What can I do to make research palatable in grad school?
February 3, 2022 9:23 PM Subscribe
So, I got into grad school, arrived here in Canada almost 6 months ago to start my master's in CS. The first semester went well, I got A+ on all my courses and I'm nearly done with the first part of my research for my lab.
I initially came here delighted to learn new things. I was very motivated the first semester and put in 120% when I got here. This is an opportunity and I intend to make the most of it. More importantly the master's is a stepping stone to a grander goal, staying here, permanently. I am at an advantageous position. My English level is near native and my French is close enough to getting to near native. Finishing the masters will give me all I need to proceed with PR.
Nonetheless, I am finding it very difficult to do things these days. Research is hard, I don't like it and I feel like I'm wasting my time with it. Ultimately, I want to get a job and run a business, but frankly I often wonder how research will help me do that. I need to get it done anyway, I accepted this beforehand knowing full well what I was getting into. Even so, it's hard and I don't know how to get through it.
It's also difficult at times for me to accept that they accepted me here. I often wonder if my lab just accepted me because they had no one else and whether I belong here at all. I see what people in other labs are doing and often it seems more exciting. Both of my supervisors are at the top of their fields, with both of them probably being the top professors in the CS department. As a matter of fact, they're both so good that they've devised a plan for all of us to be graduated in October. A year before most of my peers.
One of my supervisors has reassured me that they've planned all this out, that we are not the first and that I've got nothing to worry about.
This is all probably true but I don't know how to believe it or what to do to move forward. I'm hoping someone can give me some advice.
I initially came here delighted to learn new things. I was very motivated the first semester and put in 120% when I got here. This is an opportunity and I intend to make the most of it. More importantly the master's is a stepping stone to a grander goal, staying here, permanently. I am at an advantageous position. My English level is near native and my French is close enough to getting to near native. Finishing the masters will give me all I need to proceed with PR.
Nonetheless, I am finding it very difficult to do things these days. Research is hard, I don't like it and I feel like I'm wasting my time with it. Ultimately, I want to get a job and run a business, but frankly I often wonder how research will help me do that. I need to get it done anyway, I accepted this beforehand knowing full well what I was getting into. Even so, it's hard and I don't know how to get through it.
It's also difficult at times for me to accept that they accepted me here. I often wonder if my lab just accepted me because they had no one else and whether I belong here at all. I see what people in other labs are doing and often it seems more exciting. Both of my supervisors are at the top of their fields, with both of them probably being the top professors in the CS department. As a matter of fact, they're both so good that they've devised a plan for all of us to be graduated in October. A year before most of my peers.
One of my supervisors has reassured me that they've planned all this out, that we are not the first and that I've got nothing to worry about.
This is all probably true but I don't know how to believe it or what to do to move forward. I'm hoping someone can give me some advice.
I also did a research CS master's and struggled a lot with it.
Trust your advisors. They really have seen a lot of students go through this and what seems like a new and impossible process to you is relatively routine for them. Everyone I know who did a CS master's struggled with imposter syndrome and everyone graduated.
Also almost nobody I knew who got a CS master's actually did research after, we all went to work in industry. So you might be more normal than you think in your doubts about research.
Unlike with a PhD there's no requirement that your master's thesis doesn't necessarily have to make new discoveries in the field. That makes it a lot more achievable.
posted by oranger at 4:04 AM on February 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
Trust your advisors. They really have seen a lot of students go through this and what seems like a new and impossible process to you is relatively routine for them. Everyone I know who did a CS master's struggled with imposter syndrome and everyone graduated.
Also almost nobody I knew who got a CS master's actually did research after, we all went to work in industry. So you might be more normal than you think in your doubts about research.
Unlike with a PhD there's no requirement that your master's thesis doesn't necessarily have to make new discoveries in the field. That makes it a lot more achievable.
posted by oranger at 4:04 AM on February 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
Best answer: Ultimately, I want to get a job and run a business, but frankly I often wonder how research will help me do that.
