00:11
The third line is that of this whole thing of deciding whether to do PhD or not.
And you should constantly be asking this throughout your program.
You know, do I still want to do this?
Do I still want to do this?
Does it make sense for me to continue?
Like you should do this periodically.
But throughout it all, through it all, you should know that you're doing this for you.
And frankly, nobody else cares whether you get a PhD or not.
Nobody else, not even your advisors.
And you are the only stakeholder in this whole journey of getting a PhD.
And therefore, you are the only person who should have any say in what to do with it.
How long it should take.
What does it look like?
Do you want to have a kid in the middle?
All of this is your decision and yours to make.
And that's what makes it hard, but also hopefully liberating.
You know, all of this decision can be overwhelming.
But ultimately, this is for you and yours only.
And it's easy to forget that when you're in the middle of it.
It's very easy to forget that.
Remember that this is a place where you learn, but you're also working.
You are a worker there.
Oh, you know, that's another one of the really good advice that I got
when I was going into grad school.
Basically, this person said, do grad school like you would want to work this way
for the rest of your life.
So like, if you don't want to work seven days a week, don't.
If you don't want to work seven days a week for the rest of your life,
don't work seven days of the week during grad school.
You know, and if you say, hey, usually I'm around for this many hours,
but at times I want to be able to crunch in.
Do that, right?
Make sure that you're developing your own work ethics,
sustainable work ethics in grad school.
Because grad school is not just like your training montage in your Kung Fu movies.
Like, this is going to carry through for the rest of your life.
So treat it like work, really.
And we're not getting overtime payments.
Yeah, I was going to say treat it like work because it is in fact work,
especially in a PhD program where you will either be getting paid
and or will have to like find funding and teach.
Anyway, that's a messier subject.
But like, yeah, you are getting paid to do work, to develop a thing and to create a thing.
03:05
So treat it as such.
Treat it as something that you are working towards.
This is for you, but it is also work.
And so if you I love the advice that you were given, Asami.
I was not given that until a year and a half into my program
by by a like soon to graduate senior who was like, I see.
I come in nine to five, Monday through Friday, and that's it.
And I was like, wow, what a great way to do that.
And I still it was too late.
I needed a lot more time to figure out how to adjust that.
Right.
But yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's so helpful to just start with the idea of like, don't come in.
Everybody's going to be like, you got to work 60, 70 hours a week.
You got to work 90 hours a week.
You got to work some stupid number of hours a week.
Don't like don't take a take a decision on your own to be like,
how much am I going to work during this week?
And then you can you you have a foundation to work from.
Right.
You know what is reasonable for you and what is just not.
You don't have to answer emails after 10 p.m.
or 8 p.m. or 6 p.m.
If you decide that that's not how you work.
Or noon.
Right.
Or that.
But yeah, go ahead.
But like these happen, like, you know, maybe you're excited.
P.I. wants to share a new paper at like wee hours of the day.
Sure, yeah.
You're not obliged to respond to that.
No.
You might have a distressed student asking for you to like,
you know, help them with their exam prep like the night before.
Like, no, you are not obliged to help them.
Yeah.
And yeah, like and I think it's really because there is an element of that training montage.
Um, in this PhD journey, like I'm not saying that there isn't.
Yeah.
But we also have to remember that like this is going to set the tone for how we're going to
work in research for the rest of our, you know, lives.
That's going to set a tone of how we work towards work.
And and you might want to experiment differently.
Right.
Like maybe sometimes you want to work really, really long hours and see how that what that
does to you.
And maybe you want to see work.
You know, you want to work nine to five and see what that does to you.
Maybe you want to see how you work two to two and maybe see how that works for you.
Yeah.
Right.
I mean, yeah.
So so so these are all options as possible.
And and you should explore what works best for you.
And what works best for you at that time.
Right.
Like caveat at that time.
Always have that T in your function of your like human being.
Like it's always time dependent.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This it is constantly changing and developing.
06:02
Right.
Like yes.
Whether you were in the program or not.
Do not forget your time axis.
Time axis is clearly important.
This is an evolution over time.
This is not something stable or static.
It's a dynamic process.
Dynamic, baby.
And it really, really helps to have that mentality.
And I mean, if you're that's if you go into the program.
Right.
But same deal.
If you want to try to identify some of those things like the type of work and the type
of balance you want beforehand, try a job of some kind first.
Right.
Like yes.
Yes.
More and more students have like.
Yeah.
I think are coming with previous work experience rather than straight from undergrad.
Yep.
And they do know what it's like to work and they do know how they work best.
And that does work in their advantage.
Yes.
You know, they know how to communicate with their bosses in a way that you don't completely
lose yourself.
Yeah.
Right.
Exactly.
Yep.
Yep.
They have helpful skills.
Yes.
I think it's really helpful in that.
That would be.
Well, I tend to often say, like, you know, maybe there are things I regret, but I have
come to terms with kind of what they were in life.
But that's that's one that I think about often, which is if I had to have chosen something
or wish I'd been told something a little bit more or given advice more, it would have been.
Hey, I see you, you know, young university soon to graduate student haven't really had
haven't really had like a job of some kind.
You've had these odd job and tutoring things and like stuff that you've done, you know,
around doing school.
Maybe you should just just hear me out.
Just take a year and like go work at like maybe not a coffee shop because I don't drink coffee.
But like, you know, maybe maybe many of us do.
Many of you too.
So maybe like you should go work at a coffee shop because I mean, in cases like that, you
get a whole new respect for the idea of like the sort of hospitality type industries.
