You need to go out!

Many PhD students decide to abandon their social life at least at some points of their program. For me it was the time before my prelims. I didn't go out almost two months. The second period was during dissertation stage. I would probably go out no more than once every month. I always felt - how can I go out and have fun when I have prelims/dissertation proposal/dissertation defense coming up soon?

Now that I look back I think this was the most serious mistake I made as a PhD student. PhD program is a marathon. For most people the marathon lasts more than 4 years. If you deprive yourself of social life at any point, you may be more productive for a week or two. But this will hurt your motivation and emotional health in the long run. Here's why. First, you have to take your mind off your work regularly. This is the most obvious reason for not isolating oneself for more than a week. Secondly, if you don't go out for too long, you may lose your relationships with friends. And then when you are ready to go out, there will be no one to go out with. Everyone would move on with their lives and you will be on your own. Not only this will deprive you of fun, it will also deliver a serious psychological blow. You will start thinking "I've lost everything because of the program: time, money, friends!".

So don't make this mistake. By the way, I've known quite a few people who survived through their programs in spite of everything being against them simply by getting drunk like a pig every week. Although you have to be careful with this, as you well know.

PhDs in Philosophy Make Zero Money

I've noticed that someone came to my blog by googling something like "how much do PhDs in philosophy make". Dude, there are virtually no jobs in this field. I think this degree is even less valuable than a PhD in English (and a PhD in English is often not worth the paper it is printed on). At least, I can see some ways of making money outside of academia with an English degree. But I just don't see why would anyone hire a philosopher. So here's the answer: PhDs in philosophy make close to zero US dollars per year. So you should pursue the degree only if your love for philosophy is so great that you are willing to live in poverty your whole life.

But here's a tip for you that may be a somewhat better compromise between your interests and the sad reality where people cannot live without money. Think about majoring in Management/Business Ethics. I think this area is becoming hotter and hotter. But hear me loud and clear: this may be a better, but by no means a good idea. I doubt the employment prospects for those with a PhD in Management are very bright, although they are definitely better than those with doctoral degrees in humanities. Moreover, it may be easier to get a non-academic job with this degree. But make sure you go into a business school for your degree, and not to a Psychology/Sociology department.

The Best Way to Quit a PhD Program: Taking a Leave of Absence

The best way to quit a PhD program is to take a one-year leave of absence. During the year, you can try to put your life back on non-academic track. If, after one year, you want to come back - you are legally entitled to do so. Quite a few PhD students in our program took a leave of absence and came back to finish their degrees.

There are a few things you need to know in relation to taking a leave of absence:

• When you request one, don't burn the bridges by saying that you are sick of the program. Cite personal issues instead: health, the need to take care of your family member, financial situation, etc.
  
• Make sure you know the rules associated with leave of absence. For example, you need to find out whether you will lose one year of funding if you decide to do so
• Don't come back into the program because you haven't succeeded in finding a decent non-academic job. If you think that hiding out from real life for a few more years will solve the problem of figuring out your place in life, you are up for some serious problems in the future. You should only return when you are hundred percent sure you want to continue your academic career
  

The Power of Long-Term

Below are a few things I've learned as a result of my PhD studies. I call them "the power of long-term":

• You don't complete your dissertation by pulling a few all nighters. Only incremental work will get it done. Not years of hard work (it will kill you), but years of a couple (a few) hours a day
  
• You don't ruin your health overnight. It takes months of do a significant damage to your health. And it doesn't have to be months of heavy drinking or drug abuse. Just months of, let's say, bad sleeping habits.
  
• You don't get your health back overnight. It takes months of work to get it back. Again, I'm not talking about months of hard work, just months of doing little things right.
  
• You don't land a job by sending out a few resumes. It takes months of consistent search to find a job.
  

I think my undergraduate habits (the ones that made me so successful in my undergraduate program) played against me in my graduate program. By my senior year as an undergrad, I became so good in taking exams (yes, taking exams, not being an expert in my field) that all it took me was one day of studies to go over several textbook chapters and get an A on a multiple choice exam. I attended classes only to figure out what's going to be on an exam and not to learn the material.

