4: Graduate Science Education

So, I'm curious as to what other people think about this as well: What does a graduate education in the life sciences consist of? This is entirely my own analysis.

Many of my advisors at Muhlenberg said that the highlight of a PhD is learning how to troubleshoot - when you don't know something, or when something's not working, or when you're missing what you need, a PhD gives you the training to figure things out on your own. What should we call this - practicality? Self-sufficiency? Certainly, it's a dimension of critical thinking and problem solving.

Okay, next, one would imagine it's important to learn how to actually carry out science. Perhaps, I can break this down into 3 main areas:
-How to develop strong hypotheses: Both recognizing problems/gaps in knowledge, and coming up with a testable conjecture
-How to develop and carry out strong experiments: Make sure they're logically sound, efficient/optimal, reproducible, and bestow technical knowledge/experience
-How to analyze results

After this, what's next? Well, I imagine we're supposed to learn how to effectively convey our results: This covers giving presentations, writing articles, grants, and a thesis.

The only other thing I can really think of is learning how to interact with other scientists -criticize what we read and see in other people's work, collaborate on projects, and discuss science in social contexts, while considering the interaction of our science with society.

So, how do they go about helping us learn these things?
-We attend classes - read articles, write proposals, take exams
-We write a thesis, on experiments that take us years to finish

I guess, the whole point of this entry is that I have 2 issues with this:
1) Content - What am I supposed to know? One day, I learn the details of the bacterial cell wall, another day, I learn about aging research. There are so many disparate fields of biology. And then, on top of that, there's chemistry (even the occassional upper-level mathematics/statistics and physics). Most of it ends up turning into unnecessary detail, unless that's the specific topic you're interested in pursuing. Another point, is that I thought this would get a lot more complicated than in my upper level undergraduate classes. But it's pretty much the same level of difficulty (except for chemistry classes - they really took things to the next level). So does this mean we just have to try and remember a broader range of material instead of more depth? We don't really get tested (besides the fleeting midterm/final) on these things, and it makes me think that it's only to make us more rounded as scientists. At the same time, all of this coursework is NOT teaching me what I really need to learn about my topic.

You know, you always hear about chemists that switch to bio/biochem after their PhD and really hit it big. But you never hear about people doing the opposite, and moving into chemistry. It seems too difficult or something.

2) Assessment - Everything is highly curved here, so the only real assessments are our thesis proposal (qualifier) and thesis defense. In both scenarios, they can ask you whatever the hell they want - but will you know it?

Hmm, this was kind of a pointless list, not much of a discussion. But I guess it lends insight into why graduate school feels so loosely structured. They can only do so much, really, in providing the resources for us to develop and teach ourselves. They can guide us in our analysis of articles/science (provided they're a good teacher), but really it's all up to us, which is highly unnerving. I don't know much about the qualifier, but I feel like that also won't be so bad. It seems easy to just slip through the cracks, because there's not really much to be held accountable for. As a result, it just leaves this unnerving feeling that I won't have learned enough to function autonomously as a successful scientist once I get out of here.

Will I ever learn to look at molecules like Dan Kahne or Nathan Gray? Only if I teach myself...