Jacqueline Kory-Westlund

Why is having kids, moving out of the city, and following an unusual path a waste?

"She's worried you'll waste your degree."

My friend (let's call her Anna) relays this message to me as coming from another friend, but I can tell from her tone of voice that she's clearly worrying about the same potential waste. That makes the question doubly irritating. As if pretending to be merely the messenger could disguise the passive-aggressive way of questioning my life decisions. Decisions which, I might add, I'm pretty darn happy with.

The primary decisions in question are these:

First, I had a baby in grad school. I'm growing another tiny human now, in fact—I gave my defense talk while 6 month pregnant! Evidently, instead of seeing this as a badass feat of time management and life balance, Anna took it as ultra-clear proof that childbearing, not science, is my ultimate goal in life, since the two clearly aren't compatible. As if there aren't amazing examples to the contrary, like two of my committee members, who are inspiring women with three kids apiece.

Second, while finishing my last semester of writing, I moved to a town that Anna has frequently referred to as "the middle of nowhere," despite it having a regional population in the 200,000's, as well as a branch of a state university. Maybe she thinks "middle of nowhere" really refers to how far you are from a large number of appropriately ethnic restaurants? Being out west, up in the skinny part of Idaho with the abundance of beautiful clear lakes, pine-filled mountainsides, and a peaceful pace of life has been wonderful. Less stressful. It's a nice place for writing, and a nice place for families.

And then, there's the somewhat non-traditional plan for my post-MIT life. It's not perfectly mapped out, but it will certainly involve my husband and I homeschooling/unschooling our kids, coming up with flexible work arrangements so we can travel more and spend more time with family, and having a high degree of independence. My husband's current software-as-a-service company is a good start. We have some other ideas, too—after all, leaving MIT and Boston doesn't mean I'm leaving research or a creative, intellectual life.

Given those decisions, well, of course! Getting a degree is a waste! If my life plan does not follow the norm, if it does not include seeking out a high-paying industry job in a big city or a prestigious professorship at an R1 school while placing my kids in daycare and coercive schooling for upwards of 14000 hours, then of course, I'm wasting my degree.

But isn't a big part of the point of grad school learning? Learning about project management. Developing writing skills. Doing independent research. Asking interesting questions. Pursuing ideas. Managing time, balancing multiple commitments, and being involved in many activities I care about. Whether or not I then use those skills to pursue any of the most common paths out of grad school isn't the point. What I learned will still serve me well in future endeavors—writing papers and essays, consulting, hiking in the mountains, self-funding our startups, blogging, gardening, reading philosophy, advocating for self-directed education, or spending time with the people who really matter to me.

The implicit assumption Anna had that "wasting my degree" is even possible is, frankly, an insult. She identifies as a feminist. Isn't feminism supposed to be about empowering and supporting women in making life choices that are right for them?

Grad school was one step that was right for me. Having kids I actually spent time with, moving out of the city, pursuing whatever creative, intellectual, maternal, or domestic activities I happen to want to do next...? Also right for me. Sorry to disappoint, Anna.

—

This article originally appeared on the MIT Graduate Student Blog, March 2019

So, what do new grad students need to know?

I'm a new graduate student.

As such, I just spent the past week being properly oriented for the journey I'm about to undertake. It'll be (in the words of various orientation presenters) amazing, hard, depressing, enlightening, enriching ... basically, a grab bag of adjectives! In between the heartwarming-if-cliche welcome speeches, excited conversations with fellow newbies, and getting lost in the tunnels under MIT, I'd like to think I picked up some useful tidbits of information.

Expectations and communication

The biggest thing is to communicate. Surprise! Who would've thought that the key to successfully working with your colleagues, classmates, labmates, and advisor would be to communicate with them? The top three pieces of advice:

1. Tell your advisor/classmates/colleagues what to expect of you.
2. Ask what to expect of your advisor/classmates/colleagues.
3. Be your own advocate.

For example, if you run marathons and thus go for a long run every day at noon, tell your advisor and labmates this. That way, they don't expect to find you in the lab when you're out running. They might tell you that they have three kids and leave work every day at 6pm sharp -- so don't schedule meetings after 5pm. Or that they're so not a morning person, so never expect to see them working before noon -- but if you need something at 3am, they're the person to contact.

It's not just about when to expect to see people in the lab. Ask about communication styles. Does this person like emails? Phone calls? Meetings? Texts? Some people prefer a quick five-minute conversation in person to a lengthy email exchange. Ask what this person's expectations are about you. Does your advisor expect to see you in the lab eight hours a day? Does your labmate expect you to help out on project XYZ? Ask questions whenever you're unsure of something. After all, every relationship is different. So what works for this relationship?

The key is to share enough relevant information with each other to know what to expect. Be up front about who you are, what you do with your time, and what you want to get out of the situation or the relationship. This way, no one's left wondering. If everyone knows what to expect, you won't get into a situation where someone's upset because they didn't get what they were expecting.

Communicate both when things are going well and when they're not. If you're working on a project with someone, give regular updates on your progress -- whether you've achieved awesome results, or are stuck in a rut. Sometimes, the person you're working with can help you out of the rut. I worked with someone once who said, if you don't update me, I'll assume you're not working. While that's not true of everyone, make sure the relevant people know what you're up to.

If you remember one thing, remember this: People assume too much. People will build up their own image of you whether or not you tell them anything. So be proactive. Be your own advocate. Make sure they build up an image that correctly reflects reality.

Other advice

1. Leave your lab. Make a point of getting out of your lab, out of your department, and meeting people. Meet people from everywhere! You can meet people through campus-wide events, lectures, your classes, clubs, outside activities... pretty much anywhere there are people, really.