But a PhD program is a marathon. Sprinters always lose in a PhD program. You shouldn't try to spring with anything in a PhD program (e.g. comprehensive exams, dissertation). Those things are done incrementally. Again, not by working intensively, but by working consistently.

When to Quit your Doctoral Program II

Here's one thing you need to understand in relation PhD experience. Having ups and downs during your PhD program (and especially during your dissertation stage) is absolutely normal. However, if one or more of the following is true, then you probably need to quit:

1. You suffer from depression (inability to concentrate, insomnia, feeling sad all the time, having no energy when you wake up in the morning, constant feeling of fear and anxiety, etc) for more than a few month
2. You did thorough research on the amount of time, money, and energy it will take to get a PhD and you think that, given the employment prospects, it's simply not worth it
3. You don't think you want to be a professor. Again, every researcher, no matter how successful he or she is, has some periods when he or she feels like quitting. However, if your attitude towards the profession doesn't change for more than a few months, then you should consider quitting.
4. You feel your work has an irreversible negative impact on your health. Trust me, losing your health to be a professor is not worth it. This career is not that lucrative and important to justify the sacrifice.
   

When deciding on whether to quit your PhD program, here are a few things I think you need to avoid:

1. Don't listen to your friends and family. Don't continue your PhD program simply because you feel obligated to them to get the degree. Despite having your best interest in mind, these people often have no clue what academia is really like. They are as naive as you were when you started your PhD program. They think that a PhD is a ticket to wealth and status, BUT IT'S NOT! I often meet quite intelligent people from outside of academia who think that a person with a PhD can land any high paying job he or she wants.
2. Don't be stubborn. I think most people who come into a PhD program are of the type who don't give up easily. They are used to finish everything they started despite all kinds of hardship. The thing is that you stubbornness may lead you to the same state of despair years and thousands dollars later. I would applaud a person who year after year keeps trying to become a millionaire, discover a drug against AIDS, or pursues some other big dream. But I would think that a person who is doing the same thing to get a hard, low-paying job of an English teacher is simply crazy.
   

Stay Focused!

In order to be successful in a doctoral program, you have to stay focused. And your focal point should be to graduate (that is write a dissertation) and get a job. Everything else should be secondary.

When I joined my doctoral program, I was encouraged to produce papers from the get-go. I had been quite good at it. By the end of my third year I co-authored a dozen papers with faculty from our department. I was praised for being so productive and was regarded very highly in the program.

And then the reality hit me. As it turned out, you had to write a dissertation to get your PhD... Something that I didn't really think about. I was too focused on producing papers. After all, this is what I was encouraged to do. I was too young and too ignorant regarding the ways academia works. I also thought that writing a dissertation shouldn't be a problem, it was going to be just another paper, albeit a big one.

Well, at that time I was already burned out from taking classes, teaching, and writing so many papers. I was hoping that I could sort of staple a few papers together and that would be my dissertation. I know that many programs allow their students to do this, and this practice makes a lot of sense.

However, I was told explicitly (together with other PhD students who were doing pretty much the same thing) that I could not use my prior published research towards my dissertation. My dissertation had to be a totally new project. The justification for this decision was that using published research towards dissertation was against the rules of the doctoral program. Needless to say, I couldn't find this rule anywhere. I think the real reason was the faculty wanting additional papers out of me. The fact that I was burned out from all that work and very demotivated due to constant poverty and me gaining a realistic picture regarding my future employment prospects didn't really bother anyone.

I remember at one point of my dissertation work I was so burned out, so depressed, and so concerned with lack of money for even basic things like food that I didn't write a line for a few months... I told my adviser that I need him to help me to get moving. His answer went like this: "Well, this is your project. You have to prove us that you can do research in order to get your PhD ". I thought to myself, "Fuck, I have 12 published papers behind my belt. I received above average student evaluations for my teaching. What the hell do I have to prove to you????". Well, technically, he was absolutely right - you need a dissertation written by you to get a PhD.

