Goal-setting for Summer 2025

A good read for everyone (even if you are not a grad student): Values and Expectations for Graduate Students in Physics 

Setting research (and other) goals:

• What do you want to accomplish this summer?  

  • Be specific in your objectives (i.e., "I want to have finished X part of Y project" and not "make progress in research").  This may mean that a goal is that you want to define the research objective for a paper and then break it down into pieces.  

  • If you plan to do candidacy this summer, define by when you want to have the exam done.

  • If you are teaching, articulate goals about teaching (could be something along the lines of "I want to explain Gauss's law better to students who are barely learning about integrals in math").

  • You can (and should!) set professional development goals (e.g., learn about some career path, give one practice talk).

• What are the key milestones for each goal, and by when do you want to accomplish them?

  • OK, so you set your goals.  Now, you need a path to get there.  Identify what are the key milestones/checkpoints in each goal, and think about what a realistic timeframe is to hit each one.

  • For each milestone/checkpoint, think about what resources and inputs you need for you to hit that milestone in the timeframe you want.

Practical advice on how to manage your own research:

• Do weekly and daily goal-setting.

  • At the start of each day, and at the start of each week, define what you want to get done.  Be specific.  Think about specific tasks or deliverables that you want to achieve.

  • For undergrads (but it's a good practice for everyone, too!  I say undergrads specifically because it's a requirement for the Astro SURP program): At the end of every week, write a summary of everything you did in the week.  Take a victory lap for accomplishments, identify any barriers you encountered, and reflect on how what you did may inform your goals for the next week.

• Documentation!!!!

  • The main type of documentation you need to stay on top of: records for yourself, so that Future You can figure out what Present You was doing.  This includes: tracking initial conditions for code, what worked and didn't work, plots, derivations.

    • Crowd-sourced ideas for documentation tools/methods:

  • The second type of documentation you need is public-facing: keep a record of things you show other people, including at group meetings.  It's important when you are meeting with your research mentors to come prepared with the things you want to get feedback on.

    • Crowd-sourced ideas for this.

• Make sure you have access to the resources you need, and ask for them if you don't

  • This includes: OSC access, work computer, library

Becoming familiar with the field:

• Go to Astro Coffee! (Daily 10:30 am, McPherson 4054)

  • Aim to go YYY times per week.

  • Aim to present a paper ZZZ times per month

• Go to Little Galaxies (see schedule above, Monday 3 pm in Price Place in PRB)

  • Aim to lead the meeting at least once in the summer (undergrads and 1st year grad students can work in groups on this)

  • Present a status update each meeting

  • Aim to present at least X papers/summer

• Go to any other journal club or talk that seems relevant

• Aim to read at least YYY papers/week

  • Document questions you have about the paper, anything that's confusing, anything you want to talk to someone else about.

Communication:

• Set up regular meetings with your research mentors.

  • It's up to the group of people involved to figure out a cadence.  Also, you may find that you need to meet with different sets of people (e.g., there might be a "SIDM physics journal club" that you go to in addition to a code/research project-specific meeting).

• Use Slack/email regularly to reach out to people when you have something to show or a problem that you want to crowdsource a solution to.

  • Make sure you have access to the Little Galaxies and CCAPP Slack spaces.

• Identify people who you can talk to about specific problems, and contact them when you need to.

  • Can include: department computing specialists, that one grad student who knows everything about correlation functions, etc.

• Experiment with how long to struggle with something before seeking help.  Usually people either ask for way to much help at the beginning or (more commonly) do not ask for help often enough.

  • There is a lot of trial-and-error involved in figuring out what works for you.

• Take advantage of the professional development opportunities that are on campus or offered through professional societies.

  • Resource list: 

• Be open to and solicit feedback.

  • Often people are embarrassed to ask for feedback because they're worried that other people with think they are stupid.  I want to let you know that it is absolutely the opposite.  Asking for and taking feedback is essential to growth.  Toddlers learn about the world by asking "why?" and "how?" pretty much constantly.  A habit of highly successful people is to seek feedback from anyone who might have good advice.  

Taking care of yourself:

• Do things that are fun!

• Look for people with common interests/hobbies, and see if they want to meet up (e.g., crochet club, softball, gym, D&D).

• If it's been a while since you've seen a doctor, the summer is a good time to get a physical exam.

• Touch grass.

• Take breaks when you need them.  Life is a marathon, not a sprint.

• Take a vacation, even if it is just binge-watching a show with your cat for a week.

• Take care of your own mental health, and keep an eye out for others.  If you see someone struggling, try to be there for them.

• Resource list: