustive and speaks to my own experience as a first-generation graduate student in mathematics. After participating in the Math SWAGGER program last summer, I realized that many of these experiences are actually shared by other first-generation graduate students from underrepresented communities.

Math SWAGGER, the Mathematics Summer Workshop for Achieving Greater Graduate Educational Readiness, was a virtual month-long workshop created by underrepresented mathematicians for underrepresented graduate students in mathematics. It consisted of both larger group discussions and smaller breakout sessions covering a broad range of topics such as community, mentoring relationships, and self-care.

1. Guilt

I used to feel guilty about not doing more outside of my program to positively impact the Latinx community. Even as a first year student, I sometimes felt undeserving of my new opportunity and thought I needed to find a way give back. One of the most valuable things I learned from Math SWAGGER, however, is that the best way you can help your community as a PhD student is by finishing your degree. The mentors emphasized that you have more credibility and resources after you have completed the PhD. Your time as a graduate student is better spent focusing on doing well in your courses and research than on outreach.

2. Diversity & Inclusion 

Navigating diversity and inclusion as an underrepresented graduate student can be awkward. You don’t want to be totally ignored, but you don’t want to be singled out by your department either. Being from an underrepresented community does not make me an expert on D & I and I certainly can’t represent all diverse students. There are so many aspects to diversity and we have to be careful not to over-generalize what it means. I have found that one way to avoid these awkward interactions is by having diverse faculty in the department. It is less intimidating to approach a faculty member that you feel you can relate to in some way than to be approached by someone you think might want to use your picture for marketing.

3. Family Support

Getting support from your family can be challenging if you have immigrant parents or family members who don’t really understand what a PhD is. They may not see the value in you spending so many years to get a degree they aren’t familiar with and may even suggest you consider other options. They may assume you want to be a teacher and wonder why you are spending so many years in school instead of getting a “regular” job. It is much easier to justify being in medical school or law school because they are familiar with what doctors and lawyers do and know that these professions are generally well-paying. 

4. Extra Pressure

While I was still taking courses and studying for exams, I felt extra pressure to succeed. I was worried that if I performed poorly, it would reflect negatively on my community, or my peers would think I was just a diversity admit. I didn’t want to ruin any opportunities for future students from my community to be accepted into my department. I realize that this implies that we are somehow grouped together, but that was my experience during a qualifying course my first year. My classmate and I were always mixed by the professor and he referred to “the other one” on more than one occasion.

5. Catching Up

I still feel like I need to catch up to some of my peers for a lack of prior exposure to academia. My undergraduate institution didn’t have graduate programs in mathematics and didn’t place an emphasis on research. Even as a third year PhD student, the process of writing a thesis and graduating still feels like a bit of a black box. I just recently learned what a minisymposium is and what arXiv is really used for.  

I found it validating to discuss these challenges with a group of peers and mentors who could relate to my experience and I would encourage other students to develop their own community within math that can help them navigate graduate school while still maintaining the identities they bring from outside academia.

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Midterm studying advice I could have used a week ago

Posted on October 18, 2021 by alexisnewton

For many, midterms have already passed by, but if you are as unlucky as I, then maybe you have one more just around the corner. Whether this be a midterm you are taking or one you are grading, the advice in this blog post should be universal. However, if you are lucky enough to be past midterms already, maybe these recommendations will live on in your brain until finals roll around! So while it probably would have been helpful for me to know much of this last week, maybe my Algorithms exam will go swimmingly now that I’m imbued by the great advice that follows.

Breaks are better than breakdowns

I know you’ve likely heard this one, since the Pomodoro time management system has been recommended to me by everyone from my doctor to my mother, but for the uninitiated, the Pomodoro technique is centered around the idea of breaking your workday into 25 minute chunks, with five minute breaks in between (plus a 20 minute break after every fourth chunk). Now, while 25 minute chunks don’t necessarily work for me (I prefer 40 minutes), the science behind it is very clear. According to Loren Frank, a professor at the Center for Integrative Neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco, “to learn something well, you need to study it for a while and then take a break.” Your brain needs time to process the information that you feed it, and while the amount of break time necessary might vary based on the content you are learning, you can take solace in the fact that choosing to get up and take a walk through the woods in search of turtles is actually helping you to retain information better!

You’ve got to mix it to get the biscuit

Many times, the best way to study is by mixing it up! Varying the types of learning you engage in–such as reviewing definitions and theorems, doing practice problems, or vocalizing explanations to others–is proven to be a much more effective method of studying than spending hours and hours on one method. Even when doing practice problems, research shows that mixing up the types of problems teaches students to recognize a problem type and respond accordingly, rather than performing a rote skill that they’ve memorized. This also much more closely mirrors an exam situation, where the questions will likely be mixed as well! Integration is a great example of a place where mixing it up can pay off. Just doing integration by parts over and over might make you great at it, but it might not make you great at recognizing when to use it. Identifying the best method for solving a problem takes some practice, and much of that practice comes from challenging yourself to do exactly that.