Anyways, I hope you understand what was my mistake and will avoid going down that path. Of course, you have to bribe your profs with a couple of publications before you start your dissertation. But don't make it your priority. Your priority is to graduate and get a job.

Seeking Approval of Committee Members

Being new to the world of science and research, you may think that science is objective. You may think that you can come up with a paper or dissertation that has bullet-proof theoretical logic and superb empirical rigor. And if you succeed in doing so, the faculty in your department will have no choice but to accept your work.

This naivety can be dangerous. Science is socially constructed (read Kuhn). Any research, no matter how influential it is, has many dark areas and can be ripped apart by anyone wishing to do so. So when you do research, you have to seek approval from your committee members. Sometimes it's not even about them offering you suggestions how to improve your work. They may have no clue. It's more about them feeling that they provide some kind of input in your work. Because if they feel like they have put something of their own into your work, they will be less likely to criticize your final product.

So make sure you don't work on anything in isolation. Even if you feel that your committee does not really help you, you still have to seek their approval in the process. And not after you finish. Showing up for meetings with your committee members is at least as important as doing superb job on your own.

So what is my profession?

I think that people who decide to quit academia and get a normal job are often puzzled by the following question: "What is my profession?". The thing is that even though you have a PhD in let's say marketing, you are not really a marketing professional. The sad reality is that PhD programs do not prepare knowledgeable programmers, managers, accountants, or marketers. In a PhD program you learn how to do research. So your profession is doing research. You may know much about a particular field, especially if we are talking about the practical aspects of a profession.

For example, I've seen quite a few accounting PhD students who do not know even basic things about accounting, the things that any practicing accountant with a bachelors degree would probably know. The reason for this ignorance is that those accounting PhD students do research in perceptions and do not have time to look at some of the practical aspects of the profession.

Sometimes I even think that once you get a PhD in social sciences, it doesn't really matter in which department you work afterwards. For example, if you get a PhD in psychology, you can do research in such fields as management, marketing, or even accounting and finance. I often see professors from one discipline supervising research in other disciplines. The fact that they don't know much about the field does not really matter. They know how to do research, and it doesn't really matter what field they are looking at.

I can say the same thing about myself. Having learned about experimental design, very often I don't have much problems reading a scientific article in marketing - the field I don't know much about. But I know experimental design and associated statistical techniques, so me not being familiar with the subject matter of research does not prevent me from understanding that article. But obviously, there's no way I can be a marketer - I don't know even basic practical things about the profession. Unfortunately, this may be true not only for me, but also for people who have PhDs in marketing . They don't know much about the profession of a marketer.

Of course, you probably know more than an average undergraduate. However, those 4-5 years that you spent learning about research is largely a waste. The thing is that the real world is too fast-paced to use those scientific methods.

You may be tempted to think that at least you've learned how to think and write. Unfortunately, I don't think business owners will appreciate an employee with academic thinking and writing style. A typical academic approach is to take a trivial thing and make it sound very complex. Sophisticated language is often one of the tools to make that trivial thing sound complex and important. Practitioners often strive to achieve completely the opposite - to take a complex issue and make it sound very simple by ignoring many of the issues and using simple language. I'm pretty sure that the way normal people handle some very complex issues (i.e. "terrorism is bad", "abortion is a sin", "racism is stupid", "capitalism is good", "progressive tax is fair") is giving headache to PhDs studying those issues.

I often think that the only useful thing you learn in a PhD program is survival skills. You know how to work hard despite the fact that you have no motivation, no money, no friends, no personal life, and no energy. You are somewhat of a veteran of psychological warfare. But just like fighting in Vietnam is probably not the best route to a managerial position, your psychological warfare may not be a good route to a normal life. You may have sustained too much damage and may need a rehabilitation period to integrate yourself into normal life.

Dissertation strategies: One page per day

There's no general recipe for writing a dissertation. But there's one useful strategy of mechanical nature. Just get into the habit of writing one page per day. Don't worry if your writing is of poor quality - you can edit later. Don't worry if you are not sure how this fits into your dissertation. Just write one page per day. In a few months you may have enough stuff to put together a very rough draft. Of course, you will have to throw away a lot of those pages. But you may end up using some of them too. Moreover, this one page per day habit may benefit you psychologically. You will feel that, at least, you are doing something every day. I think it gives you an illusion/feeling of some kind of progress.

