A Day in the Life of a Ph.D. Student
Tags: Graduate School, Life, PhD, STEM, Education

5:30 am: the struggle begins

Alarm rings.

My cat, Meow (short for Meow Tze Dong, hah!) gets scared by the blaring music and runs away from the foot of my bed. I, on the other hand, do not hear the alarm and am still fast asleep.

5:40 am: dear alarm, would you just shut up?

The alarm rings again.

The sun is almost up, gracing the sky out the window with a warm, snuggly orange hue. Meow enjoys people and animal watching on the lounge chair I put there for him, so I always have the blinds for the middle window of my bedroom completely up. Nature’s Phillips Hue is getting bright, so this time, I actually wake up. Today, I come out of my sleepy brain fog feeling like trash.

It might be one of those days where despite how much I want to feel good & get things done, I’m so overwhelmed that my chest feels heavy to the point it’s hard to breathe, and all I want to do is to curl up into a ball and pretend the world doesn’t exist just for a little bit.

Quite a mouthful to describe “feeling like trash,” but that specific sequence of emotions seems like a common occurrence amongst graduate students like myself.

But alas, no matter how I feel at the start of the day, the day goes on.

6:30 am: the life goes on

After procrastinating in bed staring at the ceiling for what feels like a fleeting second, I reluctantly get out of bed. My first order of business every day is always feeding Meow. As a lucky cat owner, I never get woken up at night by him sitting on my face. The tradeoff, however, is that Meow would come howling for food as soon as I show the slightest tendency to get out of bed.

As Meow inhales his food, I get ready. This whole process usually takes less than 15 minutes. Apart from getting dressed, I perform the most basic skincare routine and do not wear makeup, because I could never survive a day without smearing products all over my belongings. On top of that, in some instances where I have to handle lab animals, artificial fragrances always get the animals screaming and acting erratically, potentially skewing experimental results. So now, I don’t bother anymore, and my skin is actually at its best.

Then, I make a quick breakfast and load up on the caffeine. Not 100% a caffeine addict, I can still function reasonably well without a cup before work. Having it every morning anyway, to me, is more of ceremonial value. It gives me a sense of getting pumped up to take on the challenges ahead.

It is also at this point that I finally start checking emails and texts I may have missed since the previous night. I take my time, and I always appreciate the extra minutes I get for a slow start to the workday.

Photo by Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash

7:30 am: morning drive is the best drive

I commute to work. Fortunately, I live less than 10 minutes away from campus. During this time, my brain starts churning for work — checking emails before heading into work gives me a chance to mentally plan out my priorities during the commute. This is also my favorite drive of the day, having the little car cabin to myself and all the peace in the world before the storm of work hits.

7:40 am: time to plan

I arrive at work. After settling down at my desk, I check email yet again — I get a spurt of emails between 7:30 and 8 am, so I try to look at my inbox for a second time then. Now that I’m on the school network, I hop on to our lab shared drive and check our purchasing log for any reagents I ordered that may have arrived. The first half an hour or so of me at work is always dedicated to administrative tasks.

After that, I plan out my experiments for the day. Grad school, in life sciences at least, mostly boils down to sharpening our scientific acumen and optimizing our thinking to that of well-rounded scientists. That requires sorting through the weeds and finding items of priority constantly. Although both my calendar and lab notebook are digital, when it comes to planning of that sort, I prefer pen and paper. My program is lab-based, and as I finish all the required courses for graduation, I no longer have structured days with set classes as I would in college. Writing everything out helps me better visualize the workflow and provide structure to an otherwise unstructured day.

Today, I’m stretching the planning out to defer actual work for as long as I can. My mind is still uncharacteristically sluggish, and even more uncharacteristic of me, I am already on my second coffee.

8:15 am: work, work, work, work, work (cue Rihanna)

I start my first experiment at the cell culture hood and promptly drop my media bottle straight in the trash by accident. Great start to the day!