juilletmercredi

In addition to the guidance you've received from other members of this BB, I recommend that you avoid forays into psychology. First, the behavior you describe is not "passive aggressive" according to the criteria set forth in DSM-IV-TR. Second, you are not in a clinician. Consequently, you are not in a position to define why your PoI is behaving in the manner you describe and your efforts to do so in psychological terms undermines the legitimacy of your argument. "Passive-aggressive" is not simply a clinical term, Sigaba; it's also a colloquial term that's used to describe patterns of behavior. I don't think the OP was trying to diagnose his or her PI with a personality disorder. In this case I have to disagree with you; the behavior that the OP is describing IS passive aggressive: The PI is doling out sanctions but isn't doing them up front; he's doing them behind the scenes, while people are away (like cutting funding or taking away projects in retaliation for vacation time instead of just discussing vacation with the person and setting out expectations up front). I only agree that talking to the PI first may be the best course of action IF these things are happening to you. Right now, you seem to have described a lot of things either in general or that have happened to other people. You can't talk to your PI about what he's done to others; then you sound accusatory and perhaps like a gossip, and that's not good. You have to focus on what's affecting you directly AND what you expect your PI to do to fix it. Has your funding for a conference been cut on the basis of a vacation? Then go to him directly and ask why the funding for the conference was cut, and what you can do to avoid such cuts in the future. Pose it as coming to some kind of mutual agreement about taking vacation time or something like that. I also agree that documenting things is a good way to shore this up. If he tells you that he doesn't want you to do a task, send him a follow-up email confirming that he doesn't want you to do X task anymore and that he instead wants you to follow with Y, and requesting a response. That way, three months later when he asks why X isn't done, you have proof that that's how it's gone down. If these are more generalized things that are contributing to a generally toxic atmosphere but not affecting you directly, there are people at your university you can talk to confidentially for ideas about how to handle that situation. If you just need help coping, try visiting the counseling center and talking to a therapist. If you want to effect some change but don't know how, the ombudsperson may be the best person to visit.

the few twenty-somethings I know with a child tend to go out less often and come home earlier (and drink a lot less alcohol) than their peers who have yet to make such a conscious decision to enter adulthood, because they have a responsibility. Many 25-30 year olds still act (and party) as if they're in college Having a child isn't making a "conscious decision to enter adulthood," and not having children is not "yet to having made" that conscious decision. Entering adulthood is not a conscious decision, anyway; it's the result of years of maturing and different people interprent that differently. I'm 25, and I'm definitely an adult despit not having children. I still like to drink and party and dance with friends, go to concerts and play games at people's houses. Yet getting blackout drunk and passing out or crashing on someone's couch are not as appealing to me as they were when I was in college, nor is partying until 4 or 5 am (I tend to go home around 2). If you have a crowd that doesn't like to go out and party, you maybe need to find a new crowd? I had the same problem, but I got a new job on campus with a slightly younger group of grad students (I was in the youngest in my grad cohort, but in this group I'm actually on the older end) and I found my niche with them.

Doesn't look like it. The second test is the "time test". If you are an employee, you must work full-time for at least 39 weeks during the first 12 months immediately following your arrival in the general area of your new job location. If you are self-employed, you must work full time for at least 39 weeks during the first 12 months and for a total of at least 78 weeks during the first 24 months immediately following your arrival in the general area of your new work location. There are exceptions to the time test in case of death, disability and involuntary separation, among other things. Even if, due to your stipend, you are a university employee - you are most likely not employed full-time. Your studies as a graduate student wouldn't count; even if your research/teaching assistantship does, you are likely only doing it 20 hours a week (officially, anyway). Graduate school is not a job. I know that thinking about it that way helps a lot of people, but it's not employment in the sense that the IRS means it for this.

