I know what you did last summer: Grad School Edition

With May having just begun, undergraduate students are looking forward to the summer, but the situation is different for Professors and graduate students. Though few grad students take courses during this time of the year, it is nevertheless one of the busiest times of the year. Below, MSc student Justin Kerr explains why and describes some of the rhythms of graduate student life.

By Justin Kerr

“So, you are a student right? When does your summer break start?” It’s only April, and I’ve already been asked this question dreaded by graduate students everywhere three times. At least it’s not as bad as when I was on the hunt for an apartment! When you first become a grad student, you quickly realize that most people outside the realm of academia don’t understand what research based graduate school in the sciences entails. In reality, we are typically enrolled in few if any classes and most certainly do not get a multi-month vacation in the summer months. Course-based graduate programs do exist, but are much less common in the sciences and are typically excluded from receiving most of the normal funding. So, what do research-based grad students in physics actually do?

While grad students do take some courses, they typically make up the smallest portion of our time commitments throughout the degree. Here in the Physics and Astronomy program at York University, Master of Science students have the choice of pursuing a degree by thesis or a research project. In the case of a research project, students are required to take five one-semester courses throughout their two-year program. This type of degree is more common in physics programs for students looking to pursue a PhD at the same university in order to reduce course load during their PhD. It gives more variety in topics studied but allows less time for research. By the end of the degree, students are expected to have completed an original research project presented in the form of a large written document (although often somewhat shorter than a thesis). This type of degree is more common in some specific fields than others; for example, it is almost always used in particle physics, but is a rare choice in our own lab group. Personally, this is the option which I chose in order to expand my expertise in different areas of physics to support my future goals in academia. While this is the high course load option, it still means taking very few courses – the equivalent of a single semester in undergrad over two years, at least without compensating for enhanced difficulty of the material.

The thesis option instead requires only three courses be taken over the same two-year period. This allows students more time for research and development of a more intensive project. A thesis is typically longer than a research project and may involve more multiple smaller projects rather than the single one described in a master’s research project submission. Theses are also presented in a formal defense process instead of a simple submission to a supervisory committee. Completing a thesis gives a more complete research experience to students, which is more heavily valued in certain fields. In straight physics degrees, this can also be used as an option for students who are not intending on continuing in academia to provide a more complete education prior to moving to industry. Some universities other than York have very strict preferences for which type of degree is completed for moving forward in a PhD program, such as physics programs at the University of Toronto. When completing a PhD, the only option available is a thesis, and it will be much more intense than the MSc version. At York, a physics PhD requires the completion of six graduate courses, including any taken during the MSc – meaning a student who used the thesis option will take three courses throughout their four-year degree, and research project students will only need to take one. This means that thesis and PhD students are often not taking any courses at all in a given semester, and usually only one at a time if they are.

The main goal of a graduate degree in the sciences is to perform the research that will become the research project or thesis. To properly do this, we need to first perform literature searches and read many scientific papers pursuant to our planned project. We also keep up with relevant new research in our fields by reading new publications, with most graduate students often reading through several scientific publications per week. The bulk of our work is to perform our research tasks. In physics, this usually means coding, lab experiments, or some combination of the two. This is the portion of our responsibilities that means we don’t have a summer vacation! When other responsibilities do not get in the way, we are working on our research. Producing publications is also an important aspect of graduate education, which when combined with thesis requirements ensures that a good portion of our time is spent writing. We are generally expected to work roughly full-time hours (although deadlines often have something else to say about that!), with research and the associated writing taking up most of that.

The final portion of a graduate student’s responsibilities is teaching assistant duties. As part of our admission agreement and making up about half of our yearly funding are contracts to be teaching assistants for courses offered by our department or that of Natural Science, which covers science electives for non-majors. These can include grading assignments, teaching/demonstrating in a lab course, or leading tutorial sessions in undergraduate classes. The standard requirement for TAing is 270 hours per year, which usually averages out to about 10 hours per week during the Fall and Winter semesters while leaving the summer free to focus on research. In reality, much of that often ends up being concentrated into a few very busy weeks around midterm and exam grading time.

While a good portion of our funding comes from the relatively small portion of our work that is TAing, the truth is that the vast majority of our time spent on research is in fact still work. Since any of the few courses we do take usually occur during the Fall and Winter semesters along with our TAing, our summers are left free not for a summer vacation as it might for undergraduate students, but instead for a large focus on our research work. This is particularly important for those of us graduating in August such as myself who are likely to have some of the busiest months of our degrees ahead of us while we try to perfect our research projects and theses ahead of submission deadlines and defenses. The start of the summer is no better, with the start of May meaning research evaluations for all of us; these are where we must present our current work and future plans to our supervisory committee in a form of oral exam. The next time you are chatting with a grad student, make sure not to assume that they are looking forward to their nice summer vacation to take a break from the courses that they are likely not even taking!