Monday, October 26, 2009

If you don’t like work… (a mini rant)

Why the hell are you in grad school?  One of the new students in my lab seems incredibly lazy.  Sure, this person is fine with discussing project ideas (as long as they don’t involve any actual work on their part or them coming up with ideas from scratch instead of critiquing other's ideas), but if you actually ask them to do something?  A bunch of excuses, blaming other people (while the other people can hear the complaint!), and general lack of doing real work.  When we do work together, this person is full of commentary about how the experiments could be done faster (hint: by not doing them!), how we should blame people who aren’t around when we make a mistake, and general issues with authorities like our advisor or the older grad students who have taken time to help them learn. 

I have to wonder if this person was smart enough to get by in undergrad without working and now expects the same thing will fly in grad school.  Or perhaps this person was the best student in their undergrad class and just likes the recognition for being the best but is not very engaged with the subject material or research questions at hand.  The part that really bugs me is that this person’s undergrad degree would allow them to get a well-paying job that they probably wouldn’t actually have to work that hard at!

Once again, if you don’t like work (actual work, not metaphorical gold stars for being the best,) WHY THE HELL ARE YOU IN GRAD SCHOOL?! 

6 comments:

  1. In grad school there were three of us the lab: Student A who had sky-high GREs and middling (middling for this grad school was not so bad) grades. Student B who had very decent GREs and very decent grades, and student C who had lower GREs, decent grades and an intense curiosity.

    Turns out, Student A was very bright but lazy. Got good pubs and a good post-doc.

    Student B was bright, but VERY efficient with their work. Efficiency sometimes meant getting their stuff done well, but no extras, such as communal work. Get a very decent post-doc, then got a consultancy job.

    Student C was a grind. They desperately wanted to learn and do well, and put in hurculean amounts of work but were relatively inefficient in their work. Got okay publications and a very decent post doc. Now teaches at a SLAC. That's me.

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  2. PUI prof- I am hoping this student is bright but lazy! Or at least bright enough to overcome the laziness. Perhaps once they have their own project they'll be more motivated and less whiny...

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  3. Looking forward to following this story! PUI prof

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  4. I know someone who is exactly the way you describe, and is a research scientist now. Collaborating with them once was really a bad mistake for me! Also what is worse is that when I started discussing ideas with them, they seemed fine; but once things got kind of set up, they refused to do any work citing all kinds of excuses, so I ended up coming up with the idea, doing the experiments, writing the paper, and putting their name on it. Oh, once those were done, they were the first to go and give a talk on this stuff!

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  5. Yeah, my advice is to steer clear of these types. They are good at using others to get what they want, which means you'll do all the work and they'll get all the credit.

    oh and getting a good job out of undergrad-? What planet is that on? Engineering planet? In most majors, new graduates are not getting jobs now, they are moving back in with their parents. That's why they go to grad school. To delay having to get a real job.

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  6. Ms. PhD, it is indeed engineering planet, along with computer science planet, and the occasional math and physics planets, depending on if they are useful for defense contractors or whatever part of the financial industry is not going down in flames at the moment.

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