S P R E A D  I T  O U T

Try spreading the material and study time out over several days. Dating as far back as 1964, German researcher Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered that spreading out the information you wish to learn, and doing a little every day, helps you to retain the information much better than learning it all at once. This is because the best way to remember something is to learn it, then forget it, and then learn it again. If your brain has to revisit topics multiple times, then it is spending more time on the process of solidifying that specific information. The more time you spend and the more deeply you have to think to ingrain information, the more likely you are to remember it. This is good! It means if something is hard to learn, then it is also hard to forget.

Set boundaries outside of the unit disk

When we think about setting boundaries, we often think of other people, but I have found that in graduate school there is great benefit in setting boundaries for yourself. A popular example of this is choosing a day of the week on which you will not do any work. The boundaries are for when you say to yourself “why don’t I just finish grading this stuff instead of going to the movie I had planned on?” No! Fight that urge! Rather, commit to giving yourself purposeful breaks that happen even when you’re not strung out and forced into stopping. Planning times during the week to separate yourself from your work helps to implement the earlier advice of taking breaks and spreading it out. Those things are impossible to do if you never have a night off!

Eat, sleep, and exercise (your mom will thank you)

The World Health Organization has officially defined burnout as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” Many are now calling it a public health epidemic that is “sweeping the nation.” So what is recommended to combat burnout? A balanced diet, a healthy sleep schedule, and exercise. In other words–self care. Drinking coffee instead of eating lunch is not doing you any favors, though it may feel like it when the day is dwindling. Just remember, you are playing the long game, and the name of that game is sustainability. If your choices aren’t healthy, burnout might be around that corner.

Like Elsa, learn to Let It Go

If no one has told you this already, let me be the first: you cannot accomplish everything perfectly. A quote popularly attributed to G.K. Chesterton, reminds us that “if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” Now, it turns out he didn’t really mean it the way most of us interpret it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good advice! Sometimes the best thing you can do for your learning (and sanity) is to turn in what you know and be done with it. At a certain point, finished is better than perfect, and that point comes when the value of letting yourself stop surpasses the value of the assignment. (For me that point is usually near 9pm when the words begin floating around on the page.) Whenever this time comes for you, I heartily recommend: do what you can, turn it in, and move on.

Final Thoughts

All of this advice is meant to be taken with a grain of salt. If there is something I’ve said that doesn’t work for you, don’t worry! Study habits you enjoy might not work for me either. You may also want to try different variations on these tips–like adjusting the timing on the Pomodoro technique to better fit your habits. Consider reading this post a thought experiment meant to get you thinking about your study habits and the healthiness of them. There is no one solution that works for everyone, so if I’ve missed a tip that works well for you, be sure to leave it in a comment. I know that I, at the very least, am always looking for some good advice!

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The best advice I never follow

Posted on October 15, 2021 by Rohan Nair

I’ve received a lot of advice over the years, some good, some bad. Parents, professors, Uber drivers – it seems like everyone has something to offer. The best advice I’ve ever received came from a professor on the first day of my undergraduate Galois theory course. Instead of starting the class talking about the syllabus or jumping right into lecture, she first gave us an important bit of advice:

Don’t be afraid to ask silly questions.

Never before had anyone explicitly told me that it was okay to ask “dumb” or “obvious” questions, and truthfully the advice was revelatory for me. The problem, however, is that I rarely follow this advice. I’m an anxious person, and for some reason I have this notion in my head that if I ask a silly or dumb question, I’m irreparably sullying my reputation. Of course, this isn’t true – nobody’s keeping score. I’m just a graduate student trying to learn as much as possible before I’m set loose onto the world, and it’s in my best interest to ask these sorts of “silly” questions, because often these questions aren’t silly at all.

Reflecting further, I think we could expand on my professor’s advice a bit:

Don’t be afraid to look silly.

Graduate school is hard. Taking classes is hard. Doing research is hard. Making sure you pick the right advisor and trying to find some semblance of work-life balance – it’s all hard. But there’s one difficulty I encounter on a daily basis that I never took into consideration prior to starting graduate school: I’m always afraid of looking silly, of embarrassing myself. Maybe I ask a question during a talk that has an “obvious” answer, or maybe I’m the one giving a talk and I make a big error that everyone catches before I do, or maybe a student asks me a question in office hours and I have no idea how to answer them. But what good is advice if you don’t follow it? So I guess I’m dedicating this year to getting over my fear of looking like a fool. Perhaps I’ll set up that logic seminar I’ve been wanting to organize but haven’t out of nervousness, or perhaps I’ll give a talk outside my department for the first time in my academic career. If there are things in graduate school you haven’t done because you’re afraid of embarrassing yourself or looking dumb, maybe it’s time to reconsider – after all, no one’s keeping score.

