Advice for grad students: own it.

Recently, the always brilliant Jeremy Yoder put up a fantastic post with some unsolicited advice for getting through grad school. Then, he (on the advice of the ever-infallible Scicurious), decided to make a carnival of it: "Knowing What I Know Now". He put out the call for everyone's best tips. I happen to have been thinking a lot about this lately, and am more than happy to share my experiences. What follows is a mix of advice and just what happened with me, for better or worse. Hopefully it helps. Before I get started, though, let me explain where I am in this whole process. Right now I'm still in the thick of it. I'm three and a half years into my doctorate degree, with an approved proposal and my comprehensive exams looming around the corner. So this isn't advice from a veteran, per se—it's advice from a fellow soldier, down in the trenches right now, still fighting the good fight. Maybe I'll have different advice in a few years, but for now, this is what I know. First off: don't start until you're ready. I remember feeling the pressure junior and senior year of undergrad. Everyone was talking about what programs were best for what, what advisors to chase or avoid, what GPA you needed to get in—it was all anyone talked about. Have you figured out what schools you're applying to yet? Have you contacted potential advisors? What research do you think you're going to do? The worst was one day senior year when I went to the movies, and upon presenting my student ID to get a discount, the teller said "I went to Eckerd, too! Graduated two years ago. What are you majoring in?" When I said Marine Science, she cheerfully replied "ME TOO!" It was like a punch in the stomach. It really felt like those were my options: either get into grad school somewhere, or look forward to a dazzling future selling movie tickets. The pressure was on. Trouble was, I was still very much lost. Yes, I had research experience, but of all the things my undergraduate research project taught me, the most obvious was that I hated counting mangrove leaves. I was not the extreme field biologist that my advisors were. Similarly, while I'd dabbled in a few other research experiences through volunteering and internships, nothing felt like it fit. I liked a few things, but did I like them enough to spend the next five years doing them? To bet my career on them? As senior year came and went, I made the scariest decision of my life: I didn't apply to grad school. Instead, I applied to jobs. I hoped that getting a little more experience before committing myself to a degree program would help me figure out what kind of scientist I wanted to be. The little tastes of molecular biology that I had gotten in my lab courses was enough for me to think maybe, just maybe, that was the field for me. In the end, I spent two years as a research assistant studying adenosine signaling in heart cells. Guess what? The biomedical field wasn't right for me either.