Originally posted by MeowMix
I would contend that working in an academic research lab in the basic sciences is not real life, for most grad students. You are insulated from the consequences and the financial aspects of your work. Most major decisions are made by someone else; your advisor bears most of the responsibility for your actions. As one faculty member told me, if your grad student gets great results, it's because they're smart; if they do poor work, then it's your fault as their advisor. In this sense, it is not realistic. As a grad student, you usually do not have to deal with personnel issues; you generally do not have to deal with shifting priorities; you usually do not have to multi-task on a dozen projects with moving deadlines; you never have to worry about a lack of clients or funding if you do poor work. You don't have a senior manager, institute director, or department chair calling you up and asking you to produce a report in 2 hours at the end of the day on Friday because they forgot to tell you about their deadline. It is a rarefied and unusual environment.
Man, This post REEKS of ignorance. You obviously know NOTHING about the dynamics of a research lab and are speaking purely from conjecture and rumor. When I screw up, my PI have no compuncture hanging my ass out to dry. She is brilliant and does not want her lab brought down by one student's mistake. For this reason, experiments and controls are carefully planned. If I deviate from protocol, she will sit back in her chair and ask, "Didn't the protocol ask you to do xxxxx? Then why didn't you? Protocols exist becuase THEY WORK."
Your ideas about funding: You really couldn't be further off from the mark. Our lab just exausted a grant and my next priority is to obtain funding for my pre-doctoral studies so that my place in the lab is not a financial burden.
Honestly, reading your post frustrates me. I said it before, but the important point is that you have spouted pure ignorance. My school trains students as if they will go on to have their own academic lab, so we are not "insulated" as you want to insinuate.
And this gem:
"As one faculty member told me, if your grad student gets great results, it's because they're smart; if they do poor work, then it's your fault as their advisor"
Wow. The faculty member who told you this (Personally, I think you're lying and made this "observation" on your own) couldn't be more wrong. Students in their fourth year who haven't published have done so because of lack of focus, poor lab skills and awkward/pointless projects. It has nothing to do with the PI.
If you want to make more posts about what a PhD program is like, please talk to someone, as opposed to making things up from what you think you see/know. Your ignorance about grad school is astounding and I hope that this ignorance is passed on to you patients.
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