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4 Tips for Statistical Consulting – Learn from my Mistakes

Posted on October 11, 2021 by Chanel Lee

 

I decided to perform my first independent statistical consulting project. What is statistical consulting? Statistical consulting is engaging with a client to provide statistical advice and/or services. This client found me through a recommendation from a professor. The client was an Ed.D. student completing their dissertation. I assumed the project would be quick and easy, but I was wrong. I made mistakes that made this task more tedious for me. The following are four tips that I wish I could go back and tell myself before I took on this project:

1. Know your worth

I experienced statistical consulting for companies and graduate students before, but this was my first time independently servicing a client. Additionally, I assumed this project would not be much work. This led me to accept a financial offer for my services that was less than I would have preferred. Never—and I mean never—settle for a price that does not leave you completely satisfied. It is not worth it! You’ll be kicking yourself while you are underpaid and overworked.

Guide to Pricing as a Statistical ConsultantHow do we develop our prices as a statistical consultant?

If I asked you to give me a quote for your services, chances are you would charge less than you should. Statistical work is valuable, so price your services accordingly. Salaried statistical consultants (with bachelor’s degrees or higher) are paid around $125,000 in the United States. You should treat this as a baseline for your prices. This means If you are using an hourly model for pricing, you should charge no less than \$60 an hour. You can increase your price if you have a master’s degree or experience. Use this hourly rate to determine the price of your services on a project-by-project basis. If a project will take you an estimated 10 hours to complete, you should charge \$650 (at \$65 an hour). Alternatively, you can use a package model to determine your price. For example, you can have a data visualization package where you provide four figures or tables for a client. Let’s say it takes a maximum of 8 hours for you to clean a dataset and prepare four figures or tables. Then the price for the package would be \$480 (at \$60 an hour). This gives you pricing packages where the client can select what works for them. Either way of pricing your service is great just make sure you know your worth before you set prices with a client.

 

2. Ask questions, then ask more questions

Before agreeing to the project with my client, we had an initial meeting to talk about the project and whether I was interested. I made the mistake of not asking enough questions which caused some issues after the fact. Always strive to understand the project, timeline, and the client’s expectations.

What questions should you be asking?

Asking the right questions can save you time and make sure you are both are on the same page. The key to asking good questions is to never assume anything! You want to know about the project background, timeline, and the statistical analysis they want you to perform. Your client probably will not have a strong statistics background, so don’t be afraid to question their statistical methods and how it relates to their research question. Determine if they have collected data, ask them about the attributes of their dataset (sample size is important). Outside of the research project details, make sure you are clear on what materials they want you to provide and how they want those materials to look. If at any point in the project you need clarification, ask the client as soon as possible.

3. Establish firm boundaries

When working on the statistical consulting project my previous mistakes came to home to roost. Due to data collection delays, the project was postponed until the start of a new semester. I was not paid for the extra work that I complete. I redesigned the method and redid the statistical analysis because of an error by the client. For weeks, the client was contacting me day and night to ask questions about my work after I completed the project. These factors caused me to struggle to get my assignments in on time. These issues could have been avoided by setting clear boundaries from the start.

How to determine your boundaries as a statistical consultant?

Talk to the client about your boundaries before you agree to work with them. When will you be available to be contacted? Do you prefer email or phone contact? If they ask you to do more work than previously agreed upon, refuse or request a payment increase. Be honest with yourself about how long a project will take and overestimate this time for the client. If you struggle with this, it may help to double the amount of time you estimate. Whatever your boundaries may be, make sure you enforce them. Don’t be afraid to tell a client no or terminate the relationship if necessary.

4. Create a client agreement

I did not have my client sign an agreement because I thought it was a small project, and it would be no big deal. This was not a good idea. For example, I had to redesign their statistical methods halfway through the project. I did not sign up for that, but the client in their mind believed it was only natural for me to do without a pay increase. A written agreement can help alleviate misunderstanding and give you a legally binding document to rely on if things go wrong.

Categories for a client agreement

What should you include in a client agreement?

There are certain things you should include in a client agreement. These items may change depending on you as a consultant and the type of client. In your consulting commitment section, you should include an explanation of the role of a statistical consultant and expectations for a client. This is a great place to state your boundaries. In the services section, you can describe what specific services you will provide for the client. You may want to think about the number of meetings, and revisions to your work as well. The terms section consists of the timeline and a termination date for the project. Information on payment and your refund policy can be found in the compensation section. The confidentiality section provides the client with a clear idea of your level of confidentiality. After preparing your client agreement, send it and have them sign. Keep this document in a safe place. If you have any issues with your client breaking the agreement, you can use the document as a reminder for your client. Worst come to worst, you have a legal document in the unlikely event that legal action is required.

Final Thoughts

I highly recommend giving statistical consulting a chance if you are interested. It can be rewarding if you are mindful of the potential pitfalls. Although I struggled with my first independent statistical consulting project—due to a lack of knowing my worth, asking questions, firm boundaries, and a client agreement— I learned a lot and have grown as a statistician and a person. Statistical consulting, as a Ph.D. student, can offer some financial flexibility, experience for a future career, and teach you how to find and manage clients.

 

Are you interested in becoming or are you a statistical consultant? What are some of the mistakes that you’ve made?

Share your experiences in the comments below!

Posted in Advice, Grad student life, Statistics | 2 Comments