The zombie topic shambles on, looking for unsuspecting n00bs to maul, spreading the D-List n00b virus knowledge to the masses.
What is the departmental culture?
The answer to this question is almost as important as anything on this list. The culture of a department drives the personality of profs hired to work there, whether having a life outside the office (and admitting to it) is acceptable, if you get paid on time, and getting access to resources without department politics coming into play. There are exceptional laboratories that are little islands of sanity in the face of departmental cray-cray, but do you really want to be in a department where the only people you talk to at happy hour are your lab mates?
Figure 1: Hordak kept trying to force She-Ra into being a model employee even though she clearly failed at the Horde's tenants of tyranny and brutality
By the power of Linebreakskull!
Will you get to write your own papers?
Learning to write a compelling document detailing the science you’ve done, and how it fits into the bigger picture, is a critical skill to learn whether you plan on staying in academia or not. But many people despise writing up their work and will avoid it with the fire of a thousand suns (the hardest part of graduating is writing your thesis!)…which may make having a PI who will whip your work into a Nature paper for you sound really tempting. However, ultimately you are a BIG loser if you never learn how to write a compelling story about your work.
Listen to what your potential adviser has to say
There is the age old cliché about dating that states ‘when someone shows you who they are, believe them’. As I have said previously, some people are so tied up in impressing a professor that they let what hir says in return fly in one ear and straight out the other. If a PI states that they’re a micro-managing dick, but that it’s an excellent chance to ‘prove yourself’ or some other bullshittery, get thine ass the fuck out. If a PI bemoans all their students are idiots, so they really really need someone bright like you, stuff your ego back in your fanny pack and gtfo. This is even more important when the PI is new, and you have no grad students to try and scry the truth from.
Do you like the students that are already there?
This is a point that, surprisingly, is often not considered by people choosing a lab. It’s true that in many cases you will eventually end up solo on your own project and may not have to interact closely with other people in your lab. But the people who staff the lab, especially senior members, really drive the personality and culture of the group, sometimes even more so than the PI. Do you really want to be the only apolitical person in a lab of Beltway junkies? Do you want to be the only introvert teetotaler in a lab of noon happy hour extroverts? I’m not saying the answer to these questions is always a resounding NO, but they are important things to consider for your future sanity.
You really do a fabulous job of laying out those things that most students don't think of until it's too late. To those students reading through this blog from someone whose made it out the other side, these words are the truth. Take them to heart and success will follow.
The noobs are listening! I'm starting grad school in...two weeks...(eeee!)...so thank you.
I third that. One of the reasons why I picked my lab in graduate school was because people would hang out in the common cell culture room and talk about everything. It was a (basically) PI-free zone, and a good place to meet everyone in the department, and it cultivated a very friendly environment. Another dept where I worked was fancier and richer but not many centralized experimental places to meet and talk, and it was not as friendly. I picked the less fancy (but friendlier) dept and got tons of unsolicited advice about grad school and experiments...at the end I think a friendly dept can really help you get through with sanity intact.
Thanks for the advice. I too, like HFM, am starting grad school in a couple of weeks.
I'm interested in the work of three (possibly four) professors. Do you have any advice on how I should handle the issue of keeping all of them open to advising me while I talk to them and their students and make my choice?