Today is my fourth real day of being a grad student, and I’m a little overwhelmed. I don’t have a specific research topic yet, and all I really know is that it will have something to do with Mercury’s thermal history and magnetic field. This project is supposed to be one of two that I work on during the next year, and then I present them for my Orals exam sometime during the second year. So it’s supposed to be something that I choose to work on and am really excited about, and I approve of that, really…but I don’t really know anything about Mercury yet. At least not enough to feel confident in choosing a decent project idea. I’ve been reading a bunch of papers, and I have a lot more to go. Hopefully by this afternoon I’ll have something to at least talk about with my adviser. Maybe he’ll even have suggestions.
Overall, I’m feeling kind of lost so far.
I really understand that lost feeling you mention; I felt that way my entire first year at MIT.
Maybe it’s trite, but I found the most important thing was to take the time to learn what I wanted. This is a famously difficult problem, but broad research can help. Go to lab seminars, talk to older grad students, meet every professor who’s secretary you can sweet talk into an appointment. Once I found the professor I liked best and research I was most interested in, everything else kind of fell into place. It was really tempting to just latch on to the first professor I met . . . and I did kind of earn myself a reputation in the department . . . but I’m glad I took the time to figure out what I really wanted to do in grad school.
I hope that helps, and have fun at Caltech!
you’ll be fine. you’ve been there like 4 days? very few people in my program know what they want to study. tho of course, i’m just a wimpy masters student.
but seriously, during general grad student orientation here they had an hour long presentation on finding an advisor, and they had two fac/student pairings who worked well, who talked about what worked and didn’t. and both students came in with some idea of their research, but much much less defined than you have. their topics got changed and refined over time, partly based on their advisor, and partly based on what they wanted. of course, i don’t want to compare my east coast liberal “you can study anything” university with your focused and serious sciency place. but there is ivy here, for what it’s worth. 🙂
oh, and shouldn’t it be “on mercury before you know it”? (harharhar)
Caltech’s department is actually pretty good about making everyone explore other options before getting locked into one project. The Mercury thing is just an orals project, not my thesis topic (necessarily). Sometime this year I’ll actually have to start another one, with a different advisor, on a totally different topic (well…differently planetary..). It’s only after orals are over that I get into that tricky business of choosing a real advisor. Thanks for the long-term advice, though, both of you! I’m trying to adapt and figure out a good pace for my days to go at. It has only been a week =)