I don't have to be in the lab to do work, so usually I go on vacation for a week or two and take some of my work with me. Usually I only go away for 1-1.5 weeks and it's usually just to go home and visit my family, but this year I'm going away for two weeks, a few days of which will be spent in Florida. I also have to be back early because I work a res life graduate assistantship and we start training again on Jan 10, even though classes don't start back until Jan 17. Honestly, more and more I'd rather not go home and visit or go on a vacation. Vacations are exhausting, especially these family kinds (my SO's family wanted to go to Orlando. Disney/Universal Studios is just not appealing to me at age 25, and I'm not really sure why we are gong because no one in the family is younger than 15). All the packing, getting to the airport, taxing, seeing stuff, getting pack, ugh. I do like to go home and relax with my own family because they usually make things easy for me vis-a-vis getting to and from the airport, and we don't tend to have to DO EVERYTHING - it's nice just relaxing with them and talking, and going to the mall and doing stupid stuff with my younger sister. His family is much more "it's a vacation, it means we have to do everything, here's an itinerary and it starts at 9 am". If it were my choice, I'd stay in NY/NJ for Christmas - spend Christmas with my cousins in the area - and then fly down between Christmas and New Year's to see my family, stay for a week, and then come back to veg out a little more before the school year officially starts.

I agree for the most part...graduate school, and academia in general, isn't about brilliance or intelligence. Pretty much everyone who is accepted into the arena has above-average intelligence at least. But even the most brilliant of graduate students won't like the field if they don't have patience or can't stand constructive (or non-constructive) criticism. And I agree - classes and to a certain extent exams are the easy part. I'm transitioning from qualifying exams to writing my dissertation proposal and coming up with an original idea is the difficult part...I have that I'm fairly certain will be approved, but it takes thinking, reading, writing, and independent thought. No one tells you where to look or what to do. And I feel like it's easier in the sciences (I'm in a social science that behaves like a science), because you're probably working with your adviser's data set and your adviser's tools and your adviser's budget. In the humanities...for y'all it's wide open. where do you even begin?

I don't think one should have "safety schools" in the traditional sense when applying for PhD programs. When I say traditional sense, I think of a safety school as one that isn't necessarily the best fit for you nor a school that you would choose to go to independently, but a school that you will go to if you don't get in anywhere else. That works in college because college degrees are almost a necessity in today's job market, and you can get a decent undergraduate education at pretty much any reputable accredited non-profit college. But for a PhD - if you want to go into academia, you need to go to the best fit program for you. You also will be spending between 5 and 10 years there depending on your field. You need to be reasonably content, it needs to have a good reputation and you need to have an advisor with at least some connections who can help you on the job market.

Is the variety because you can study what you want to study in any of those programs, or is it because you are unsure about what you want to do? For example, I study health inequality from a socio-psychological perspective. I could've done that in a sociology program, a public health program, or a social psychology program, as well as a program in human development and family studies. My research interests and questions would've stayed the same, it would simply be a different degree with a different approach to doing the research. But if you are applying to multiple disparate programs simply because you can't decide what to do, yes, that does look bad to your referees. That might require some explanation. For example, I can link three of those programs together - it looks like you may be interested in cultural influences on media made for or by immigrants, or something that has to do with media surrounding immigration, so I can understand the first three. But then the last two are just totally different.

If you can't afford it, answer no. In the comment section briefly explain your current financial situation (loans from undergrad, if you have dependent children, etc). Be sure to emphasize that you're absolutely interested in the program and want to pursue a TA-ship, GA-ship, etc. Then note that if you aren't awarded funding you would commit to taking out loans in order to make it work because this is what you really want. I agree with everything except for the last part - that really depends on whether or not you are, of course. For a professional master's degree program, I would, but definitely not for PhD programs.

Well, not necessarily - you can do a grade conversion. You'd turn in your transcript with an explanation of how to read the grades written by an independent person. I'm not really sure who that independent person would be, but I have heard of people having this done when they apply to graduate school. If you have a bachelor's degree already, you may be able to obtain employment at a university as a lab tech or a research assistant. This will give you the research experience you need. Professors with large labs need people to run the physical and technical aspects of their experiments. Another way to get experience, if you can't find employment in it, is to find a job to pay the bills and volunteer for a lab in your spare time. Some people have turned these kinds of experiences into paying jobs later, but even if you can't, the experience is still there. You can start by looking up nearby university labs that seem interesting and emailing the lab manager/research coordinator to ask if there are any positions open. You can also look at university job postings; many of these are posted there. If you live near a medical school that would be even better, as they tend to have a lot of these jobs. Another way would be to get into a funded MS program and get some experience with research there. This would also be your chance to prove that you can handle graduate level work. Whether you need an MS or a PhD depends on what you want to do in research. If you are content to be a part of a research team, assisting others in their research by performing routine tasks, you can do that with an MS. There are positions called "research associate" that are like this. However, there's not a lot of upward mobility in that. The highest you can get is managing the lab of a professor, which actually can pay quite well at a medical school. If you want to be a professor, or if you want to direct your own research and be the leader of that team - you'll need a PhD.

