Right, so summer exploded on me, as summer has been apt to do the past few years, so I haven't had time to do much beyond fight the most proximal fire for the past few months. I'm still getting used to this adult thing where summer isn't a time when things slow down - on the contrary, they seem to speed up.....
So, since I started writing the last post in.... May..... I've run off on several trips, GOTTEN MY FIRST PAPER PUBLISHED IN A PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL*, and I've somehow managed to track down and make contact with all the professors on my short list.
*I'm not excited about this AT ALL.
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| I PUBLISHED!!!! |
In general, if you're applying to grad school, it's a very good idea to make contact with the professor you're planning on working with first. This is how you find out some very basic, essential information, such as does this person even have funding for you in the first place, and when the heck do you apply*. It's also a way to get an up to date summary of their current research directions and get a first read of them as a person**.
*This is turning out to be a non-trivial question for one of the universities I'm applying to....
*Step 1: Did they actually answer the email??
It's also, crucially, often the first time they will get to read you as a person. A few of the professors I contacted had met me before, but for the majority it was essentially today's equivalent of a cold-call. Among the ones I had met, the meetings were often brief or in passing - I had never worked with any of them before. So it was very important to me that I present myself as well as I could in this first contact.
The process of drafting this first-contact email was actually pretty involved, and I think I worked on it off and on for about a month. The email had the same basic structure for each professor:
- Hi, my name is THIS, and I want to study volcano deformation
- I want to study with you because you did THIS WORK and it's awesome to me because THIS
- Here's a brief summary of my science life before now
- Here's what I'm doing now
- This is why I left my first PhD
- Here's some ideas I'm interested in researching now
- I might help fund myself through THIS
Given that I left my first PhD, it knew it was really important to present my story in the best way I could - I wanted to make it absolutely clear that I had not left because it got too hard or because I was lazy, because that simply wasn't true! I wanted to make it clear that I had left out of a love for research that unfortunately just couldn't be realized at my former institution.
I also wanted to counter-balance the leaving part with my own qualifications. This part was both easy and hard to write - easy, because it was all stuff I knew well (i.e., my own life), and hard, because I really don't like bragging!*
*I've found wine can help with this while writing scholarship applications
Both because of my queasiness with talking up my skills and qualifications and my desire to get my story right, I had several people in my inner circle read over my email. Their comments helped me to avoid embarrassing typos and make sure my wording was clear. Most importantly, they reassured me that I wasn't going over the line into excessive self-aggrandizement - in fact, they almost always told me to include more about myself, with stronger language!
The other part I got helpful feedback on related to talking about the work of the professors I was contacting. Many in my inner circle strongly advised me to demonstrate in my email that I was thoroughly familiar with the professors' work. The process of researching their work in further depth was helpful not only for writing the email, but for increasing my own understanding of what they did, and how I might fit into that work.
It took forever to get those emails out, but it was worth it. A couple of the professors I was able to rule out pretty quickly. One simply said straight-up that he didn't have funding - I was very glad for his honesty! Another I finally quietly gave up on after a series of emails that just went nowhere. I would attempt to get a productive conversation going about his current research, and I kept getting back one or two sentence responses that never really answered my questions. I don't know definitively if this was a sideways attempt to dissuade me, but regardless, I quickly realized that if I couldn't find a way to communicate with this person by email, this was not a promising sign for working with him in person!
The other exchanges I had, however, were far more encouraging. A few I did have to send a polite follow-up email to after I had received no response for about a month - in all cases, the reason was that they were out of town for vacations or fieldwork. These professors, once I did receive a response, were more than happy to tell me about their current research opportunities, and transparent about their current funding situation. I had been a bit worried about the length of my initial contact email, but one responded with an email even longer than mine!
Of these professors with whom I had positive email contact, I've now been able to meet them either in person or via Skype. I've found these interactions very reassuring. There were a few professors who came off as slightly cold in email exchanges, but via Skype I found them to be very warm, quick to smile, and easy to joke with. This is actually really important to me - I tend to want to make jokes about everything, all the time, so if someone is too serious they're going to be difficult for me to work with closely, because I'll constantly be worried that I'm being too silly. I also suspect that having a good sense of humor can be a good indication of flexibility in a personality.
The meetings were also really useful for having a real-time discussion about the research opportunities, the school culture, and the PhD program structure. For me, it is always so much easier to have a discussion in real time than be tangled up in knots trying to have a discussion over email, where I have to figure out how to phrase things clearly and succinctly, and more importantly, find time to do this. Each conversation gave me a pretty good sense about what the research would be, and what life in the department might be like.
One thing I've also been doing is reaching out to current or former students of these researchers. While I did ask most of the professors to tell me a bit about their advising style, I of course know that source is slightly biased! I also knew that if there was anything not-quite-right going on, I'd be likely to hear it from the student. In a few cases, I knew personally some of the current and former students (or knew people who knew them), but in others I just asked the professors if they wouldn't mind me reaching out. One professor even suggested I contact his students even before I asked! In general, I've received pretty rave reviews of the four finalist professors, which has been really good to hear.
So now from 20 odd professors, I'm down to 4. All have research that makes parts of my brain jump up and down with excitement, seem to be decent human beings, and either have funding in line or a clear-eyed assessment of where funding will likely come from. This phase of the process has been more than me simply figuring out where to apply - it's really felt like I've been interviewing these professors for the job of advising me! I realize that sounds full of hubris, but the reality is, a PhD-student relationship really should go both ways - we have something to gain from each other, and if I can't be sure they'll be able to be a good adviser to me, that's not a relationship I should pursue.
However, now the other side of the process begins - the application phase! Now's my chance to prove that I am and will be a thoroughly awesome student. More on this in the next post - which will probably appear in mid-October, after I've survived the Fulbright application!*
*EDIT - I'm actually not applying for the Fulbright.... for reasons which I shall reveal in THE NEXT POST! The suspense is just killing you, is it not??
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Now, really, were ALL of the 20 professors odd? ;-)
ReplyDeleteWell, the way I see it, you have to be at least a *little* bit odd to be a professor! ;)
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