>>13077941>This. I had no idea that's how it works until I got into grad school. Now I know. They just tell you what your project is.PhD holder here.
Grad school is like "naive country bumpkin moves to big city and gets scammed by first person he sees who needs $1.38 to take a bus to jersey".
You can get roped into a famous PI's lab and get fucking wreckt with a high risk project, or similarly get pulled into the PI's pet project that you don't care about.
However, you can also join a lab where the PI lets you choose the project (that's what I did) and go fucking nuts with it.
You have WAY more power than the culture lets you believe. Getting into a program may be difficult, but once you get accepted, they will literally bend over backwards and suck your dick to make sure you don't leave, because the worst metric a grad program can have is a lower % of "people who completed their PhD's in the program". The act and will bluff as if they don't give a shit about you- but unless you work for the department chair (lmao how fucking stupid are you to put your career in the hands of someone who has unchecked power), you can basically do whatever-the-fuck and they will yell and scream but not do *anything*.
I did my own project for my PhD, it was amazing and fun, the PI grumbled but loved it in the end, because literally what could they do? They would 100% lose tenure if I left the program.
A lot of naive grad students pick horrible labs and let it run their lives.
If you go into a program, don't be that idiot.
1) NEVER choose a "superstar" lab, it's like choosing to work as a cashier at wal-mart instead of trader joes because "wal-mart is a superstar company in the stock market". They rely on slave labor to be good.
2) be upfront and straight-forward. Literally ask how much funding the lab has and what their grant situation is. All good labs will immediately answer with the facts. If ANYONE wavers for even a second and are wishy-washy, fucking drop them.