It seems like the primary way research will allow you to get a job and run a business is by allowing you to complete this masters' degree (and thus further your goal of getting PR).
I mean, yeah it would be great if it were also fulfilling and helped you learn skills that would translate to your future work, but sometimes grad school is a hoop that you need to jump through and there's only so much you can do to make it enjoyable or useful (I'm not saying you shouldn't try to get as much out of it as you can! just that you should keep your expectations low).
I have a masters degree in library science, and although there wasn't a research component I took a lot of courses/wrote a lot of papers that were pretty useless and felt like a waste of time and didn't help me acquire the skills that I actually used when I was a librarian. But those classes did help me achieve my goal of becoming a librarian, because I needed that degree to become a librarian (eventually my goals shifted and now I'm not even a librarian, but whatever).
Also one of the tasks I did while I worked in libraries was checking people's theses for formatting before they were sent to the binder, and although I was not a subject matter expert on any of the subjects covered in these theses, I feel pretty confident stating that the probably most masters' theses are trivial and a lot of people just stone-cold half-ass them.
So, yeah, this isn't the most fun, but you're probably where you need to be right now. You need to get that "has Canadian masters degree" box ticked, and it's likely that the easiest way for you to accomplish that is by sticking this out for another... 16 months? Something like that? You can do this!
posted by mskyle at 5:13 AM on February 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
It seems like the primary way research will allow you to get a job and run a business is by allowing you to complete this masters' degree (and thus further your goal of getting PR).
I mean, yeah it would be great if it were also fulfilling and helped you learn skills that would translate to your future work, but sometimes grad school is a hoop that you need to jump through and there's only so much you can do to make it enjoyable or useful (I'm not saying you shouldn't try to get as much out of it as you can! just that you should keep your expectations low).
I have a masters degree in library science, and although there wasn't a research component I took a lot of courses/wrote a lot of papers that were pretty useless and felt like a waste of time and didn't help me acquire the skills that I actually used when I was a librarian. But those classes did help me achieve my goal of becoming a librarian, because I needed that degree to become a librarian (eventually my goals shifted and now I'm not even a librarian, but whatever).
Also one of the tasks I did while I worked in libraries was checking people's theses for formatting before they were sent to the binder, and although I was not a subject matter expert on any of the subjects covered in these theses, I feel pretty confident stating that the probably most masters' theses are trivial and a lot of people just stone-cold half-ass them.
So, yeah, this isn't the most fun, but you're probably where you need to be right now. You need to get that "has Canadian masters degree" box ticked, and it's likely that the easiest way for you to accomplish that is by sticking this out for another... 16 months? Something like that? You can do this!
posted by mskyle at 5:13 AM on February 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
Something to consider (this is my serious advice): It's the middle of winter in Canada. Are you potentially at all experiencing some effects of seasonal affective disorder? I've found that mine hits earlier in the fall now that I'm at a higher, colder latitude, and I'm not even as far north as you are. That plus the ongoing pandemic have made it really difficult to concentrate. It definitely hasn't hit me as hard this year as it did last year, though, and I credit outings with friends and sustained dancing for a few hours most weekends with improving that. If you haven't been tending to your physiology, it's possible you might need to pay more attention to that in your new environment.
posted by limeonaire at 6:27 AM on February 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by limeonaire at 6:27 AM on February 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
Best answer: I once saw a description of the creative process:
1. This is fun!
2. This is hard.
3. This is shit. I am shit.
4. Maybe I can do this.
5. I did it! Now I can have fun again.
I have yet to do any large, meaningful project without Step 3. I have yet to do any small project without Step 3, only with small projects, Step 3 goes by quickly. In doing their projects, all my friends and family members have hit Step 3 every.single.time. I completed a doctorate last summer and a recursive loop of Steps 2, 3, and 4 lasted for years.