For me personally, my advisor calling Enterprise and then calling me a liar for saying there were no cars available would be the nail in the coffin for our relationship unless I was far enough in my dissertation that that would significantly set me back. That indicates a fundamental lack of trust that goes beyond my work. I'm an adult, I don't need someone calling in to check behind me and I opted INTO this graduate work. Why would I lie and make up excuses? If I really didn't want to go to class, I simply would not. But that's just because my personality is very laid back and so NOT a perfectionist. Whether or not you want to do the work to get up to her standards is up to you to decide. I just couldn't imagine any of my advisors or the professors I am close to actually doing that.

In metereology? There are several places you can work with an MS - NOAA, the U.S. military, the Weather Service, and a bunch of for-profit weather outfits like the Weather Channel. I wanted to be a metereologist growing up.

-Your admissions interviews are neither here nor there. You are in the program now, so the point is moot. -Seek out mentorship and advisement elsewhere. Unless these are things that only the chair can do for you (which is uncommon)...you should be able to get assistance elsewhere. "Playing favorites" is not uncommon in academia; most people in most industries help out the people they really like and don't help other people so much. Be someone else's favorite. Also, learn that placements, jobs, and fellowships are hardly ever based solely on "objective" qualifications. If two people can do the job reasonably well, employers are going to go with the person they like better or have a connection to. This is a fact of life and is pretty consistent across industries. -What does "randomly cancels" mean? The phrase could indicate that she did it once or twice, or that it's an ongoing pattern. Is she canceling class because she's sick, or has an emergency, or is she canceling because she mismanages her schedule and forgets things? If you feel it's impeding your learning, talk to the DGS - but beware, because if it gets back to her you may make an enemy out of her. I guess I can't imagine being PO'd about this, unless the extra assignments are given right before a due date or take an inordinate amount of time to finish. -How is this information that's not self-explanatory? I go to a program where master's students are required to do a practicum, and it's pretty obvious that no one is REQUIRED to take on a practicum student but that if you don't do it in time, you won't graduate. It's up to the students to find an appropriate practicum that will count towards graduation. That's pretty much common knowledge; it's not any different from having a required class to take towards graduation. It's your responsibility to be familiar with the course requirements and to sign up for the class, even if it's a popular one. And as someone else said, presumably she's not the only professor in the department, so if you feel you need help you can always go to another professor. Have you ever talked to your chair one-on-one? Made an appointment with her, or visited her office hours? Or do you just expect her to do the same things she does for the other students she likes simply because you exist and are taking her class?

It largely depends on the relationship you develop with your advisor. I have two - one in each of my departments. My primary advisor: -Minimally advises me on courses. He is not fully aware of the coursework requirements of the program, so basically I tell him what I'm planning to take and what requirements they fulfill, and he says "good." Occasionally he's helped me decide between two courses. -Advises me on more advanced pieces of the PhD, like studying for my qualifying exams. He served as one of the supervisors of my reading lists, graded my exam, and will serve on my oral exam committee along with one other professor. -He will be my dissertation sponsor, and has already begun guiding me on the road towards my dissertation. He listens to my ideas, helps me develop them, helps me formulate aims and research questions, provides general guidance about where to find sources, etc. I am expecting that he will read my drafts and give comments on them, as well as review my data analysis to a certain extent. -Coauthors papers with me. -Writes grants with me. He is the PI, but we both have done substantial work on the composition of the grant, although he does the majority of the writing unless it's my idea. -Recommends me for funding, and I am assuming he will also recommend me for jobs. -Helps me network by reaching out to his contacts, especially if I have expressed an interest in something that they are doing. -Discusses job opportunities and the market with me, especially now since I am a fourth year and will be looking for post-docs and/or jobs in the fall. -Helps me prepare conference presentations and papers. My secondary advisor does some of these things. He has offered guidance on coursework and exam requirements; he has proofread conference and publishable papers; he has recommended me for funding when I have applied for fellowships. He's also gone to bat for me when the financial aid office tried to screw me out of my TA compensation (long story). I have little doubt that when I am on the market, he will recommend me and reach into his networks to help me. His networks are more extensive than my primary advisor's, as he is a full professor who is well-known in our field (to the point that I go to professional conferences and people know the research I am doing based on his name). My primary advisor is an untenured assistant professor who, while wonderful, obviously does not have the reach. So yes, I think your advisor can help you by looking at your article. I would certainly ask him. I'm in the social sciences, BTW. EDIT: Given the statement that "there is a huge difference between a mentor and an advisor," I agree. I also say that in certain circumstances, it's possible to have an advisor also serve as a mentor. My primary advisor does this; my secondary advisor, not so much. It's really based on demeanor, comfort level, and other more nebulous factors. With my primary advisor, I could share my difficulties in the program, asked for resource help when I needed it, and very briefly discussed my depression. I do none of those things with my secondary advisor; our relationship is simply different. And I also have a mentor who is not my advisor at all, for whom I can go to to speak more deeply about issues I am confronting.