How long does it take to get a PhD?

This question has to be carefully investigated by anyone planning to pursue a PhD.

My impression is that many programs advertise themselves as "4 year programs". The reality is that 4 years often seems to be an ideal that most program do not live up to.

On average, I think, the length of a PhD program in social sciences is 5-5.5 years. Obviously, some programs may be in the lower quartile and students may have to put in up to 10 years of hard work to get that piece of paper called diploma.

Make sure you do a very thorough research on the subject. Just ask specific people in the program about their tenure with the department and about the number of years it took the program's recent graduates to get their degrees. You may be surprised!

Know the rules of your PhD program!

Make sure you become well-versed in departmental, college, and university rules applicable to doctoral students. Don't waste your time at a PhD student orientation daydreaming about the scientific discoveries you will make (you will make none) or trying to meet other PhD students (they will not become your friends anyway). Listen to the rules and policies instead. Create a folder where you keep all the handbooks. Make sure you take some time to go through those handbooks. You don't wanna be caught off guard with an accusation that you have violated a rule.

Professors usually don't know those rules themselves. They have their own problems and knowing PhD program rules is the least important (or non-existent) thing on their priority list. Their legal nihilism is often replaced with legal fundamentalism when they want to find a formal reason to kick you out of the program. So don't put yourself in a vulnerable situation because of your own ignorance.

Just to give you an example. We had a lot of doctoral seminar classes where we would usually get "incompletes" instead of a grade at the end of a semester. This had to do with the fact that faculty always wanted a publishable paper as an outcome of every doctoral seminar course. They marketed this requirement as rigorous training. However, it was more due to them wanting to get papers out of us. Well, as you know, writing a publishable paper in a new area may take you much longer than one semester. Moreover, after the class is over, your prof may be too busy to get back to you and grade your paper. As a result of that, many doctoral students in our program would have several incompletes after 2 years in the program. There's a rule that after certain amount of time an incomplete becomes an "F". There's also a rule that that a PhD student who gets three grades of C- and below is automatically dropped from the program. So quite a few students would find themselves with 1-2-3 Fs on their transcripts. Which is not really their fault yet a violation of PhD program rules.

We had a guy who was an exceptional doctoral student. He was very hard-working. Had a few papers already published. Did excellent job teaching. However, he was too independent (didn't kiss up to people much) and some faculty members did not like him. So his "bad grades" (mostly due to incompletes) gave them a perfectly legal reason to drop him out. There was nothing he could do. He violated the rules.

Of course, this is a rather extreme case and this probably doesn't happen too often in PhD programs. Still, keep those things in mind. Do not make yourself vulnerable. You can recover from the outcast state only if you are not terminated from the program.

Employment for International Students in the United States

International graduate students often find themselves in a much harder financial situation than locals. This has to do with the fact that they often have no where to go if they run out of money. Their folks back at home may not have sufficient money to help them out. What makes the situation even worse is that international students often think they cannot get the money through legal employment.

This is not true. Usually most schools have programs that would allow international students to get authorized to work off campus. For example, there can be a thing called "practical training" (I'm not talking about OPT here, it's a different kind). This practical training thing usually requires you to register for a class (with a minimal fee) and then you can work off campus (even full-time). Moreover, you can do this for a long time (I think at least for several semesters). They usually require the job to be in your field of studies, so that you can make a strong case that this will benefit your education process. Usually, this requirement is not strictly enforced and you can always prove that working as a janitor will be beneficial to your education as an architect.

PhD in Accounting

PhD in Accounting has been one of the hottest degrees to have in terms of employment prospects for the last few years. I think Sarbanes-Oxley act is what gave accounting such a push. The act created an unprecedented demand for accounting graduates and consequently, Accounting PhDs. I've seen quite a bit of statistics on that and I personally saw quite a few newly-minted accounting PhDs getting decent jobs even without any publications behind their shoulders. Moreover, I think that accounting is a profession which is not going anywhere in the nearest future. There may be ups and downs, but there's always going to be a demand for accountants.

