Almost a year ago, I had one of my annual thesis committee meetings, and my adviser and committee gave their blessings and said the much-coveted magic words: “I think you’re ready to graduate”. After briefly enjoying the moment, my adviser and I got down to business:
(1) working out a timeline to finish the remaining experiments
(2) planning my dissertation and manuscripts I would be submitting to journals
(3) discussing my career plans after graduation.
Outlining these tasks was the easy part; what I didn’t realize was that this translated to me having to do all three things at the same time! I kept thinking of an ideal scenario, where I wouldn’t have to do them all at the same time, but in reality most graduate students, like me, end up having to master the art of juggling. Luckily for us, multi-tasking is an integral part of the graduate school experience, whether it’s reading literature, doing experiments, updating your lab notebook, teaching a class, writing grants/manuscripts, or presenting your work. So, if you ever find yourself at crunch time having to successfully do three things at the same time, let me offer you some advice:
I. Prioritize
First: sit down, take a deep breath, and organize your thoughts. Make broad outlines of things you need to accomplish, and then break those down into smaller tasks. Finishing up your degree is a big undertaking and so you need to come up with a clear plan and outlined goals. Mine looked something like this:
A. Experiments
B. Writing
C. Career
I then proceeded to fill in each category with more specific goals:
A. Experiments
1. In vitro
2. In vivo
B. Writing
1. Thesis
2. Paper
C. Career
1. Informational Interviews
2. Resume/CV
3. Cover letters
4. Optional Practical Training (OPT) application
5. Networking events
Now, you can extend or breakdown this list to infinity (e.g. further break down thesis to its individual sections). At some point, you need to take a step back and really think about what your priorities are. If you get stuck, reach out to people around you; people like your adviser (if they’re worth their mentoring salts) or your committee members can help give you an outside perspective on whether you’re on track to accomplishing your goals.
II. Set realistic daily goals and celebrate small accomplishments (it’s a marathon, not a sprint!)
From my goal outline, I proceeded to create a daily checklist, making sure that I had small tasks from each big goal. Now, I could count on one hand the number of days that I checked off EVERY SINGLE TASK I had for the day; more often than not, there would be some left undone. As with most graduate students, I set ambitious goals and often felt disappointed with my uncompleted daily to-do list. It took me a while to alter my perspective from focusing on the unchecked tasks to celebrating the ones that I accomplished. It’s a lot easier facing the next day, and the next day’s list, when we realize that we are getting things done.
III. Compartmentalize
This is something I learned the hard way and had to struggle with for a while. I would get to the lab and decide to do some writing, but then the close proximity to my workbench would remind me of experiments that also needed to be done. Being in a distracted state left me less productive and consequently unable to meet my goals. My solution for this was to do my writing away from the lab, and so I would spend my mornings either at home or some coffee shop where I could focus solely on writing. After working for a few hours on this, I would then come into the lab and then focus on performing experiments I needed to do, or go attend a career workshop or an iJOBS event, or have an informational interview. This way, I was less distracted because each space was dedicated to a specific task, and I managed to be more productive. My schedule wasn’t fixed; sometimes, depending on other factors, I would have to change it up, which also helped prevent my days from becoming too monotonous.
TAKE HOME MESSAGE:
Have fun! Don’t forget that getting to this last stage in your graduate education is already an achievement in itself! Juggling is hard; sometimes you let a ball drop, and that’s ok. The key to success (and finishing) is making sure you don’t drop the same ball all the time.