It depends on your program and the places to which you are applying. I have a friend on the job market now and I forgot what field she's in, but some of her schools are asking for transcripts. Every other person who's done the job market before has told me that no one asks for your transcripts. The question of whether Bs get you a PhD is separate from whether they get you a job. It also depends on your program. Some programs have limits on how many Bs you can get. If you get too many, you may be put on probation and later dismissed. Others see it like my grad program, where the joke is if you have too many As, it means you weren't focusing enough on your research. Our DGS sat us down the first week of school and told us not to worry about grades, just to focus on learning and doing research. Also, your motivation to study for class should not be to get an A. It should be to learn the material that's vital for your qualifying exams, your dissertation, and for doing research in your field.

It isn't really "2 per state". When the article addresses elite institutions, it isn't talking about the majority of state flagship universities. The author is talking about the relatively small list of elite, mostly private and very expensive universities in the country - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Caltech, Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Kenyon, Grinnell, etc. This list only has a few state flagships on it, such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Berkeley, UCLA, perhaps Georgia Tech, Penn State and a few others. It's overwhelmingly private and East Coast schools are overrepresented, particularly the tony private institutions of the Northeast/New England area. These statements don't reflect my personal feelings about college - I think public flagship institutions are underrated. But I talked to a lot of undergrads here at my university who turned down much more affordable and top-name public institutions in their home states (CA, MI, WI, WA) - often where they had earned some scholarship money - to spend $200K to come here. There are over 3,000 colleges and universities in the United States. 100 colleges is only 0.33% of those colleges. And as you exemplified yourself, top scholars/students don't always end up at the top 100 colleges. They tend to be expensive, and you have to come from a family/background that is aware of them. That means first-generation college students often aren't there (they tend to be at their closest public university campus), low-income students often aren't there, and ethnic minority students often aren't there. These top private institutions often base their admissions on things that come with money - high SAT scores (which can be boosted with test prep courses), AP and IB classes, a variety of honors courses, some kind of long-term artistic ability like dance or music (purchased with lessons), and organized sports that often aren't offered in working-class and lower-middle class high schools (lacrosse, crew, squash, polo, sailing...) The students I know who consider themselves pretty normal and middle-class at my Ivy League took figure skating/violin/ballet/hockey/[insert expensive activity] lessons growing up, went to expensive private high schools, took thousand-dollar SAT prep classes, the whole nine yards. I don't believe that "most deserving scholars" attend the top-ranked schools. I believe that students with money and connections attend the top-ranked schools. It's not that these students are not intelligent, driven, ambitious, and deserving - they are, I just don't think they are the MOST deserving by necessity. It's also not as if their achievements are unwarranted, as these top institutions often offer more resources by comparison and more prodding for students to think about graduate school. There also needs to be some examination of the phenomenon I pointed out in my earlier post, which is that students who go to top schools are often far more interested in graduate school than students who went to lower-ranked schools. I don't think it's always that they just naturally are; they are far more likely to have parents and other adult models who have graduate degrees. They're also more likely to be familiar with a range of careers that require or recommend a graduate degree.