So if you are thinking about majoring in accounting, this may not be such a bad idea, especially in comparison to such majors as English or Math. However, you have to keep in mind that it may already be too late to jump on board. You don't know what's going to happen five years from now. Chances are high that in five years there may be on oversupply of accounting PhDs. So don't assume that the demand will persist. You may be gambling!

No Money - No Work!

Hoping to please my professors, I got myself into a state of things where I would perform a number of duties many of which were not directly related to my responsibilities as a doctoral student. I soon found myself not only doing research and teaching classes, but also managing a student organization, helping graduate students from other departments with my lab's equipment,and doing guest speaking gigs at places where my professors didn't wanna go. In addition to that, I was doing some analytical work for organizations in exchange of them giving me data for my dissertation.

Needless to say, in order to do all those things I had to work 24/7 and borrow time from my personal life and my main responsibilities as a doctoral student. Obviously, I wasn't paid for doing all those things. I was paid as much as any other doctoral student who did nothing but dissertation work.

At some point I realized that this is not working well and I need to stop. It wasn't pretty - some of my profs became a bit hostile towards me. But this worked out quite well, eventually. I acquired a reputation of a person who doesn't do any favors, so professors stopped bothering me with their requests.

Despite academia positioning itself as a very altruistic place where people don't care for money, I think it's very useful for a PhD student to think in economic terms when asked to do all kinds of favors. You always have to ask yourself:

• Am I paid for this?
• Is there, at least, a potential for being paid for this in the future?

If the answer is no, you probably shouldn't do it. Your goal is to graduate and get a job, and not be someone's servant.

Tips for finishing PhD by Matt Schonlau

Some very useful tips from Matt Schonlau:

A few years ago I was asked by several Ph.D. students what advice I could give to finish a Ph.D. While I don't think there is only one answer I do have some principles that worked well for me- if you are a current PhD student hopefully you will find this useful also. If you have any comments or suggestions, I'd love to hear from you.

Over the years I have received many positive comments from Ph.D. students from the U.S., Canada, and as far as China and Korea. Several students have linked this site form their sites. Thank you so much for your feedback. It means a lot to me that I some of my thoughts made a difference to you.

