Asking for Help in Grad School

[maldon]

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Hi all,

I'm an incoming MD/PhD student who literally just had his first day of pre-M1 lab rotations. I've talked with the PI about a potential project and he's given me a project with a very broad scope. I'm excited but at the same time feel overwhelmed and do not know where to start. Asking for help is somewhat intimidating because it's a large lab and I do not know anyone. To make things worse I don't have much of a background in the lab's field of study ( though I am very interested in the problems) so much of it sounds like a foreign language.

My first day was mostly inactive, I spent most of the time reading papers, doing paper work for animals facility training, and watching one lab member do a test. I felt mostly useless with everyone being busy and whizzing about. I can't really get started on my project since I haven't gone through animal training and orientation yet (that's scheduled for next week). But I don't want to sit on my hands either....

I know that grad school is about learning to be independent and figuring things out on your own. However, right now I feel pretty lost. I was thinking about asking my PI if I could be assigned to another member of the lab to assist in whatever they were working on. But I was wondering if this would come off as weak or servile.

Any advice for what I should do?

Thanks

 

[strangeglove]

Relax. Most of us had the same experience on our first research rotations. Some of us even felt this way for the whole first year of grad school.

 

[Watson104]

Do not try to do grad school on your own without any help. A rotation is for you to get to know the lab, not to accomplish anything of importance. Ask/shadow/chat with as many people as you can. It's all a foreign language, seek out experts to teach you. Figure out what they are working on and ask them to teach you. These don't need to be your busy PI. I've learned some of my best lab skills of high skilled technicians who have been around and seen it all. They also have the best gossip. Learn unrelated protocols. Learn about your PI's personality. Be nosy.

 

[gutonc]

Does this lab do a general data sharing lab meeting (one where everybody shares what they've been up to the past week or two)? If so, figure out who's doing the stuff closes to what you're assigned to do and latch on to them.

Agree with the others, trying to do grad school on your own is a recipe for disaster. Ask your PI, the senior post-docs, techs, etc for help. If this is a lab where nobody wants to help you (one where the PI has set up the students and post-docs in competition with each other) then walk out tomorrow. No joke.

 

[maldon]

Thanks for the advice you all. I asked the senior grad student to show me a few things, and she as well as some of the other students have been giving me inside info on how the lab works as well as working with me on a few techniques they use.

I definitely need to relax and also man up the courage to chat with the techs/post-docs and ask for help.

As for meetings, we do have lab meetings but they're more informal than that. Luckily, this isn't the cutthroat type of lab that gutonc is talking about.

The grad students in the lab have been really helpful and they seem like good people. But I've been baby-birding off them the last couple days and don't want to be a burden to them. Ultimately it's the post-docs and the techs who know how to do what I need. So I still have to work on asking them for their help.

I think the biggest issue so far has been that my PI has left my project relatively open and undefined. I think he expects me to pitch him an idea. But honestly, I have no idea what to think. I need to hammer down a project with him and then work out a plan. Until then I'm relatively paralyzed/ spending time learning techniques that are unrelated to my project.

 

[debateg]

I think the biggest issue so far has been that my PI has left my project relatively open and undefined. I think he expects me to pitch him an idea. But honestly, I have no idea what to think. I need to hammer down a project with him and then work out a plan. Until then I'm relatively paralyzed/ spending time learning techniques that are unrelated to my project.

This is very common. My PI was phenomenal but he did that to me as well. It's probably not that he wants you pitch an idea, it's probably more likely that he has not yet decided what to do with you. He probably has about 10 different ideas, many of them bad or risky. It's your job as a student to figure out what projects are worthwhile and then define them as rapidly as possible. It's not your job to conceive of the project yourself because at this level of training, you really don't know the field well enough to come up with a decent idea. Get to know the other graduate students and postdocs and ask them what they think is a good project; as a senior grad student, I had about 5 different projects that I wish I had done if I had time, some of which were quite easy. I know it's early, but I recommend that you tell your PI that you want to write a F30 grant and you two should pick a good and relatively straightforward project that would work for that. That can serve as one aim in your thesis and serve as a springboard for the larger thesis.