Honestly, I never went to pick up graded anything. I felt like it is the TA or professors job to return graded assignments. It actually REALLY pisses me off when they tell us to "go pick it up". In undergrad, I had no clue where their office was, and wasn't about to spend precious study time figuring it out and picking up an old assignment, but I still want to know what grade I got! This is just pure laziness, and it's attitudes like these that make professors want to make fun of the students' work. Part of studying is learning where you made past mistakes and doing better. It's these students who irritate me the most - the ones who ask me 8 weeks into the semester where my office is or when my office hours are (it's been listed on the syllabus since BEFORE the first day of class), the ones who don't bother to pick up their homework even when I bring it to CLASS and then badger me about what their grade is. I had a student complain to me that she didn't realize that there was a late penalty on homework, so she felt like she had to talk to the professor because if she had realized there was a penalty, she would've turned it in closer to the due date. You're trying to tell me that you made it all the way to college (twice) and you didn't realize that there's almost always a penalty for late work? (And yes, we announced it.) I also don't believe the sentiment that there are no stupid questions. It's simply not true. There are a variety of stupid questions students can ask during class - the ones that ask me something I've repeated 5 times already; the ones who ask questions that are unrelated to the subject at hand; "will this be on the final" questions (EVERYTHING is on the final. it's a statistics class!).

Perhaps it's because Southerners want to stay in the South? I'm mostly joking, since I'm a Southerner with a BA from a Southern institution and I am SO ready to go back home (doing my PhD in the Northeast).

I would NOT stay in any unfunded PhD program, but especially not a statistics program. Statistics is in such high demand nowadays that you could easily leave with a master's and get a job; I just feel like a PhD in that field should definitely be funded. Were I you I'd definitely quit and go after a PhD in biostatistics or bioinformatics. Probably easier to get into a biostatistics program and then do some bioinformatics research during the program, and then do a post-doc in bioinformatics.

I also only took the GRE once and received a 6. Really, you are not going to write anything like what you would actually write in graduate school or even a good undergraduate paper. It's a variation on the simple 5-paragraph essay you learned to write in high school. It's a bit ridiculous, but basically you'll have an introduction paragraph, 3-5 good body paragraphs each with an example supporting your argument (even in the issue one), and then a conclusion paragraph that sums everything up. I agree with the first poster that the one variation on the simple 5-paragraph essay is that you definitely should present a counterargument to your argument, and then dismantle it. That makes your argument stronger. I also would like to add that you can certainly make up facts. Passion and interest does matter - my essay topic was on science education or science research or something of that nature, and I am a scientist. It didn't require foreknowledge, but the fact that I HAD some foreknowledge definitely helped in crafting my essay. However, when I couldn't remember exact quotes, dates, or people, I fudged it. They don't check for accuracy; they check for argumentation and clarity.

Self-selection has a lot to do with this. Students who have money and connections often go to top 50 schools with the intention of going to graduate school, or they develop those intentions through research work and classwork during college. Many students who go to public universities and universities unranked by U.S. News (and I don't think professors are following U.S. News rankings, but moreso that the U.S. News ranks sometimes seem to parallel top programs in certain fields) don't have any intention of going to graduate school and don't develop those intentions through the sometimes huge introductory lecture courses that they have to take. I went to a small liberal arts college of about 2300 students and about 100 psychology majors - but about 30% of us went on to graduate programs following college. It is not a top 50 institution; it is in the top 100 though. Like some other SLAC students have mentioned, my advisor was not very well known, but I worked closely with her for 2.5 years and got a lot of individual attention and mentorship - as well as research training through a great undergraduate fellowship program - that wouldn't have necessarily have been available to me if I had, say, come to my Ivy League graduate institution for undergrad. The undergrads in my lab do not work directly with our PI; they work with the grad students. It also depends a lot on the program. I am in two departments. The psychology department is a lot more prestige-conscious; the students come from top schools generally. The public health department is not so much; I can't really remember my cohort's exact undergraduate schools, but only one or two of them come from schools that are top (and I'm talking about Michigan, not Brown. I don't think anyone in my PH cohort went to an Ivy or anything like that).

I think the main trouble is that while I come with a structure in mind, usually in the form of a series of carefully planned questions that lead the students to the larger idea or theme, the discussion doesn't necessarily take that route. This always happens. The discussion is rarely going to go the way that you've planned it. I agree with runonsentence in that you should have a short list of key takeaways that have to be covered. Ask your questions, and direct your students' conversation, around those takeaways. This may be three major points. It also may be a good idea to at least hint if not directly state to your student that there are major themes in the work that need to be talked about. One problem I realized from taking a mixed seminar with undergrads (although I wasn't teaching it at the time) is that undergrads tend to look at discussion seminars as a chance to talk about what they liked about pieces, or their own personal experiences related to articles, or (at best) to summarize articles. It takes them a little while to recognize that you're not trying to summarize but synthesize, analyze, extract information from the articles. If you directly state that there are three major themes in such and such piece and then ask them what they think those are, you can start to foster discussion and then it won't come as a shock when you curtail their story about how they went to Hawaii last summer and saw that art piece in their hotel room. I always thought that reader response papers - 1-2 pages of reaction to the material that were "lightly graded" in check-minus/check/check-plus fashion - were very useful. Not only did it ensure that you were reading the material, it also gave the professor the heads-up on what people were pulling from the material and how deeply they were engaging with it. Another tactic that a professor used is using our university's Wiki space. We were required to post one 1-2 paragraph response to the readings AND to respond to one other student's response to the readings. Then they read it and had an idea of what we had been thinking about,

