"Any Advice for a Struggling Graduate Student?"

"My wife is a graduate student and she's really struggling," Larry said the first time I first met him.  It was clear he was struggling to help her carry the burden as well. 

She can't find an advisor, she lost her assistantship this semester, she doesn't have a topic.  All she does is work all the time or cry.  Do you have any advice for a struggling PhD student?"

That was two years ago.  Tonight Larry and his wife are taking us out to celebrate her upcoming graduation and job offer. 

Two years ago I had shared four counter-intuitive insights that had personally helped me when I was in a similar situation in my late 20s.

1. “Choose your best friend as your advisor.”

I heard this from a Med School professor friend who then said “And choose your older brother to be your second committee member, and choose your favorite uncle to be your third.”  

Some people tend to choose our dissertation committee based on who’s "most famous" or most connected in their department.  Instead, consider which professors most want you to graduate. [Read more] ​
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2. ​The ‘P’ in PhD stands for Perseverance.

The smartest and most talented people in PhD programs aren’t always the ones who graduate.  

The two most outrageously smartest people in my PhD program both quit the program​ after passing their comprehensive exams but once they started struggling with their dissertation.  (They also both went on to become outrageously successful without having graduated, so one might say they knew what they were doing when they left.)
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3. “It’s an N-period game.”

When I had to find a new advisor and defend a new dissertation proposal with four months notice, the game theory economist who gave me this advice was implying that there are a lot of second and third chances in academia as long as you keep swinging.  

​Related to this . . .
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4. Consider being a Visiting Professor

Suppose don’t get a good offer when you graduate from your PhD program (or you get turned down for tenure).  If you “settle” for a tenure-track at a school you’re not crazy about, you’ll be perceptually anchored to that type of school by both you and by others.  

​Instead, by taking a one or two year post as a visiting professor keeps you from getting perceptually anchored to a school you're not crazy about, and it gives you more time to strengthen your vita, and it lets you take another swing at the job marketing in another year or two.

​There's lots of advice a person could give, but these were four "counter-intuitive" insights that were real breakthroughs for me.  Maybe for Larry's wife too.  We might learn about that tonight.