Trying not to let coursework overtake my schedule

[starofdawn]

GradCafe has provided a lot of insight on how to be a productive graduate student. One valuable piece of advice I learned before starting is to not let classes/coursework be your priority; research should be your priority. I have tried to keep this in mind during this past quarter.

 

It's proven to be more difficult to implement. So many more hours of my time are devoted to coursework than to research. I know that grades aren't super important, but everyone in my graduate school classes are motivated and hard-working, the homework assignments/projects are challenging, and it seems half of everyone is not even performing research (at least not yet). I feel some more internalized pressure to do outstandingly well because I would like to talk to my advisor about switching from a MS (thesis) to a PhD track.

 

I don't know what my question is exactly.... am I having a hard time letting go of my GPA-perfection-obsession that I had in my undergraduate years? Has anyone else felt this way when they started graduate school? Can anyone provide insight on letting go of grade-obsession? Or am I right to push myself hard to get good grades?

[fuzzylogician]

Well norms and expectations vary widely across fields and institutions and even within the same program, across years (and even PIs, but never mind that). If you are in your first year, at least in my field students will mostly be expected to concentrate on their coursework. They don't really start thinking about research until the spring, and even then it's secondary to classes. Only over the summer and gradually during the second year does the focus begin to shift. So, someone in my program who was ignoring classes for research would probably at some point have a talk with their advisor where the advisor would explain that at the moment the student should concentrate on classwork, to make sure that they are getting the background they need to build research projects on in later years. I am not sure what is expected of you in your program, but if you are not sure, I think you should have a conversation with your advisor about that. I think it would also probably help you a lot to ask in particular what is expected of a student who is interested in switching into the PhD program. The important question is not (just) grades, though, it's how much time you should be spending on classes vs. research. Based on how much time you are expected to spend on classes, you can try and figure out how good a job you can do on your coursework, and if you can't do it all (which no one can, btw), you can start to think what you can cut back on: skim but don't read all the readings, or don't completely solve the extra difficult last question on the problem set, or whatever it is that you need to adjust so you're spending your time as you should be. I think the adjustment is more about thinking strategically about what you *need* to achieve and what you *want* to learn from your classes, and how you can manage your time to accomplish that.