Your advisors have done much sustained work, and have observed many other people working, and Step 3 is a requirement that everybody goes through. You, my friend, are at Step 3. John Bunyan wrote about it in 1678 as the Slough of Despond. Winston Churchill said, "When you're going through hell, keep going." The only way out is through. There are tons of clichés, aphorisms, and proverbs about what you're going through because it is a universal, archetypal experience.
That doesn't make it any easier for you, I'm sure.
Your advisors, if they're good at what they do and are also good at articulating what they do, may be able to help scratch a fissure in the wall of despair you're staring at, that you can enlarge to a window, and eventually a door through to the other side. But even if they can't, know that your own persistence through Step 3 will also work.
Plus, what limeonaire said. I was going to say the same thing, but they said it first. Canadian winters are hard, especially your first one.
posted by angiep at 6:57 AM on February 4, 2022 [8 favorites]
1. This is fun!
2. This is hard.
3. This is shit. I am shit.
4. Maybe I can do this.
5. I did it! Now I can have fun again.
I have yet to do any large, meaningful project without Step 3. I have yet to do any small project without Step 3, only with small projects, Step 3 goes by quickly. In doing their projects, all my friends and family members have hit Step 3 every.single.time. I completed a doctorate last summer and a recursive loop of Steps 2, 3, and 4 lasted for years.
Your advisors have done much sustained work, and have observed many other people working, and Step 3 is a requirement that everybody goes through. You, my friend, are at Step 3. John Bunyan wrote about it in 1678 as the Slough of Despond. Winston Churchill said, "When you're going through hell, keep going." The only way out is through. There are tons of clichés, aphorisms, and proverbs about what you're going through because it is a universal, archetypal experience.
That doesn't make it any easier for you, I'm sure.
Your advisors, if they're good at what they do and are also good at articulating what they do, may be able to help scratch a fissure in the wall of despair you're staring at, that you can enlarge to a window, and eventually a door through to the other side. But even if they can't, know that your own persistence through Step 3 will also work.
Plus, what limeonaire said. I was going to say the same thing, but they said it first. Canadian winters are hard, especially your first one.
posted by angiep at 6:57 AM on February 4, 2022 [8 favorites]
Best answer: If your supervisors are at the top of their fields and probably the top professors in the CS department, then they have their pick of grad students. They chose you because you are the best of the best: a straight A+ average in your first semester of grad school! Near-native English! Do you have any idea how rare that is in a CS master's program? And the fact that they have a plan to have you and your co-students finish by October illustrates how much confidence they have in your ability to do it. In other words, objectively you rock, even if it doesn't always feel like it.
A perspective on research: think of it as significant experiential training in project management, which will be of great benefit to you when you get a job and/or run a business. You are learning how to plan, manage, and execute what's most likely the largest project you have ever run, with the most significant deliverable (your thesis) you have ever delivered. The fact that it is hard means you're "building muscle". The skills you learn (with the help of your supervisors) in dealing with the challenges you're currently facing can be directly applied to future business-related projects.
A concrete suggestion: find an academic in your department whom you can talk to one-on-one about your current feelings about research: maybe one of your supervisors, maybe the grad advisor for your department, maybe the faculty member who coordinates the co-op program (suggesting this because of the business angle). Just being able to talk to someone (who's had experience mentoring CS grad students) about these things may help you process them and get some reassurance that you're doing all right.
Also, if you think it would help, see if you can get a one-on-one meeting with one of your supervisors (rather than the whole-lab meeting) to ask some broader questions about how your research project fits in to the grander scheme of CS research. This might help with the feeling that you're wasting your time with it.
posted by heatherlogan at 11:55 AM on February 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
A perspective on research: think of it as significant experiential training in project management, which will be of great benefit to you when you get a job and/or run a business. You are learning how to plan, manage, and execute what's most likely the largest project you have ever run, with the most significant deliverable (your thesis) you have ever delivered. The fact that it is hard means you're "building muscle". The skills you learn (with the help of your supervisors) in dealing with the challenges you're currently facing can be directly applied to future business-related projects.