I also have my students sit in the front for the first 10 minutes or so, and discuss questions and issues about the week's homework assignment or the lectures that were given (labs follow lecture). Then I allow them to disperse to their computers. And as for the other point by adinutzyc, if they do not want to learn the software they are free to not come to my class. Nobody is forcing them to show up or even to register for this class, but if they are going to come and expect to get the credit they need to be paying attention. It seems like no big deal from your end, but when you actually are faced with a crew of 20 people if even 5 of them are not paying attention it disrupts the class. First of all, those 5 are likely to miss some material, which means they look up 15 minutes later and ask me a question I've already answered when everyone else is paying attention. That keeps me from moving forward. Not only that, but the 5 multiply quickly. If students don't see us addressing Facebooking during class with the first person, it quickly snowballs. They begin to think that I don't really care if they are paying attention (or don't notice) and more begin doing it. Not to mention that there are always those students who will mess around online, get their first midterm back, and then go complain to the dean about how they didn't do well. That creates hassle for me and the professor. They are "presumably" grown-ups, but I TA at a university where the majority of undergrads are 18-22 years old and just out of high school. They are still learning what it means to be a grown-up. They are also students who are used to showing up and getting an A just for showing up. As their TA - and a future teacher, hopefully - I feel that it's also my responsibility to show them that that's not going to fly anymore. Besides all of that, it's disrespectful and annoying. If you are such an adult who doesn't want to pay attention in class, go do something else. Nobody's forcing you to be here.

The other thing is that they may not be loners - they may just have other things going on, other friends, other hobbies, other interests. There were a couple of people on my cohort who always turned down invitations out, but it was simply because they worked, or had children or spouses, or they were from the city and knew a lot of other people and so didn't feel as connected. Now that I'm a fourth year, I get a lot of the "we never see you" comments that people at my stage got when I was new. I'm definitely not a loner, but I have a different circle of friends, and I prefer not to do my work in the windowless research room that's 30 minutes away from where I live when I can use the beautiful libraries on the main campus.

1. Setting deadlines, and telling those deadlines to other people. Then I feel accountable and guilty if I don't make them. 2. I'm in public health, so reading news stories about the mess health care is in my country helps. 3. Looking at dream jobs. Then realizing that I have to do stuff to get them.

"well, didn't you know? Didn't you do your research?" Of course they did. Most of us are entering research-intensive programs. Of course we did our research. When people say that, they are usually referring to things that it is possible to know before you go - like the fact that no one at your school is doing research in your area, or the wonderful professor you wanted to work with is actually not taking any students in his lab, or that Professor X's research interests on the website are actually her interests from 5 years ago and she's doing something else now. It's not possible to know that you are in a cohort full of axe murderers or that professor with the interesting interests is a dick, and people normally don't admonish them for that. There is a certain impossibility of "being sure before you go." While I do encourage all prospective graduate students to learn as much as they possibly can before committing, who amongst us can claim that they really truly knew the intensity of the loneliness, the depth of internal doubt, the purgatory of unstructured time? Nobody. When folks say "know before you go," they're not talking about knowing that you want stay in graduate school. They're saying be sure that you want and need to go. Some people dislike research and want to get a PhD. Don't go! Some people don't like to write papers but they want to ride out the recession. Don't go! Some people aren't sure what it is they actually want to study or do in life. Don't go! I don't disagree that there are some things that it is impossible to know before coming to graduate school, but I DO disagree that it is common for graduate students to say "didn't you know?" to a person thinking about leaving. When I decided to leave my program (before I changed my mind), I posted on a number of forums and talked to colleagues. Not one person said that to me, not here, not LJ, not in person. They expressed sympathy, talked about how difficult the life is here, and gave me advice. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I don't think it happens often when it's not warranted.