If you work at like a department store, you deal with retail nonsense like there are a
lot of things that you will experience, which you don't necessarily get exposed to in an
academic, you know, university environment and you're not ready for.
And somewhere out there, you may get it and it might show you that you want to go back
into that setting with these, you know, more centered awareness of what work looks like
for you, a more comfortable version to start from, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's like a thing also because it helps you create that distance because if
you're doing this for you, most likely you're very passionate about this research area and
that passion and interest, that's a requirement for doing PhD, I think.
09:02
But it also exposes you to all the risk of conflating self-worth with your productivity
or thinking you are worthless if you're not 120 percent excited about research all the
time, like things like that.
And having that work experience, I think, gives you an idea that like, oh, my relationship
to work can change day to day.
My enthusiasm for work is allowed to change day to day and I should expect a constant
and like non-flaky communication with the bosses or things like that, right?
And it's hard to have that perspective if you're freshly out of school and that's all
you know.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
If I had worked in like a non-research environment before going into grad school, I would have
been a lot quicker at pointing out some of the very non-professional things that advisors
do.
Sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was gonna say most of the time they don't even know themselves, right?
Yeah, most of the time they don't even have any experience outside of academia.
Right.
So like, they don't know.
No, no.
And it's like, I wouldn't even consider myself fully knowledgeable about it.
I have this like sort of sideways track, you know, where I arrived at being like, wow,
I had to like study how people engage in like work type like environments and stuff, right?
Like that was me investing in that to be like, oh, wow, that is pretty messed up.
Why are you doing it that way?
Like that's, you know, and it's, yeah.
And maybe you have a different appreciation for academic work style, because like, oh,
like, it's so nice.
Maybe some elements of having the freedom is very nice in academia, which you will not
get in corporate job.
And that would also give you the idea of which way you want to sway more.
Right, exactly.
Or the types of jobs you might be leaning towards, because there are jobs that honestly,
there are a lot of jobs that can be just as flexible or if not more.
A lot of jobs.
There are also a lot of jobs, period.
That's what I tell myself.
I'm like, you know, if I don't make it as a researcher, there are a ton of things I
can do to make my ends meet, pay my own bills, like if I'm not picky about it, right?
Yeah, yeah, there's.
Yeah, exactly.
That's a bit soothing.
I mean, I will, I will note this, although I don't think our audience maybe is specifically,
you know, listening from this crowd.
But there are also many situations and many people who have a job and cannot afford that
same ability to survive.
That's a bigger topic.
That is an issue with cost of living and like wages and.
And capitalism.
Yeah, sort of unionize somewhere in there.
12:00
So yeah, that's that's a different thing.
But that I think you're absolutely right.
It gives you perspective on work, work environments, ways that you like can engage well with someone
about work times.
And it becomes very clear very quickly, I think, in something like a retail environment
when you are definitely being treated poorly.
Like it's kind of hard in academia because it gets conflated with you as a person trying
to like learn about all these things.
Yeah, also working not so much when it's like you literally sell T-shirts at a hot topic
and your manager is like, oh, yeah, somebody just dropped.
I'm extending your shift to like a triple today.
You know, that's not good.
Right.
That is that is bad.
That is an awful manager.
And like that's pretty clear right away.
So yeah.
And also in like similar line of thoughts, let's say you're selling T-shirts at Old Navy
and and sometimes to no fault of your own.
Some batshit crazy customer will come in.
Sure.
Demanding like 80% off on the T-shirts that you don't have a discount for.
And this kind of unreasonable encounters also happen to no one's fault.
You know, sometimes experiments don't work.
Sometimes like clusters crush and sometimes things you worked really hard for doesn't work.
And that is OK.
That's not because you're stupid.
That's not because you like, you know, are like inherently worthless.
That's because it just happens that way sometimes.
You know, you didn't get a shit customer because you're a bad person.
You were just there.
You were just there.
I'm literally I literally just work here.
Like what do you want?
So like, yes, important to learn from your mistakes or any failures, troubleshooting.
Yeah.
These are opportunities to learn, but also like don't tie that to your self-worth.
Yeah, that's I mean, we yeah, that is that is a huge key part of this entire discussion.
It's also probably one of the hardest things to do if you are anything like me, for instance.
But yeah, it's it's hard for me, too.
And it's you're passionate about it.
You care about it.
You have some shit about it.
And sometimes it's easier to blame yourself than to actually look at the problem and solve it.
It's easier sometimes to be that's because I didn't work hard when the problem lies elsewhere.
And maybe that's a lot more complicated solution to that.
But yeah, that was that was what I was pointing at.
15:01
But that's that's right.
Yeah.
And maybe and maybe that's a different topic.
But it's sometimes so easy to like blame ourselves.
Yeah.
Depending on a person like some of the times surely we deserve the blame.
But like, I would say for most of us, 90% of the time, it's not our fault.
It's something else that led up to this situation.
And you are human.
You're allowed to make mistakes.
Yeah.
And you make a mistake doesn't make you any less of a researcher, less of a grad student, less of a human.
No, none of that.
So yeah, if anything, it makes you more separating those.
Yeah, yeah, please.
Yeah, please separate those pieces, right?
Like, I like I like this sort of like, that was a lot of like, in that previous sentence,
the humanness and the way that we say, you are allowed to make mistakes.
And I like to follow it up with not only are you allowed, but you will.
I promise you.
And it will be okay.
Inevitably.
Yes.
In fact, it's like, I cannot, I could not place a bet on a more surefire outcome.
Like, that is that is the answer.
And it is okay.
All right.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening.
And find us on X at Ego de Science.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time!
