Pre-Grad School

I'll be starting in the CUNY Grad Center's PhD Program in Earth & Environmental Sciences this fall. I need to sort some things out before that. I've already been through a Master's degree program before, at Adelphi University; the MS was through their Biology Department where I was lucky enough to work with Dr. Beth Christensen on paleoclimate-paleoceanography. So on the one hand I have some idea of what Graduate School is like, keeping in mind that a PhD program is going to be different. I know I do good work in a lab and do good research and that I have some trouble writing up that research; I never published my Masters as a separate article in a journal, but I have done poster presentations on my subject matter, and I've done an oral presentation at an AGU conference. Clearly the big hurdle I need to make it over here is actually submitting and publishing in a journal.

I've done research, and I've applied for and obtain small grants, and I was also lucky enough to be responsible for equipment purchasing on a big grant where I work. But I haven't obtained and administered a big grant on my own. That involves a lot of paperwork and management, its not the sort of thing that you normally think about as being associated with doing science. Business, sure, that can be expected, but you tend to think of the work of science being spent either looking down a microscope or pouring over research papers; if a spreadsheet's involved its for tabulating data, not doing accounting. I'm expecting to see lots more of that as grad school progresses; I'll need to obtain funding just for taking credits/tuition, if that's doable, or maybe I can get a fellowship or some sort of grant for doing research while at school. I don't actually expect much 'support' in that sense from the program. In some ways, they shouldn't be providing that sort of support, students need to develop those skills, and sink or swim is a way to do that.

So I understand that scientists spend a lot of time doing things other than science. How much, I can't really say. I'd hope that the program can help make that clearer, but its not what we usually think of the doctorate curricula are.