Academia – Page 13 – The Renegade Coder

As I work toward the midpoint of my first semester, I wanted to take some time to discuss some of the challenges I've noticed. Perhaps when I make it to the other end, I'll reflect on some of these challenges. At any rate, let's talk about why grad school is hard. My Issues When I decided to leave industry to return to academia, I did so with the intent to take control of my life. After all, I wanted more freedom, and I wanted to continue growing as an individual. I found both freedom and growth to be rare in industry. Today, I still believe I made the right choice, but that doesn't mean everything is sunshine and rainbows. In fact, grad school is a lot different than I imagined. So far, the experience has been quite a bit different from my undergrad. As a result, there are a few issues I'd like to get off my chest: No Sense of Community During undergrad, most students are in the same situation. They're probably 18-22, living on campus, and away from home for the first time. As a result, they form community out of necessity. In other words, they need friends to survive. They probably don't want to take any chances on living, eating, or studying alone. In addition, there are loads of opportunities to form and sustain a sense of community. They could join a club, partake in intramural sports, study abroad, or join a fraternity/sorority. And because they're full-time students, they have time to explore these options. By grad school, there’s no underlying drive for community. That's likely because of the diversity of individual backgrounds. Take me for instance. I spent the last two years working for an engineering company in a leadership program. On top of that, I spent a lot of time working on this site, and I even got married. How many grad students do you think have a similar background? While our backgrounds vary wildly, so do our futures. In fact, in my program, most students are going for a Master's degree and heading out into industry. Clearly, I have no plan to follow them. Instead, I get to spend at least two times as many years studying than any of them. As a result, I get to see a lot of Masters students come and go. That makes it tough to build friendships. In addition, our interests vary wildly despite sharing similar undergrad experiences. While I'm interested in music and graphics, most students are chasing the latest buzzword: machine learning. That doesn't mean we don't cross over from time to time, but it does create massive gaps in knowledge between two seemingly similar individuals. Because my peers are at such different points in their lives, it can be hard to connect and foster a community. Many people finish their classes and head home as they have their own lives to live. Naturally, it can be hard to feel a sense of community in grad school. That said, I don't feel like this lack of community is much different from industry. At least now, I feel like I can trust in leadership a bit. Diverse Focus During undergrad, the primary goal of every student is to get good grades. That’s it! While this can be difficult—and I found it extremely tough—students can lean on their peers who are all in the same situation. This makes undergrad a great melting pot for knowledge. In grad school, we’re forced to spread ourselves thin. Personally, not only am I juggling classes, but I'm also trying to get into research while teaching a class of my own. And, I know that's just the tip of the iceberg for many grad students. In addition to our education, some of us head home to spend time with our families. Others may run off to an evening job. By grad school, many of us are already buried in debt from our blissful undergrad. As a result, we have bills to pay. These differences in expectations can make a world of difference from day-to-day. While my undergraduate students are worrying about passing my class, I'm worrying about a whole host of teaching related issues. Are my students getting anything out of my lectures? Am I setting the right expectations? Will my students pass their exams? Are my comments helpful? In other words, studying is only one of our responsibilities as grad students. Compare all that to industry, and you start to notice why grad school can seem so stressful. A year ago, I spent every single day working on the same exact project. Now, I shift through responsibilities on an hourly basis. Even when I start my research, I know my day-to-day will be more volatile. Knowledge Gaps At this point, I've mentioned the differences in grad student backgrounds quite a lot. As it turns out, that doesn't just affect our ability to mingle. It can also hurt our performance in class as not everyone comes in at the same knowledge level. For example, I'm taking an algorithms class, and I'm expected to remember how to determine and prove runtime complexity of various algorithms. The last time I've done any serious math was 2013 when I took differential equations, and I've already forgotten all that. While I took discrete math in 2015, I don't exactly remember how to invoke induction and whatnot. Many of my peers seem to be having no problem as they were previous math or computer science majors. In