Sometimes We Laugh, Sometimes We Cry… Embracing the Adversity of Graduate School

When you’re accepted into graduate school, whether it’s a Ph.D or Master’s program, you’re likely to hear two things:

“Congrats, you’re so smart, look at you go!”

...and...

“That’s going to be a lot of hard work. Are you sure?”

The reality is both are true. You are smart. You managed to make it to the next stage of school, a stage that is designed to not only test you academically but to also test you mentally. I made some of my fondest memories and forged friendships that I know will last a lifetime during my time as a Master’s student in the Cellular and Molecular program at San Diego State University (SDSU),.

However, the other part is also true. Graduate school has a way of finding your deepest insecurities and bringing them to the forefront of your mind in the times that you’re stressed out beyond belief and breaking down (fun fact for my fellow biologists out there: the 30C walk-in incubator is the most perfect place to have a warm little cry!). What you often don't see in that moment is that these moments will shape you into the scientist and the person you will become.

In my time at SDSU as a graduate student, I experienced adversity in ways I still have not truly processed. On my first day, I found my laboratory did not have funding. While my Principal Investigator was unique in the way he funded the lab, we still had to be smart about how we used our resources. We made our own reagents, used a quarter of enzymes that were in the instructions, and graciously accepted donations from other labs. 

In my first semester of graduate school I felt like a failure as I could not get the first step in my project to work: get a PCR to work. Day in day out for the first month, I would set up my PCR reaction and tweek it little by little and it still would not work, making me feel like a failure. 

However, the unthinkable happened in my first semester of my Master’s, my Principal Investigator and mentor was diagnosed with lung cancer, and, the worst and most unthinkable thing happened in the middle of my second year. The professor I was incredibly thankful to work with, who had inspired me to go into research, who had taken a chance on me even though I had no research experience, had passed away from his cancer. A little over a year later, it still feels unreal. 

I give these examples not to show how horrible it was or to invalidate the feelings of frustration that come from an experiment not working, but because in all honesty if I can make it through it, you can as well. I am not someone with superhero resilience (in fact, most of my friends would say I am probably the most dramatic person they have ever met - that was even my high school superlative). I am not a super genius; I too failed organic chemistry in undergrad.

The reason I was able to get through it was thanks to an amazing support system that included my peers, my friends and my family, many of whom have endured hours of me venting on the phone. 

It was also those small wins along the way that helped keep me going: finally cloning a plasmid, seeing the undergraduate student I trained become independent, learning how to do a Western Blot. You must appreciate those little wins to get through grad school, because research is filled with constant failures. Rarely do experiments work on the first or second time. It is when you learn from those failures and you string together those little wins that you see the growth in yourself both as a researcher and as a person. 

I love basketball, and NBA coach Monty Williams tells his team, the Phoenix Suns: “Everything you want is on the other side of hard.” And look, the Suns finally ended their 11-year playoff drought (second longest such streak in the NBA, for my non-sports people out there).

Williams’ quote is true in the setting of graduate school. It can be making an experiment work, moving to candidacy, obtaining your degree, or becoming the researcher you want to be. It will all be on the other side of hard. Despite all that I went through in my Master’s, I decided to go back into academia for my Ph.D at USC (#FightOn). Maybe I’m crazy, but it does take some level of crazy to go through the stress we do, then look back at it and still love it. If you don’t trust me, trust my Phoenix Suns as proof that you can go from a 9th seed missing the playoffs to the 2nd seed through perseverance, sheer hard work, and a drive to be legendary. 

It is with that I tell you not to despair as those who have come before you have been through the belly of the beast. They have had those same feelings of doubt. But there is hope because on the other side of hard is who you will become. Not just as a scientist but as a person.