Mechanical Engineering PhD - Student Personality and the Stress Level

jack63
Fri, 13 Mar 2015 17:20:00 +0000

So why is getting a PhD stressful? It is a good and a simple question…At least on surface. I’ve actually had this discussion with other students. Ideally to receive a PhD (in engineering) you should

1. Pass Quals

2. Understand your specialty and the literature

3. Try something new to solve a problem relevant to your specialty

4. Achieve moderately good results

5. Write a lot about it.

Hard…yes…soul crushing…it shouldn’t be. This isn’t the “real list”. I think the “real list” is below.

1. Get and stay funded by a TA, RA, or fellowship.

2. Get along well with your advisor, other faculty, committee members, post-docs, research scientists, other grad students, and academic staff.

3. Pass Quals

4. Understand your specialty and the literature

5. Try something new to solve a problem relevant to your specialty

6. Achieve moderately good results

7. Write a lot about it.

In the “real list”, issues 1 and 2 caused me the stress. The rest of the issues I either didn’t mind or enjoyed.

1. I accepted without funding into grad school. I did get funded the Wednesday before classes started. While I had the money to pay for a semester or two, this was very stressful. TAs are tough. You earn every penny of your tuition and stipend. They are 20 hours of hard and often unpleasant work. You do the grunt work of academia, work with profs that are too busy, and undergrads who don't respect your. You have no freedom in your schedule as a TA. You must keep office hours, hold help sessions, proctor exams, and sub for the professor's class at set times. RA's are tough too. They are better than TAs, but funding is fleeting. It gets cancelled for no reason without warning. As a student, you constantly are filling out funding reports and preparing funding presentations.

2. As a grad student, you are nobody's priority. As an undergrad, you evaluate your profs for every class. At my undergrad, students were chosen to write tenure evaluations for professors....I wrote a few. This type of thing gives undergrads real power. As a grad student you don't have that same power. Your advisor, other faculty, committee members, post-docs, research scientists, other grad students, and academic staff care about their careers above all else. To make matters worse, on some level, other faculty, your committee members, post-docs, research scientists, other grad students are your competitors. Sometimes your advisor is your competitor indirectly too....I didn't feel this way about my advisor though. All of these people have control over you.

Keeping issues 1 and 2 in mind from the real list, you must complete the rest of the list.

Your son should take it slow, talk to profs, and maybe just commit to the masters degree for starters.