Almost a half a year into my postdoc, I had a moment when I literally screamed in my car and began offering Thanks that I was out of graduate school. Six months after my PhD I thought I was well past my graduate school roller coaster experience, but apparently not. I was so glad that in my postdoc I could breathe. I could sleep peacefully. I could enjoy going to the lab everyday. I could have a life outside of lab. I had a life outside of lab. I was happy. I had peace.
I can be quoted many times saying that the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life is staying in graduate school (well until I hard kids but you get the point). I came into graduate school extremely prepared to redeliver on the same stuff that I did in undergraduate. Study hard. Stuff my brain with information needed for the exam. Get an A. Brain Dump. Repeat. I was rudely awakened over the first year in graduate school all the way until the last moment of transitioning out of my research lab and that part of my life. It turned out that graduate school was much more about making me and me digging deep into parts of my soul and intellect that I did not realize were there. While I’ll share lots more about days and months of my graduate school experience in a 360 way, here I want to let you know that I challenge the status quo about graduate school.
The status quo is the one which says that graduate school sucks, will suck the life out of you, but if you’re strong enough to survive, it will all be worth it in the end. Advisors hold your fate in their hands and even when you encounter a decent advisor, life is still hell in graduate school. Here at Purposeful PhD, we just don’t believe that that has to be truth. We believe it’s time to help hundreds of thousands of graduate students reclaim their minds, lives, joy, and peace in their graduate journey. And unfortunately, it will take a lot of effort to help faculty and most graduate programs change their culture and expectations to the true benefit of graduate students.
However it is time to make the change in a big way and now. We are here to help transform the graduate school journey by focusing on graduate students and supplying what they need to thrive in graduate school and importantly, thrive as they move forward in their lives after this chapter is over.
Renã AS Robinson, PhD
