More on personality and success...

Kate asked about burnout in grad school.

It's entirely possible, and I saw it happen. In one case the person took a year off, and then was able to come back and finish. Perhaps some of the folks who left did so simply because they burned out. I don't think there's any shame in admitting you're burned out. I also know people who went and started getting counseling in grad school and that seemed to help them.

I never really felt it - I had moments, days, maybe even weeks of frustration. But my attitude was "I'm gonna do this or die trying - and I don't intend to die." And I think that helped me, the sheer stubbornness, the "I am not going to fail at this."

Like anything in life, there are things you can do to guard against burnout.

I think one of the things that saved me was my life-situation. I am not (and wasn't then) married and didn't have kids - so I had no real responsibilities in that arena. And that helps a lot, I think - only having yourself to take care of.

And I had an even easier time of it because I lived with my parents at that time. I wound up attending grad school in the town where they lived. My choice (given the stipend I received at the time) was to either have my parents as "housemates" or to have two or three people I'd never met before as "housemates" in a rental house.

I figured that as I got along well with my parents - and often did NOT get along well with other people of my own generation, as I'm the kind of person who likes to be in bed by 10 and who isn't interested in consuming Mass Quantities of things like alcohol, and really is appalled by the idea of being "sexiled" from the apartment for the night, just so one of my roommates can have a scrump-buddy over - that I'd live with my parents.

And that turned out to be a good choice. (Probably the only drawback is it did kind of affect dating type things: it seems a bit of the gleam went out of a guy's eyes when he found out I lived with my folks.)

When I was really really close to losing my stuff because I was stressed, my mom would offer to do my laundry "for a week" or so (I otherwise did it myself) and I was excused from the usual household chores I took part in. I was also usually freed from doing the grocery shopping because she did it. And once or twice one of them would "kidnap" me from my lab and take me out to lunch or take me to the quilt shop to calm me down. (I also did something like that to friends of mine - MADE them come off campus with me for an hour or two when they were close to bugging out.)

They also provided a considerable amount of emotional support. And both my parents are Ph.D.s, so all the crap you put up with in grad school - they'd been there, done that, and lived through it. So I figured I could.

I do think part of avoiding burnout is knowing, judiciously, when to say, "I can't take it right now" and to just GO - to go out for pizza and beer, or go to a bookstore and spend a couple hours browsing, or go hiking, or something.

If you're not naturally a procrastinator (and I am not), sometimes you need small mental health breaks. (For people who are naturally procrastinators, they're necessary too, but you need to be sure that you're not taking it just to avoid working).

One of my favorite Matt Groening "Life in Hell" cartoons about grad school, which I had up over my desk for a while, showed Binky (one of Groening's rabbit characters) sitting working at a desk. One of his buddies stuck his head in the room and said something like, "Come on outside! It's a beautiful day! We're having a picnic and drinking beer and playing frisbee!"

And Binky replies: "Sounds great. I'll be out in about five years."

It made me laugh but it is not - and should not be - strictly true about grad school. I had my share of picnics and played my share of frisbee with my friends. Sometimes you DO need to acknowledge that it's a beautiful day, and that the books and data and half-written thesis will still be there when you come back in.

But the flip side is that you do need to know that grad school is a lot about delayed gratification. I never really knew what either Seinfeld or the Friends were up to, because I found evenings were a good time to read journals for me. I didn't go to many movies when I was in grad school. I didn't go skiing (not that I ski anyway) or to the beach or took long vacations. I was in the lab a lot of Saturdays, or out in the field.

But I made it through. Oh, there were a few times when I didn't think I would. There were a few times I was within a hair's breadth of quitting and....I don't know, I don't know what kind of a job I would have got. There were times I threatened to quit school and waitress for the rest of my life, but those were hollow threats because I knew I had the wrong sort of personality to waitress. (I'd be too prone to "accidentally" drop a bowl of soup on a rude customer.)

Another thing that I found helped was to set small goals. I don't work well with just one big goal in sight, where that big goal is a couple years down the road. I need small, intermediate goals. And sometimes, I need those goals to be something other than just steps on the way to the big goal.

I remember one semester what saved me was taking a seminar class on the orgin and evolution of land plants. Every week we had papers to read and critique, and each of us had to prepare and present a specific topic. (I don't even remember my topic now). I liked having that because I could check off at least ONE thing as being done for that week.

Having grading to do helped also - again, it was something to check off. And teaching helped - the contact with the students, the time out of my lab doing something else. Being a teaching assistant can stink if you're working for someone who puts too much responsibility on you, or who is in general a bad supervisor, but by and large I had good supervisors. (In fact, there was one class I taught MANY times - I asked for it every semester - because the prof in charge was so good. Any problems the students had, if they got angry or anything - his policy was: you send them to me. I will deal with it.

Funny story, while I'm on a digression: I had one student one semester who was a real problem child. Handed things in late, handed one lab in plagiarized [for which he got a 0.]. Towards the end of the semester he came to me wanting to hand a lab in three weeks late. I told him it was my policy not to accept late work. First, he tried wheedling, tried cajoling. I said no, it's not fair to anyone else, I've turned down other people who brought late work. Then he got angry and threatened me.

"I'll go to the professor in charge," he threatened.

"Be my guest," I responded.

The prof's office was right next door to mine. The student stormed out, went next door.

About 30 seconds later, I heard a very loud "HELL NO!" echo from the prof's office. Obviously the student had tried to get the prof to force me to accept the late work.

I just sat at my desk and grinned to myself, and thought, "Dr. R. strikes again!"

Is it any wonder I kept asking to teach with him?)

Anyway: I think having intermediate goals helps a lot. And sometimes taking a few hours off when you're at the breaking point helps. And if you can manage to have some of the "life responsibility" loads shouldered by another while you're in grad school, that helps as well.

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On another note: my students started their research presentations today. I'm pleased, in general. I was also very happy when one of the students collared me earlier this morning and spoke excitedly about his project and how the data fell all into place at the end and how he actually SAW something meaningful in his results.

And I thought to myself: yup, that's why I make them do it. For every person who gripes and complains, there's someone who goes, "I never did this kind of thing before and it's sort of cool!" I feel like they learn something useful - if at the very least how to research a subject without resorting to wikipedia or other crap sources - from this project. Even though it's a lot of work for them. And it's a lot of work (in grading) for me.