addition, not many of them took a couple of years off to work like I did, so I started a little bit behind the academic curve. Of course, my knowledge comes in handy during application courses where I get to actually produce code. That's when I shine, so I guess it's not all bad. However, knowledge gaps do make grad school hard because you're responsible for filling those gaps as you go. That said, learning on-the-fly is something you often have to do on the job, so I'm more or less comfortable in this setting. Fortunately, I'm only taking three classes. Meager Pay To an outsider, grad students have it pretty good. After all, our tuition is covered, and we receive a regular paycheck. Personally, I make roughly $1700/month over 9 months on top of free tuition. In addition, I have health insurance which "covers" vision and dental as well as mental health. However, as someone who has a college education in engineering, I'm aware of my worth to the market, and I'm not even making a dent as a grad student. Back at GE, I was making about $75,000/year pretax before I left. In addition, I had the same benefits plus a 401K with a rather nice company match program to boot. Now, I barely break $20,000/year. I suppose the irony is that GE would have paid for my Masters degree while continuing to pay me the full salary. Yet, universities want to claim grad students are expensive. To make matters worse, rent is astronomical. My current apartment complex charges me about $1200/month compared to the $700/month I was paying in Erie. Of course, I could probably save some of that money if I was willing to sacrifice the walking distance to campus. That said, I don't miss having to spend money maintaining a vehicle. On top of that, I'm stuck paying about $50/month for the worst internet I've had in years. Don't forget the $200/month phone bill and the $150/month utility bill. Fortunately, I'm not responsible for paying student debt from my undergrad thanks to deferment. Otherwise, I'd be stuck with another $275/month. At the end of the day, my monthly bills average around $1600/month. Compare that with my monthly stipend, and you may wonder how I eat. Fortunately, I don't live alone. I've been surviving off my wife's teaching salary. Go figure! Granted, we're minimalists, so we don't waste a lot of money by buying a lot of things. However, we would prefer to feel a bit more comfortable on our income. After all, we'd like to start saving for retirement and perhaps even starting a family. My point is grad school is definitely restricted to the well-off—which includes my wife and me. Why else do I keep hearing that "people don't pursue a PhD for the money." That's the same line we often hear teachers spew, yet they're on strike all around the country because they're underpaid. Smells like exploitation to me. Just think about it. If I was living alone, I wouldn't be able to survive the summers here. I'd probably be forced to pick up a minimum wage job every summer. No way would I have the time or energy to do something like that during the year. Not when I'm burning up 60-80 hours/week on homework, grading, lesson planning, and teaching. Major Commitment When I was an undergrad, I got used to seeing people switch majors every semester. In fact, there was a common joke at CWRU about Biomedical Engineers (BMEs) becoming Business Majors Eventually. As a grad student, I'm in it for the long haul. If I changed projects at the same rate most undergrads switch majors, I'd never graduate. That said, the grad school day-to-day grind is quite comparable to my undergrad as I often find myself working just as many weekends. Compare that with industry. Instead of having an 8-5 grind 5 days a week, I'm now rocking a much more erratic schedule which includes weekends and holidays. For instance, I'm only on campus from 11 to 4 on Mondays. Meanwhile, I spend almost twice that time on campus on Thursdays. Of course, I prefer the volatility because it keeps things interesting. In addition, folks in industry can be more flexible with their job opportunities. If they hate their job, the switch is relatively easy. If I hate my department or school, the change is much more difficult. Instead of interviewing and being hired tomorrow, I'm stuck following the application process for another year. In general, I find grad school to be a significantly greater commitment than anything I've ever done before. From the day-to-day grind to the long haul, grad school eats up a lot more of my life. Yet, Life is Better All that said, I'm infinitely more happy than I was just a year ago. Now, I get regular activity and sleep which has allowed me to lose a lot of that engineering weight. In addition, I still have time to work on personal projects like this site. In terms of mental health, I'm probably just as stressed, but I like what I'm doing. I don't have to worry about a boss moving up deadlines or shifting project requirements. Instead, I focus on making sure my students are learning, and I get to learn really cool algorithms without a ton of homework. As time goes on, I'll probably reflect on this article again. For now, I'm happy, and I love what I'm doing. I wish I could have said that a year ago.