• Begin with the end in mind
  I found it always helpful to know I what my overall goal was. During my PH.D. I aimed to finish in my Ph.D. in 3 years. I didn't make that in the end - it took 4 years - but that isn't important. The important thing is that I knew in order to make 3 years I had to do a certain course load in the first and second term , I had to take the comprehensive exam the first time it was offered, I had a rough idea of how much time I had to write the dissertation. There are road blocks along the way and things turn out different than you expect. But if you know your overall goal obstacles won't through you off the course, you are just taking a detour.
• You have no obligation to write an important or even useful thesis
  Sometimes students set out to write this all-encompassing break-through thesis and then fail because they try to accomplish too much at once. Very few researchers achieve fame because of their dissertation work. Try to write a good dissertation, not a great dissertation. Further, don't insist on writing a useful thesis. Your primary goal is to get a Ph.D. , not to change the world. There is enough time for changing the world after your dissertation when you have less constraints about what criteria your work has to meet.
• Write!
  A psychology student told me once that he spends the entire day doing research and then forces himself at the end of the day to summarize what he found - even if he doesn't think he found anything that day. This is important for several reasons : (a) writing helps your thoughts to crystallize (b) you accomplish your daily task which will make you feel good (c) you can track your progress (d) when you write your thesis you have material to draw on (e) you won't forget what you were thinking two weeks ago. In my opinion most students start too late putting their thoughts into words.
• Exercise regularly
  I have always found I can work better when I am physically in good shape. During stressful times such as exams, I exercise more often rather than less often. The energy I get from exercise more than compensates for the "time lost".
• Enjoy your "play time"
  There is a time to work and a time to play. I try to work hard when I work, and not to think at all about work when I don't work. For example, every year I fly home to Germany for Christmas. I never take work to Germany. All that would accomplish is that I would feel bad the whole time about not doing the work. When you have worked hard all week and can afford to take the week-end off, try to get out and do something fun. Try not to think about work at all.
• Talk to others about your problems
  After finishing his Ph.D. a social scientist at an Ivy League university told me once that at some point during his Ph.D. he had so much dissertation anxiety that he went to see a psychologist at the medical center. To his surprise the waiting room for the psychologist was packed and he recognized several other people. Everyone was there for the same reason. He later emailed one of the students he saw whether he wanted to talk about it . Within 10 minutes he got a reply email : the other student was just as desperate to talk about it. Most Ph.D. students at some point or another have problems - talking to fellow students or professors almost always helps. You are not alone. (The above mentioned student graduated smoothly and now excels working at a very prestigious institution).
• Record your progress
  Sometime during my second year of my Ph.D. I started writing down every week-end what I had accomplished during the preceeding week. I took great care in this and I often reread what I had done in the past few weeks. This weekly ritual became very important to me and motivated me a great deal. Sometimes in the middle of the week I would realize that I hadn't accomplished anything to be recorded at the end of the week and I would make sure I would get something done.
  In addition, I kept a list of things to do at the white board and marked each item off once I had done it. I wouldn't erase it until a few days later though - because that gave me the satisfaction of seeing what I had accomplished already. I still follow this habit to this day.
  During a Ph.D. you often try something and it doesn't work in the end. That can be frustrating - but I feel that tracking what you have done helps to overcome this frustration. The path to success has unexpected twists and turns in a Ph.D. - and while a failed attempt looks like no progress it really is.
• Don't find excuses - don't do too many other important things.
  Some of the brightest students sometimes have trouble finishing because they are so successful doing other things that may reasonably also be considered important. A very bright young fellow I know kept taking on temporary consulting jobs working for the UN in Brazil and all kind of other exciting and useful jobs. Working for the UN in Brazil is a great experience and you may not want to pass it up. But at some point finishing your Ph.D. outweighs taking on extra consulting jobs.
• Choose a dissertation topic you are passionate about
  You will do your best work when you work on a topic that you really care about. This not always possible - but if you have the choice go for it. Also, it is better to come up with your own thesis topic rather than having your supervisor find you a thesis topic. You will find it easier to care deeply about a thesis topic that you came up with yourself.
• Work on your strengths, not on your weaknesses
  I was once fortunate enough to have a brunch with the famous statistician Erich Lehman - organized by Agnes Herzberg in Kingston, Ontario. Dr. Lehman had an unusual career and had many things to say. I will never forget the following advice he gave : when in England the professors noticed that his background in mathematics was much stronger than in physics. They therefore forced him to take extra classes in physics. On hindsight Dr. Lehman felt that that was a big mistake. He didn't have any passion for physics and he claims he wasn't good at it either - so there was an extraordinary effort going into something that wasn't necessary.
  There may be situations where our passion requires us to work on something we are not good at. For example, my friend Fiona was never interested in any handyman work. However, she was a theatre major and some point she had to know technical theatre operations. And when it was relevant to theatre, she all of the sudden took an interest in handyman work as it related to theatrical set construction.
  Unless necessary though I always thought that it was good advice to work on one's strengths - because otherwise we'll be constantly disillusioned and frustrated.
• Take charge - it's your life not your supervisor's
  I have always found taking an active role leads to better results than a passive or reactive role. It makes life more exciting. For those of us who like playing computer games - it's like the difference of playing the game and watching the game. Playing is just more fun.
• Do what is right for you - including the choice of discontinuing your Ph.D.
  A Ph.D. is not for everyone and I think not to continue a Ph.D. ought to be one of your options. I am most impressed with Judy whom I met during my time as a student. She successfully mastered the comprehensive exam, and then decided that she wasn't really all that interested in research. I still hear her say "You know, it's not for everyone" - not disappointed but just matter of fact. She is happier now. However , I do think you should only quit because you have come to the conclusion that you do not enjoy research, not because "it's overwhelming", "it's too much work", or "I don't know whether I can do it" or "I don't like my supervisor". People can do more than they think - they just have to really try.

