Some Modest Advice for Graduate Students

This is a hard stage to get through because you will feel guilty about not getting going on your own research. You will continually be asking yourself, "What am I doing here?" Be patient. This stage is critical to your personal development and to maintaining the flow of new ideas into science. Here you decide what constitutes an important problem. You must arrive at this decision independently for two reasons. First, if someone hands you a problem, you won't feel that it is yours, you won't have that possessiveness that makes you want to work on it, defend it, fight for it, and make it come out beautifully. Secondly, your PhD work will shape your future. It is your choice of a field in which to carry out a life's work. It is also important to the dynamic of science that your entry be well thought out. This is one point where you can start a whole new area of research. Remember, what sense does it make to start gathering data if you don't know and I mean really know why you're doing it?