What I Learned in Graduate School

Today, my life as a graduate student draws to a close. I stood before an audience and defended my right to be called Dr. Stacey Rodenbeck. In one hour, I summarized the last four years of my life – at least the science part. The reality is, however, that the science is only a miniscule part of the learning I did in graduate school. As this day draws to a close, I’m pensive. I need to share the ways in which graduate school shaped and changed me.

I learned humility. When I graduated from Indiana University Southeast on May 7, 2012 with a 4.0 GPA in my major classes and highest academic distinction, I believed that the sky was the limit. I was the big fish. Everyone knew who I was. Underclassmen asked me to tutor them. Faculty relied on my expertise as I served them as a lab assistant. I had easily conquered the challenges of an undergraduate education; so I was excited about my future as Ph.D. student at Indiana University School of Medicine. On my 27^th birthday, August 20, 2012, I sat down in my first graduate level class. As the barrage of information began, I realized that I was no longer the big fish. Sometime during the first year, I asked a trusted mentor from my undergraduate institution if I would ever feel smart again. The answer was, “Yes, but you will never feel as smart as you did the day you graduated with your Bachelor of Science degree.” Fabulous. A life time of feeling average. That wasn’t what I’d signed up for. The next four years, I won some and lost some. I learned how to compete with myself and not others (I still have growing to do in this area!). I learned to think of myself less and of the work more. I learned to apply those principles to my personal life, and have been blessed with some fulfilling opportunities to serve in my church and personal relationships.

I learned how to suffer. To a degree, graduate school is one long lesson in suffering. Sleepless nights. Isolation. Failure.  Disdain from those who don’t understand the intense, grueling nature of what you’re doing, and who can’t understand why you would stick with it if it’s that bad. “It’s your choice,” they say. “If it’s that bad, you could get out.” I learned that if you love something enough, you suffer for it. As I realized that my thirst for scientific knowledge allowed me to endure, it awoke in me a greater intensity of desire for spiritual growth. I began to pray that God would teach me to love Him so intensely that I was willing to suffer worse things for Him than I was willing to suffer for knowledge. I worked to develop a meaningful relationship with my Creator and a deep and thorough theology that would stand the test of time, ridicule, and persecution.

I learned the importance of community. On that first day of classes, I sat beside three other girls who were to become dear friends over the course of our first year. Even in the days of full-time class taking, we gave and gained support from one another. We encouraged one another to stay the course, to fight the battle of graduate school. As we joined separate labs, we continued to be friends. As we learned the ropes and prepared for our qualifiers, we served as editors for each other, sounding boards, and learned to function as colleagues. My labmates formed a team, and together we solved problems, asked and answered questions, and developed strong personal bonds. Science should not be a solo activity. Like good science, good lives are founded in community. As we sharpen and strengthen and serve each other, character flaws are revealed and dissolved, love flourishes, and productivity is enhanced.

I learned that something worth doing is worth doing poorly. I don’t like to fail, and until graduate school I just avoided things that I wasn’t good at. During my graduate training, I soon learned that the avoiding tactic doesn’t fly. If something is worth doing well, it’s worth doing poorly at first while you’re learning. I learned sheer grit – to get up and try again when a negative data set knocked me over. I sometimes think that if I’d never gone to graduate school, I would have never gotten married. I was terrified of failing in a marriage. Learning that failure is just another chance to get up and solve problems enabled me to step out in faith and to marry a man who makes me a better person. I don’t like the moments when I fail him, but if being a good wife is worth it, so is being a poor one as I learn the ropes.

I learned how to think outside the box to solve problems. Ph.D. stands for “Doctor of Philosophy,” and even though I never took a formal philosophy course as a graduate student, I soon found that abstract thinking was crucial to success in the lab. If something doesn’t work, you examine a million facets of the experiment to determine why. If your hypothesis is consistently shattered, you change your paradigm. That’s how science works. As my critical thinking skills sharpened, I found myself applying them to other parts of my life. My Christian faith strengthened as I applied critical approaches to Bible study. My understanding of my own shortcomings deepened as I sought to “determine the mechanisms” underlying my personal failures.

So yes, I learned how to do science in graduate school, but I also learned how to do life. I learned to look the future in the face, knowing that I’ll fail miserably sometimes, that reaching out to those around me is ok, that I’ll get back up when I fall down. Graduate school isn’t the only place where you learn lessons like this, but I will never regret my choice to pursue higher education. The lessons I’ve learned here are valuable and will travel with me in all aspects and phases of life.