Take Your Dissertation Research Mulligan

In golf, a horrible tee shot can often be remedied by a mulligan – a do-over – that gives the offender a chance to improve upon the recent catastrophe.  Knowing how the first shot ended up, the golfer will usually make the proper adjustments to avoid repeating the same mistake.  The result is usually a better shot that allows the golfer to keep moving forward, as opposed to searching for their ball in the woods for 15 minutes.  Here, we’re issuing a mulligan for your dissertation research…

Although every dissertation research experience is different, we all experience failure, and generally lots of failure.  Unfortunately, failure is unavoidable in research.  Working with new genes, proteins or cells requires the development of new assays, purification schemes and culturing conditions and these often take time to define.

Beyond technical issues, we also face the tremendous challenge of the intellectual focus of the project.  Many experiments may be executed perfectly, but still fail because the hypothesis was incorrect.  It can take weeks, months or years to finally hit paydirt – also known as “a working project”.

At some point after obtaining our degrees, we all look back and do a casual post-mortem on our experience.  What if I knew the assay conditions from day one?  What if the synthesis of my inhibitor had worked the first time?  What if I hadn’t chased that terrible idea that ended up wasting most of my third year?

At the risk of catalyzing a wave of depression among readers, we want to know how long you think it would take you to complete your dissertation research (omitting classes and teaching responsibilities) if you knew everything you know now.  No need to repeat experimental avenues that didn’t work – just the work that ended up in your final dissertation.

We apologize in advance for making you to think about this…

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