Graduate school: the movie

T here is a series of documentaries trackmg a group of British schoolchildren every seven years, that began when they were all at age seven with a film called Seven-up, and has now passed age 35. The films were made with an explicit assumption that social class and innate character, properties already apparent in a seven-year old, would be the defining characteristics of the adult's life. While this assumption turned out to be partly true, the films also showed clearly how much of character seems to be determined by stage of life: in many ways, the 28-year olds were more similar to one another than they were to themselves at 21. These films have come to mind recently while thinlung about the progress of students through graduate school, which has come to seem remarkably consistent to me. The sad thing is that much of the process is traumatic to the student, yet completely predictable and expected. What is needed is a documentary for incoming graduate students, tracking some previous graduate class with interviews about once a year. Most undergraduates who decide to go into science do so with only a minimal idea of what graduate school is like, let alone what the whole career path will be. The first shock comes when they arrive at a new place and suddenly find themselves surrounded by other students with similar interests and equal talent. O n the one hand, it's stimulating. On the other hand, a student who was really one of a kind in college becomes one of a group, and even the ones from high-powered institutions find their classmates daunting. By the middle of the year, student after student has come to me expressing doubts about their abilities and performance. Each is sure that no other member of their class is concerned. My protests to the contrary are met with polite disbelief and occasional tears. I wish I had an instructive videotape instead of more Kleenex. Fortunately, the anxiety of the first year dissolves with choosing a thesis lab, and immersion into lab work. This period is the honeymoon of graduate school, characterized by enthusiasm for science, the lab, and the future for about a year. Then, problems. First, with the exception of those students who worked as technicians for a few years, it is rare to see a graduate student who is ready for full immersion into the life …