School Update - with an expected apology for my hiatus with an unexpected explanation

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving!!

Sorry for the brief hiatus - life got crazier than usual lately.  Which I will detail a bit in a later post.  Just as an appetizer ... the story may involve the police, a van full of mexicans, loose cows, and a car chase.

Not necessarily in that order.

Anyway ... update on John's schooling...

John really likes the lab he's currently in.  He loves the research (eye research - something he's been interested in for years)He gets along very well with the PI, who is and would be working closely with him.  The only other grad student in the lab is graduating after 4 years (would have been 3.5 years, but she had to take a personal leave of absence for a few months) and is the most decorated and honored student on campus.  Not even exaggerating - she received about 4 different awards and scholarships at the beginning of the year.

That being  said, there's two things against her ... one, she's thinking about moving on.  She's putting out feelers to move to another university.  If that goes through, then John would have to move with her.  There is no guarantee that if she moves, that John will be able to get into the new university (especially with his record of having dropped out of medical school).  Also, he loses all kinds of contacts from this school; as well as being faced with people accusing him of "coming in the back door".  Second, he's not sure that this lab would put him where he wants to be long term.  It would be amazing for the short term 5-10 years.  But not where he wants to be in 15 years.

So, we're back to the original first lab.  It might not be as ideal in the short term - but it really is pointing him to where he wants to be in 10-20 years.  And to be honest, that is the biggest difference between John and his classmates; he knows what his final goal is.  They are focused on the here and now.  He is focused on where he wants to be.

Yesterday John signed up for his elective classes for next semester.  The lab he wants to go into requires a certain class - Genomic Medicine - and as of now he's the only one signed up for the class.  He's excited because all the people teaching the class have been some of best lecturers this semester - and having a one-on-one class would be an interesting experience!

He still has some decisions to make, and details to work out.  But at least we're headed in a specific direction.

I'd better pick up that Mandarin Rosetta Stone course again.  Something tells me it would be a good idea to learn it.

Lab Updates

John has decided that he does not want to work in the lab he is currently working in.  While he says it's a good lab, and one that many of his classmates are interested in, it's not a good fit for him.

Besides the fact that the lab (or the building, we're not sure which) gives him headaches, he's decided he's not that interested in that field of research.  Apparently it is one of the most difficult specialties to actually receive funding for, so it really is a declining field.  If he went into this field of research, he'd constantly be struggling to get funding, and he'd constantly be worried about being "scooped" from other labs and researchers who are trying just as hard to get funding.

More and more, he is thinking that he'll end up in the first lab he rotated through.  Although he had a rough start, he truly liked it there by the end.  Once he left and saw other labs on campus, he's realized just how great that first lab was - and how those three weeks, even with the language barrier, left him better prepared and more knowledgeable about research techniques than his classmates.

Very few (if any) of his classmates are interested in that first lab.  All of them (John included) had heard negative things about the lab.  But John traced all those negative things back to one grad student in the lab, whose initial research didn't work out, and ended up in a position in the lab that she hates.  And the things in the lab that she hates, are things that John actually kinda likes.  She's been scaring grad students away from this lab - a lab with plenty of money, resources, and a willingness to teach a grad student - for the past 3-4 years.  The PI of the lab is beside himself; he can't understand why no one is going into his lab.

The PI met with John on the last day of his three-week rotation, and promised him three things: 

1. John will graduate in 4-5 years.
2. John will be researching something that matters, with great possibilities for getting published in high-profile journals.
3. John will not have to worry about money.  If John wants to research something that costs a million dollars, they can do that.

The neat thing about this lab is that it approaches research differently than most other labs on campus (Indeed, most of research nowadays).  Most scientists and researchers come up with a hypothesis, and then collect data to prove their hypothesis correct (or incorrect, as it sometimes happens).  This lab collects the data first, and then analyzes the data to come up with the hypothesis.  Which honestly makes much more sense than the normal method to me.

Another cool thing?  The primary language in the lab is Mandarin Chinese.  John and I have been interested in learning Chinese for the past two years - we've got the Rosetta Stone Mandarin software that we've been going through off and on for about a year now.  There is no better place in this country to learn Mandarin than in a lab populated primarily by native Mandarin speakers.  If John could leave grad school with a good degree and knowing Mandarin ... that would be so amazing, and would make him stand out to no end.