 

[maldon]

This is very common. My PI was phenomenal but he did that to me as well. It's probably not that he wants you pitch an idea, it's probably more likely that he has not yet decided what to do with you. He probably has about 10 different ideas, many of them bad or risky. It's your job as a student to figure out what projects are worthwhile and then define them as rapidly as possible. It's not your job to conceive of the project yourself because at this level of training, you really don't know the field well enough to come up with a decent idea. Get to know the other graduate students and postdocs and ask them what they think is a good project; as a senior grad student, I had about 5 different projects that I wish I had done if I had time, some of which were quite easy. I know it's early, but I recommend that you tell your PI that you want to write a F30 grant and you two should pick a good and relatively straightforward project that would work for that. That can serve as one aim in your thesis and serve as a springboard for the larger thesis.

To be honest, I'm not entirely thrilled with the project that I have been given. While interesting, It's an outgrowth of work that was already completed but has been languishing in publication-hell for years because it doesn't jive with the reviewer's dogmas. It was described to me as being a technical challenge but I feel like with what my PI has told me about the politics behind it, that it won't lead me down a straightforward path.

This was a failure of my judgement and I suppose that I should have pursued another idea from the start. I'm literally only a week into my rotation and afraid that scrapping that project so soon will be a red flag. I do like the idea of bringing up an F30 though as it would focus things considerably.

 

[MSTPlease]

To be honest, I'm not entirely thrilled with the project that I have been given. While interesting, It's an outgrowth of work that was already completed but has been languishing in publication-hell for years because it doesn't jive with the reviewer's dogmas. It was described to me as being a technical challenge but I feel like with what my PI has told me about the politics behind it, that it won't lead me down a straightforward path.

This was a failure of my judgement and I suppose that I should have pursued another idea from the start. I'm literally only a week into my rotation and afraid that scrapping that project so soon will be a red flag. I do like the idea of bringing up an F30 though as it would focus things considerably.

Does your school not do the 2-4-2 model? To be thinking about an F30 or what your project should or shouldn't be when you still have 2 years before joining a lab (and it may not even be this lab you're in now) is really premature. Hell, I'm wrapping up PhD1 year (3rd year in the program) and I've only started to think about my F30.

 

[maldon]

Does your school not do the 2-4-2 model? To be thinking about an F30 or what your project should or shouldn't be when you still have 2 years before joining a lab (and it may not even be this lab you're in now) is really premature. Hell, I'm wrapping up PhD1 year (3rd year in the program) and I've only started to think about my F30.

We do 2-4-2. I'm in a pre-M1 rotation right now. Yeah, in retrospect I've hesitated to ask about this for precisely those reasons. At the same time, I think directly asking for a project would make sense. So far I've been floating around without any aim.

 

[MSTPlease]

We do 2-4-2. I'm in a pre-M1 rotation right now. Yeah, in retrospect I've hesitated to ask about this for precisely those reasons. At the same time, I think directly asking for a project would make sense. So far I've been floating around without any aim.

It's perfectly fine to ask for more direction in a "rotation project." In my rotations I had a specific thing I was trying to accomplish it just wasn't anything on the scale of an F30 or full thesis project. Others often were just assigned to a post-doc or senior grad student and helped them out since our rotations are only 5-6 weeks (which is probably similar to you) so it's really just about getting a flavor for the lab, not about production.

 

[maldon]

It's perfectly fine to ask for more direction in a "rotation project." In my rotations I had a specific thing I was trying to accomplish it just wasn't anything on the scale of an F30 or full thesis project. Others often were just assigned to a post-doc or senior grad student and helped them out since our rotations are only 5-6 weeks (which is probably similar to you) so it's really just about getting a flavor for the lab, not about production.

I fleshed out a project with my PI and now we're in the stage of getting animals and processing them. Lol, I suck at animal surgery. I guess this thread has outlived its purpose...now if only there was one for bitching about how badly being a noob sucks...grad school problems.

 

[UCLAzy]

take comfort in the fact that everybody else is silently suffering and has no idea what they're doing.

http://imgur.com/a/HMBAH

 

[phonyreal98]

take comfort in the fact that everybody else is silently suffering and has no idea what they're doing.

http://imgur.com/a/HMBAH

👍

 

[maldon]

We used sample sizes of n = x because that's how many usable samples were left after the noobish rotation student got his hands on them. #overlyhonestmethods

 

[MSTPlease]

http://whatshouldwecallgradschool.tumblr.com/post/52569691843/how-i-feel-about-rotation-students

 

[maldon]

Haha, pretty much. Though the grad students in my lab have been pretty proactive about supervising me so that I don't accidentally destroy/ruin/contaminate something. One thing I wish I would've known beforehand was how quickly time flies when you're in a rotation. Now that I have a project, I have an ultra compact schedule for getting it done before med school orientation starts. At this point I'm going to be rushing just to get anything done.