Befriending College Staff

If you are a PhD student, your success in the program will depend on your school's staff as much as it depends on your own effort and support from your professors. Trust me, there will be at least one occasion in your career where things will depend on nothing but a decision of one of your school's clerks.

Make sure you are friends with people like:

• IT support staff (if you are nice to them you can always get hardware and software you need)
• Cleaning staff (they can help you to get access to building if you lost your keys)
• Secretaries (they will give you insider knowledge about some of the things that are going in the department; won't report you if you violate some of the department policies)
• Records people (they will help you if you miss registration deadlines for example or fail to submit some needed papers)

Make sure you are nice to those people. It will certainly pay off. I've seen quite a few PhD students who look down on staff, thinking those guys are not at their intellectual level.

I didn't have a problem with building relationships with staff - I think I'm a very friendly and down to earth person. I did make a mistake though. At one point our IT folks just drove me nuts with their screw-ups and incompetence. We were like enemies. But then I took time to apologize and do some damage control. The result - I got a bunch of software by putting it on the department's tab as opposed to paying for it myself.

Interested in Psychology? Try Management Instead!

If you have interest in psychology, I suggest you major in management or marketing instead. Many areas of these two business disciplines are nothing but applied psychology. Yet both marketing and management are in business school. You may have much better employment and earning potential if you get a degree in one of the fields. As for psychology, I think there are more psychologists in the United States than dogs and cats combined.

Teaching

Make sure you don't put too much effort into teaching.

You may be tempted to do a great job teaching your classes. I think two factors may lie behind this drive. First of all, somewhere deeply in your mind you think that university is all about teaching. In fact, this is what you did as an undergraduate student - you took classes. You admired good teachers, and you loathed crappy ones. So you, as a teacher, may want to be among the good ones. Second, just like any responsible person, you may be too embarrassed to do a crappy job in front of several dozen people.

Putting a lot of effort into teaching is a big mistake. What really counts for your reputation in the program and your future employment prospects in academia is your research. I remember one of the top professors in our field told us the following:

"If you are one of the best teachers in the college, your dean may stop by and say 'you need to improve, buddy!' If you are one of the best teachers in the college, your dean will stop by and say 'great job, buddy!' And that's about it"

Of course, you shouldn't do a really crappy job teaching. Just make sure you do an OK job, may be even slightly below average. I think that some of the most successful students in the department did a really crappy job teaching. To the point where their students would go to out department chair to complain about their teachers dismissing them early from the class or hiding from them outside of classroom hours.

Sounds like a shady advice, but this is the sad reality my friend!

Don't do anything unless you are reminded about it 3 times

Don't take your professors too seriously. They talk a lot, they do little. Don't try to put up with all their requests and suggestions. You will end up in a mental hospital. Ignore some of their requests. They don't have the mindset to follow up. They just don't care. They talk for the sake of talking. Then they forget what they told you. They may even ask you to do completely the opposite if you were stupid enough to do what they told you. So here's a useful tip for you:

Don't do anything unless you are reminded about it 3 times

You have to master this skill if you are to survive in academia. Your professors are experts in this, haven't you noticed? They won't do anything unless you remind them several times. This is how they survived in academia.

Staying Focused

You have to stay very focused in the graduate school. And here's what your focus should be:

"Graduate! Get a job!"

Your goal is not to change the world. Your goal is not to come up with innovative ideas. Your goal is to:

"Graduate! Get a job!"

Your professors want you to develop a new course?

"Graduate! Get a job!"

Your professor forces you to attend guest speaker presentations (usually by a his or her buddy on a topic you don't care about)?

"Graduate! Get a job!"

No matter what kind of stimulus you get from your PhD program, repeat this mantra three times before you think of anything else:

"Graduate! Get a job!"
"Graduate! Get a job!"
"Graduate! Get a job!"