2. Leave your comfort zone. Try new things. Try hard things. Learn.

3. It'll be hard, but that's okay. The orientation events I attended had a common theme—grad school is hard. Grad school is supposed to be hard. You may not be motivated every step of the way. The key is persistence and perseverance. Find ways of keeping yourself on track. And:

4. Take care of yourself. Don't put the rest of your life on hold. Leave the lab once in a while. Do outside activities—whether that's walking your dog, spending time with your family, or backpacking in Kenya. What do you enjoy besides your research? Make time for it. It'll help keep you sane.

Your expectations define your perceptions

It's raining.

Fat, corpulent water globules cascade from the sky. Plop, plop. A drop, and a few of its compatriots, dribble down the inside of your collar. They're cold. Wet, and unpleasant. The drops slither down your neck.

"Take my cloak," he [Lord Golden] suggested. "It would only get as wet as the rest of me. I'll change into dry things when I get back." [Fitz] He didn't tell me to be careful, but it was in his look. I nodded to it, steeled myself, and walked out into the pouring rain. It was every bit as cold and unpleasant as I expected it to be. I stood, eyes squinted and shoulders hunched to it, peering out through the gray downpour. Then I took a breath and resolutely changed my expectations. As Black Rolf had once shown me, much discomfort was based on human expectations. As a man, I expected to be warm and dry when I chose to be. Animals did not harbor any such beliefs. So it was raining. That part of me that was wolf could accept that. Rain meant being cold and wet. Once I acknowledged that and stopped comparing it to what I wished it to be, the conditions were far more tolerable. I set out.

--- Fool's Errand, Robin Hobb

Keep it in perspective

Keep what in perspective? Well, everything, but particularly the bad things, the frustrating things, and the irritating things. So it's raining. So you cut your finger slicing potatoes. So it's ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit and humid. You are in some set of circumstances and you wish to be in some other set of circumstances. You wish to be dry. You wish your finger didn't hurt. You wish to be cool and comfortable without drops of sweat sliding down your neck.

Unfortunately, we don't live in a world where wishes change the world's physical properties. We have limited control over our environments. We have slightly more control over our reactions to our environments.

"Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes that see reality." ---Nikos Kazantzakis

What you expect significantly influences how you will perceive your circumstances. The thing is, a lot of times, we don't explicitly set out our expectations. You leave the air-conditioned building with the continued implicit expectation that you'll be cool and comfortable, and when that blast of muggy, sticky air hits you, it hits you twice as hard because you're expecting something else.

What can you do about this? Try explicitly setting up your expectations. It may help prevent the disappointment of being wrong (and feeling unpleasant). Instead of thinking "Aaugh, I'm getting wet and the rain is cold, why can't I be warm and dry?" try thinking "Okay, I'm going out in the rain so I'll be wet and cold. That's just how rain is." Keep in mind that this works both ways--sure, you can set yourself up to expect to feel better about your circumstances, but you can also easily set yourself up to expect to feel worse.

As a final note, I'm sharing to a quote I occasionally turn to as a reminder to keep things in perspective, from Nick Hornby's High Fidelity (on the subject of pop music):

"Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music?"

Are you miserable because of your circumstances, or are your circumstances miserable because of your misery?

Improbability and confidence

Scene: One of those big college gyms, set up with fencing strips from wall to wall. People everywhere, fencers shouting and scoring machines buzzing, referees struggling to be heard above the din. I'm about to start my next 5-point bout. "You've got this!" my teammate says. An optimistic pat on my shoulder accompanies the words.

Stop right there.

I don't "got this." I won't have "got this" until the score is 5-something in my favor. Sure, it may be improbable that I would lose the bout, given my opponent. My teammate was merely expressing confidence in my abilities (and I appreciate that). But the way the encouraging statement was phrased expressed an assured certainty that I personally cannot associate with future events. The outcome of a bout--the outcome of anything, really--is in no way fixed until it's over.

Maybe that's just semantics and a personal irritant. Expectations can, and do, go a long way toward fixing an outcome.

No harm in faking it

During a lesson with a coach last year, I was having a lot of trouble executing a particular action. He stopped the lesson. He looked me in the eye, and said, "Repeat after me: 'Hells yeah I can do this action!'"

His intent: Increased confidence. If you expect to succeed, your chances of success improve dramatically.

I repeated the phrase, as directed. I then had to repeat it several more times before I achieved the desired level of confidence in my tone. The action I was practicing worked better after that, though. I was a little more convinced I could do it.

Of course, just being more confident won't win a bout. Expecting to win--not doubting that you can win--still needs to be paired with good performance. If you think you'll beat your opponents because your opponents just isn't good enough to beat you, well, you still have to do your part and be good enough to beat them. Over-confidence sets you up for disappointment. The reverse is true, too: If you're convinced you'll fail, guess what, you probably will.

Another sports analogy Presentations!

We're not all athletes here, so I have another example! Have you ever had to stand up in front of a roomful of people and talk coherently and engagingly? Presentations: the bane of our existence.

One class, three folks and I were going to give a half hour presentation. The morning of, our professor asked us if we were ready. I told him, of course! It'll be great. "What if you stuff up?" he asked us. "What if your voice squeaks?" No, I said, it'd be fine. If my voice squeaks, my voice squeaks. I didn't let the possibility of anything other than "this will go fine" enter my mind. "Can't faze you, can I," he said.

Truth was, I could be fazed. Like many people, if I stopped to think about it, I'd forget what I was saying, talk too fast, stumble over words--I have experience with that. But in this case, I was remembering all those little bits of good advice I'd been given. Hells yeah, I could do this. Or my dad's advice: "Act like you're supposed to be there, and no one will question you." Act like you know what you're doing and everyone will think you do--including yourself.

Conclusion

Confidence is good. Over-confidence is bad. Go figure.