A concrete suggestion: find an academic in your department whom you can talk to one-on-one about your current feelings about research: maybe one of your supervisors, maybe the grad advisor for your department, maybe the faculty member who coordinates the co-op program (suggesting this because of the business angle). Just being able to talk to someone (who's had experience mentoring CS grad students) about these things may help you process them and get some reassurance that you're doing all right.
Also, if you think it would help, see if you can get a one-on-one meeting with one of your supervisors (rather than the whole-lab meeting) to ask some broader questions about how your research project fits in to the grander scheme of CS research. This might help with the feeling that you're wasting your time with it.
posted by heatherlogan at 11:55 AM on February 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
A perspective on research: think of it as significant experiential training in project management, which will be of great benefit to you when you get a job and/or run a business. You are learning how to plan, manage, and execute what's most likely the largest project you have ever run, with the most significant deliverable (your thesis) you have ever delivered.
Oo, to this point, this makes me think that if you aren't using any software already to manage things, you could probably benefit from literal project management software. E.g., you could try doing a rough sort of scrum approach for yourself and/or any collaborators and spin up a Trello board and a backlog of epics (larger deliverables) that can be subdivided into tasks and stories to plan, complete, and track progress on each week (sprint, in scrum terms). Taking a scrum approach would both help you get the work done and also give you a valuable practical framework that might facilitate managing your future business endeavors.
posted by limeonaire at 1:16 PM on February 4, 2022
Oo, to this point, this makes me think that if you aren't using any software already to manage things, you could probably benefit from literal project management software. E.g., you could try doing a rough sort of scrum approach for yourself and/or any collaborators and spin up a Trello board and a backlog of epics (larger deliverables) that can be subdivided into tasks and stories to plan, complete, and track progress on each week (sprint, in scrum terms). Taking a scrum approach would both help you get the work done and also give you a valuable practical framework that might facilitate managing your future business endeavors.
posted by limeonaire at 1:16 PM on February 4, 2022
Looking at your askme history, you seem to have some serious issues with (a) deciding to enter academia (b) where to go for grad school (c) navigating grad school politics (d) understanding the purpose of graduate school research.
Are you sure graduate school is for you? From an academic with a PhD, perhaps it's time to cut your losses.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 7:25 PM on February 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
Are you sure graduate school is for you? From an academic with a PhD, perhaps it's time to cut your losses.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 7:25 PM on February 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Looking at your askme history, you seem to have some serious issues with (a) deciding to enter academia (b) where to go for grad school (c) navigating grad school politics (d) understanding the purpose of graduate school research.
That's not really an option that I will be considering.
posted by Tarsonis10 at 9:51 PM on February 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
That's not really an option that I will be considering.
posted by Tarsonis10 at 9:51 PM on February 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
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Not grad school degree track like that. But CS major (lol) working for the University Computing Services as work-study. For 4 years. They offered me a job that I missed because it was in HR speak but was "don't leave, we'll just hire you". I was totally failing classes and working so much to keep myself alive that that was the reasoning I gave to my last boss when I left. "duh, we'll just hire you full time with benefits". Missed it.
A decade later I started working at that same university in the now renamed ITS department and skyrocketed ridiculously into high level management still having those same sort of "I don't feel worthy but they keep saying (even sometimes pleading) yes please we got this".
In the university CS staff world. I've been on both sides of this story.
Had I only known or trusted or understood that first offer.... My Imposter Syndrome ass would have started working for the university a decade earlier. I just took a long sabbatical.
Hope the actual academic side is about the same way.
Not the first time, not the last time, we know things about you that you're missing, you should probably stick it out.
Get this.... one of my grad student CS types of way back in 1989 in my first computing services job.... until a few years ago even after all the middle stuff was my direct boss. It's a lol worthy 30 year story.
Trust people who trust you. Believe people who believe you.
Trust your gut? Or maybe leave anyway and come back to it later?
posted by zengargoyle at 12:32 AM on February 4, 2022