Ask YC: How to survive grad school?

I've been amazed how helpful people have been here to career advice questions earlier, so as I feel I have hit rock-bottom today, I give it a try myself (I am a regular poster, but anonymous this time). I guess others might be in similar situation, so discussing this might be helpful.

I have always dreamed of becoming a scientist. I always loved maths, sciences, puzzles, theory but also programming and engineering. To illustrate this, I would say that probably I look up to Sergei and Larry more for inventing PageRank, than for building up their company, although I'm interested in the workings of the economy as well, but more at an abstract level.

So getting accepted into grad school in one of the top labs in its field seemed like a dream come true. I really admire some of the professors and postdocs in the lab. Many of them have achieved ground-breaking theoretical results in the past and their groups have produced a great number of widely cited papers, surveys, useful toolboxes, etc. I was anxious to take part in similar work, however small my contribution would be.

I was even excited when I was told that I will work on a newly started, well-funded, "interdisciplinary" project, that will greatly impact people's lives. Well, I was suspicious of the buzz-wordiness initially, but how could I not trust the judgment of such smart people. After almost a year, it is fair to say that I have good view of the project and it is almost surely a giant failure. I am completely burnt out and have given up all hope of getting any meaningful work done in this project. It does not solve any real problem, there is no potential for any good science within it and no-one has the slightest idea what it is about and where it should progress. I can't say exactly what it is, but in scope it could be imagined as similar to the EU-funded Google competitor that has been widely ridiculed before.

On the surface everything still looks good, we have plenty of meetings, senior group members travel to conferences to project partners, we have an active wiki, we make demos from time-to-time, the reviewers are happy, funding is good, etc. etc. However, I find it the most soul-crushing experience to continue working while pretending that the whole thing is getting anywhere. Any attempt I made to point out ways how it could be made more practical have been ridiculed, or even trying to question some of the assumptions have met aggressive reactions from the professor, so I have given up.

Watching my collegues I have noticed different kinds of behavior. Some of them are smart and realize what is going on but they have become cynical and play along, trying to get their own stuff done on the side. Others are just too incompetent to notice something is wrong, and are happy to have a good place where they can surf the net the whole day, while pretending to be scientists. Some of my collegues are completely clueless about programming or engineering, but having good observations, comments on meetings, being generally friendly goes a long way. I have to mention that this is in a place where tuition is free, grad-school pays about 60-70% of what one could earn in the industry at the moment, so it is a safe choice financially. Not much is expected of anyone, I guess if I wouldn't turn up for a few days in a row, no-one would notice.

So what do you guys suggest I should do? I have given up getting anything useful in this project, but still research is my main dream. Is there hope of better in a different grad-school or project ? How can you tell from the outside ? Is this frustration common or is there actually a way to get honest theoretical work done in grad-school ? I consider myself a hacker as well, so working at a start-up or big co. would both be an option, but I would still most love to work in research, in the idealized way that I imagine it. (find elegant solutions to difficult problems that have wide-reaching implications). Should I ignore the environment and just try to set my own research agenda ? Is it possible to do research outside of academia ? (I'm a bit afraid of becoming a crackpot publishing papers on perpetual motion machines on arxiv :-) ? Have you been in similar situation ? How did you manage ?

Sorry for the long rant, and thanks for any suggestion...

Please send me your CV, or link to a web-site, or an email that says more about your skills. I may be able to help you with an internship, or if not, at least give you some better advice.

A year is hardly enough time to gain perspective on grad school. Give yourself some time. Eventually you will find a research project that interests you. In the meantime I'd suggest you continue cultivating inter-departmental relationships, eg, by working on the project you mentioned.

Also, worth noting, most people find the first couple of years of grad school the most frustrating because they don't align with their expectations. Once you are past that and you have a well defined research project things get better. Finally, regarding "finding elegant solutions to difficult problems that have wide-reaching implications": you'd be surprised to discover that incremental work can also be elegant and make an impact. Especially is CS that's how most research is done. So, don't set yourself up for disappointment. Pick a small problem that interests you and start reading on it...

Good luck.

It's hard to know how applicable my experiences are to your situation, but here are some things that I figured out (after a lot of time and frustration) that proved effective.

Grad school, for many people, seems inevitably to entail some prolonged dark night of the soul. Accept this as part of the process. It can cause you to lose yourself and your connection to what you really care about... or you can use it to strengthen these things. But you have to do that yourself. Don't expect anyone to help you. Models like "a community of teachers and learners" or "a thriving research environment" can lead to serious depression when they don't deliver. A better model is something like "an odyssey of solitude to test you".

I naively assumed that grad school would be an extrapolation of undergrad: I would be continuing my education by going deeply into a particular field. That was a big mistake. Eventually I realized it had nothing to do with education or even particularly with ideas. It was job training for becoming an academic. The real subject matter was: how to get an article published, how to fill out a grant application, how to give a talk at a conference. (Edit: oh, and how could I forget: how to pay as little attention to your teaching as possible.) As for learning the field, you were expected to know it all already and fill in any gaps on your own (we were handed a list of 500 books to read). I thought this was stupid and rebelled against the system in all kinds of ways that didn't help. Eventually I accepted that it is what it is, and turned my attention to what I wanted. Instead of changing the context, I figured out how to use it for my own purposes. It was hard to let go of my expectations - particularly to stop expecting mentorship or guidance from teachers. But doing so led to a lot of good things.

I divided my work into two categories: what I had to do to "feed the animal" (busywork and formal requirements) and what was meaningful to me. The strategy was to minimize the former (not eliminate it - don't fight the beast, petting works better) and maximize the latter. This worked well. Ironically, a lot of the praise and mentorship I had been craving started raining down on me once I no longer needed it.

Once one figures out how to feed the animal (in your case that sounds pretty easy), a graduate stipend can be a great basis for doing whatever you want. In my case, I used the last year of my fellowship to get back into programming. That was because I figured out I didn't want to stay in the field I was in; I had gotten what I needed out of it, and an academic job in that field would have been a waste. On the other hand, if I had had a passion for that field, I would have used my stipend to do work that I cared about, whether or not it was related to my official responsibilities. Not that I would have abrogated my responsibilities (that's the feeding the animal part) - just minimized them. If someone had asked me, "Why are you doing this other stuff" I would have said "That's my side project" or something like that. I also would have reached out to other people in the field, perhaps by sending them drafts of papers and so on. The point is that I would have done all this on my own and built up my own network of relationships.

This is a long comment that I could easily make longer! In any case, good luck.

Edit: ok, one more thing. It can be really useful to find a kindred spirit or two at your institution. They don't have to be in the same field. I would go exploring a little if I were you.

I was in Law School for 2 years... It actually worked out quite well. One of the things that you forget about when you are a student is that professors love looking for real world examples that they can incorporate into their curriculum's and classrooms. I had professors, students, and even librarians helping me collect everything from incorporation papers to market research. Eventually, as the company began moving a million miles a minute, I took a step back from my education and decided to get 'the baby out of the crib' before I return.

My point? Utilize what you can from where you are... engage fellow classmates, professors, and faculty. My number one suggestion is pull a professor aside and talk to him, can't hurt can it?

At the end of the day... everyone loves helping a student.