We also learned that two of the researchers in that lab live about two houses down from us.  We haven't actually met them yet, but if John does go in that lab, I'm sure we will at some point.

So ... now John's approaching his next few lab rotations as though they need to prove to him that they are better than that first lab.  Right now?  That seems a rather high goal to reach.

Grad School Triumvirate

My father got his doctorate through online courses about 2 years ago.  He was the first on my side of the family to not only attend a graduate degree program, but to receive his degree. 

I have no experience or expectations of grad school besides that it's supposed to be hard.

Both of John's parents went grad school.  His dad graduated with a DVM degree, and his mom with a PhD degree.  John's brother graduated with an MD degree.  Higher degree programs and graduate school is no stranger to his family. 

Thankfully, we can depend on John's parents to understand and help us through the various pressures and stresses of graduate school.

The biggest decision John has to make in the next year is what to focus his research on.  John's parents came up with a list of three things that make up an ideal program.  Best case scenario: your research has all three things.  But whichever program you choose, it must have at least two of them.


I.  A Good Mentor/Primary Investigator

•  You must have a mentor who will actually mentor you; one who will teach and advise you.  Your mentor must be someone that you can work alongside with; someone who will push you to succeed and encourage you when it's hard.  

• You do not want a mentor whose personality clashes with yours, or who is rarely in the lab, or who cannot explain or teach anything.  This is a person who will have a definite, direct influence over your career as a grad student - make sure it's someone you can work with.

II.  Fascinating Research

•  You must choose your focus based on what interests you.  You will be researching that topic for the next 3-6+ years; if you aren't interested in it, you will have a difficult time putting out quality work.  Whereas if you find the research intriguing, you are pursuing the research based on your own interest, not just as a job or to get a degree.

III.  A High Graduation Rate

• You should examine the research lab you are interested in and see how long the students generally stay in that lab.  Your mentor may be amazing and the research rewarding, but if it takes the students in that lab about 10 years before they graduate ... that needs to be considered.  
• You should look for a lab with a reasonable graduation rate; 3-5 years.  You can (and should) also look into what the graduates of that lab go on to do.  Are they successful once they graduate?  Or are they now flipping burgers?

John gets to rotate between three labs this fall, and two additional labs in the spring.  The whole program is designed to help him find the perfect fit for him in his research.  Last week he narrowed his (long) list of labs he was interested in down to five.

Since he wanted to leave his final rotation open in case he wanted to repeat any lab rotation, we needed to narrow the list down one more.  So, we placed each lab up against those three principles.

Four of them met all three.  One only met two.  That made the decision much easier!

John starts his first lab rotation on Monday.  I hope he likes it!

Back In School

John did not get much study time this weekend.  He claims that he doesn't have much to study yet; only a week out from his first tests, and nothing posted online yet for the upcoming week.  A part of me is glad that he's on top of things.  Another part is just a little bit worried.

We've done this before, you see.  Before starting the program he's currently in, John spent two years in medical school - and hated it.  He disliked the curriculum, didn't connect well with his classmates, and generally was not ready for the responsibilities required for medical school.  By the end of his second year, he was genuinely dreading the next 8 years of his life. 

After much heartache and discussion and prayers and more discussion ... we decided it would be best for him to leave.  Which he did.  Leaving him unemployed, without an MD degree, and over $100,000 in debt.  Yeah.  For two years of medical school. 

We spent the next year basically trying to "find" ourselves and survive.  John found a temporary job to supplement my decent-but-not-great income.  Our income was low enough to put his school bills into deferment for a year until we could "re-evaluate". 

Months passed with John recovering from his ordeal in medical school, and finally he decided that he wanted to go back to school again - this time for a PhD in research.  He worked hard, interviewed several places, and was accepted - at the same school he had attempted to get his MD degree!  Plus side: we don't have to move!  And they give their grad research students a stipend.  He would be paid for going to school - and actually be making more than me!

We've still got that medical school debt ... but now that John's in school it should go into deferment.  Meanwhile, we've bought a house in a much nicer neighborhood (no drug dealers or murders!  Yay!)  And John is so much happier than he ever was in medical school.  Which makes me happy!