choosing a thesis

Dear Diary

We did it. We found a home. Now the thesis journey can begin!

In all honesty, I had no idea what was going to be expected of me during my PhD. Orientation and interviews gave us a list of things the department required of us, but in reality, it felt like a lot of jargon and I was banking on the fact that I would just figure it out as I went. So hopefully this blog post helps, but know that if you are unsure of what’s coming, you are not alone.

Step 1: choosing a project…

[Side note: a major part of the reason it is hard to find information on the path of grad school is because it ACTUALLY is different for ever person. BUT, after having gone through this experience and talking to several other students, it has become easier to grasp the basic layout that I can explain to you. My hope is that you walk away with a better understanding of what you will be getting into as a graduate student and the potential paths you might take.]

In some cases, you may have a lot of independence, and after rotating with a lab or reading up on work the lab has already produced, you have ideas. Or maybe the lab you work in already has several projects ready to be started; they just need someone to take the reins. Either way, you need to be brainstorming questions and researching where the field is currently at with those questions. You need to find questions that haven’t been answered. The edge of the unknown.

Understandably, you may not even know what questions to ask, yet. A good place to start can be the discussion and conclusions section in a more current paper that you find interesting. At the end of these papers, writers will say things like “more work needs to be done to better understand…” and this can help spark new ideas. If you collect a lot of these future ideas of interest, you can then start to come up with a big-picture question that can lead to a thesis project.

You will then need to essentially design a grant proposal of how this project is laid out. Your thesis proposal.

[Writing a thesis proposal is specific to my program but regardless, it is good to outline your thesis project in this way from the start]

What is the background work done in the field that set up your questions? What is the main question? What do aim to investigate specifically? How? You should have 2 or more “aims” that you plan to target and they should NOT be dependent on one another. If one aim relies on the other and one aim fails, then you’re screwed. Basically, you should be able to attack the gap in knowledge in a few ways and if some don’t work, you have others as backups so that you don’t risk having a failed project 4 years into your PhD.

From here, you should be able to explain in excruciating detail exactly how you plan to address your aims. What experiments are you going to do? Why? What is the exact methodology? Why? What equipment do you need? Why? What is your model organism? Why? The more specific you can get, the better. What are you doing that is novel to the field? “Novelty” is the key and it’s the only way to be competitive.

Why? Why? Why?

Most importantly, you need to understand exactly WHY this is the best approach for your project.

A classic committee member question is: Why are you using X technique instead of using Y technique?

At the end of the day, you want to be working on a project that you are passionate about. You will be spending a lot of time on it. And it is much easier to be motivated when you truly want to answer these questions.

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Step 2: choosing a committee…

Your committee is composed of PIs that you think will guide you best through your PhD career. Their fields of study should coincide with your project in ways that can aid you long term. Each program is different, but for the most part, you have a few members (including your own PI) that somewhat fit within your field of study and are directly helpful to the techniques and skills you will be using. And then you have one or two (or no) extra members that are outside of your specialty, to also get an outside perspective.

You should feel comfortable meeting with these people at any time you need guidance in your work. They can be an extra sounding board if you are going in circles with your PI on a daily basis. At a minimum, you should be meeting with your entire committee once a year. They will confirm you are doing the right things and staying on course. You will need approval from them before any major step in your PhD career: thesis proposal, candidacy exam, setting a defense date, etc.

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My Experience:

I joined my lab based on the good experiences I had with people in the group and because of the project I was working on at the time. The project was wildly interesting, but I also knew that there were several other questions the lab was interested in pursuing. With this, my PI and I formulated a plan for a few ideas that were not dependent upon each other; some having high-risk high-reward and others being low-risk low-reward, but would still result in a PhD at the end of the day.

I did not know at all how to write a thesis proposal, but luckily we had a short course for our cohort of students. In our program, we propose our thesis in our second year. We took this course at the beginning of that year, ensuring that we had everything ready for our committee by the Spring. The course taught us the ins and outs of grant writing, thesis writing, how grant committees assess proposals, how best to present our works to a broader audience, and allowed us to be evaluated by our peers in a respectful setting. I will be implementing these experiences for the rest of my career.

I want to also note that this was my first true experience where I witnessed EVERYONE in a room wanting to be there. We had each chosen to further our education because we genuinely enjoyed to learning and it showed. We were there because we wanted to be; not because we thought we needed the grade. I feel like my entire education, there were always at least a select few who didn’t want to be there or needed a good grade simply to finish their degree or needed an A to get into medical school, not because they wanted to learn the content. Grad school was real.

1.18.23
MDC