I recently started what I consider to be a Twitter storm when I tweeted out some graduate student work-life balance opinions. Please note: the original tweet was not based around my advisor’s expectations for me, it is a culmination and slight over exaggeration of what I have heard from other students. My original tweet was “Grad school is hard & requires dedication. Should that be 10-12 hour days 7 days/week, 52 weeks/year? Thoughts please. #GradAdvice #phdchat.” To this tweet I added several others, including one particular tweet that had the most likes, “To me, this is a job. I do it passionately and professionally, but this is not my entire life.”
While I am not familiar with anyone who is actually expected to work 10-12 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, I have heard of students working arduously long hours, only to mess up an experiment, make little progress, or become physically and mentally ill as a result of stress and exhaustion. For some reason we discuss academia and mental health at length, but progress is slow on solving this problem. To me this seems analogous to mitigating climate change.
Anyway, when I wrote those tweets I knew I was opening myself up to criticism and honestly I expect to hear more than I did. I expected some millennial entitlement comments, some “just suck it up” comments, some comments about the only way to be a scientist is to work a million hours a week period. Instead, I was surprised at the overwhelming support. The general consensus was work smarter not harder, on average 8-9 hour days 5-6 days a week is enough for graduate school with the understanding that sometimes you will work longer hour days making up for that during “slower” periods, and that you make actual progress during those 8 hours.
There are many opinions when it comes to graduate school, meaning no one is right and no one is wrong, entirely. For example, I tweeted “To me, this is a job. I do it passionately and professionally, but this is not my entire life.” Some people may take issue with that statement and they are entitled to that opinion. I am not saying I will not work hard, I mean I refuse to be on campus 12 hours a day every day, 12 months a year. Again, an over exaggeration, but I know of some students who are in their office before I arrive at 7 am and still in their office when I leave at 5 pm. Maybe this is the old-school science way, maybe some people still believe grad students (and post-docs and new faculty) should be working this much. Some people believe grad students should be made to cry from stress. Some expect you to work in a lab 8 hours a day, then work 5 more hours at home. I should note sometimes, in some cases, this has to do with women and minorities and the extra pressure to outperform, but I want to talk about that at a different time. I think the expectation that we suffer through grad school is absurd. I love science, I want to be a scientist. I want to do the best research I possibly can and then work hard to communicate my findings to many people, to mentor young scientists and cultivate an atmosphere in academia where we can be productive but not stuck in an ivory tower. But in the end, if the expectation is for me to be stressed out, to cry myself to sleep, and to work so hard that my mental health is put in jeopardy, this isn’t worth it.
Luckily I have a great support system and these tweets end up being less about me and more about those people who are unhappy and cannot stand up for themselves or cannot leave a bad situation because they cannot see there are other options. To those people I say, work hard in life, work hard in your graduate career, but remember that hours do not equal efficiency and if you cannot communicate these problems with your advisor reach out to someone else to help you start that conversation. Often times there are simple solutions. Remember to take a break every now and then and destress. Find the thing that helps you relax and please do not feel guilty for doing those things. For example, after work yesterday I helped make hay on my farm. It might sound like more work, but I love “working” on the farm with my family and end up getting tons of exercise.
On that note, back to the lab...
While I am not familiar with anyone who is actually expected to work 10-12 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, I have heard of students working arduously long hours, only to mess up an experiment, make little progress, or become physically and mentally ill as a result of stress and exhaustion. For some reason we discuss academia and mental health at length, but progress is slow on solving this problem. To me this seems analogous to mitigating climate change.
Anyway, when I wrote those tweets I knew I was opening myself up to criticism and honestly I expect to hear more than I did. I expected some millennial entitlement comments, some “just suck it up” comments, some comments about the only way to be a scientist is to work a million hours a week period. Instead, I was surprised at the overwhelming support. The general consensus was work smarter not harder, on average 8-9 hour days 5-6 days a week is enough for graduate school with the understanding that sometimes you will work longer hour days making up for that during “slower” periods, and that you make actual progress during those 8 hours.
There are many opinions when it comes to graduate school, meaning no one is right and no one is wrong, entirely. For example, I tweeted “To me, this is a job. I do it passionately and professionally, but this is not my entire life.” Some people may take issue with that statement and they are entitled to that opinion. I am not saying I will not work hard, I mean I refuse to be on campus 12 hours a day every day, 12 months a year. Again, an over exaggeration, but I know of some students who are in their office before I arrive at 7 am and still in their office when I leave at 5 pm. Maybe this is the old-school science way, maybe some people still believe grad students (and post-docs and new faculty) should be working this much. Some people believe grad students should be made to cry from stress. Some expect you to work in a lab 8 hours a day, then work 5 more hours at home. I should note sometimes, in some cases, this has to do with women and minorities and the extra pressure to outperform, but I want to talk about that at a different time. I think the expectation that we suffer through grad school is absurd. I love science, I want to be a scientist. I want to do the best research I possibly can and then work hard to communicate my findings to many people, to mentor young scientists and cultivate an atmosphere in academia where we can be productive but not stuck in an ivory tower. But in the end, if the expectation is for me to be stressed out, to cry myself to sleep, and to work so hard that my mental health is put in jeopardy, this isn’t worth it.
Luckily I have a great support system and these tweets end up being less about me and more about those people who are unhappy and cannot stand up for themselves or cannot leave a bad situation because they cannot see there are other options. To those people I say, work hard in life, work hard in your graduate career, but remember that hours do not equal efficiency and if you cannot communicate these problems with your advisor reach out to someone else to help you start that conversation. Often times there are simple solutions. Remember to take a break every now and then and destress. Find the thing that helps you relax and please do not feel guilty for doing those things. For example, after work yesterday I helped make hay on my farm. It might sound like more work, but I love “working” on the farm with my family and end up getting tons of exercise.
On that note, back to the lab...