There is one piece of knowledge I am sharing with new students this year. Some people seem to come in already knowing it, and other people take literally years to figure it out, but it’s pretty simple:
Your primary job in graduate school is not to impress your advisor. Likewise, your advisor’s primary job is not to evaluate you.
This is a big change from undergrad, where you’re constantly trying to get good grades in order to get in to grad school or get a great job, and your professors are the gateway to those grades and hence those jobs.
In grad school, though, your task is not to get good grades. Your task is something much harder: you need to do cutting-edge research, and literally push forward the extent of human knowledge. And here’s the tricky part: it is very hard to learn how to do this without letting your advisor know exactly what your strengths and weaknesses are, and letting he or she help you make the best of them.
If you do not let your advisor know that you’re not so hott at statistics, he will not be able to recommend that you take STAT 200 now, before you get to the tricky analysis part of the project you’re working on. If you do not let your advisor know that you’re not so hott at writing, she might put off reading your draft, not realizing that you might need a little extra help getting it into a publish-worthy state before the deadline.
Now, you who look ahead might be thinking, “You’re kidding - my advisor has to write me a letter of recommendation, and surely I will look bad if he/she knows what my weaknesses are.” If you’re thinking that, you’re totally missing out what your advisor’s motivation is in writing you that letter. Your advisor wants you to get the job, or the internship, or the fellowship. This is what I meant when I said your advisor’s primary job is not to evaluate you. Your advisors job when it comes to you is to produce a successful student. Your advisor wants to send strong students out into the world! So he or she will talk you up, as best as possible within the bounds of honesty, in their letter.
Finally, this piece of advice is not telling you to take it easy. Remember that your goal is to extend human knowledge here. That’s going to be terribly terribly difficult (and also fun). Let your advisor help you do it. And go get to work.
Disclaimer: I am a second year graduate student. While I’m still getting the hang of things, this is one of the things that’s been important to me in getting into the groove of graduate school.
