The Contemplative Professor

 In last week's post, I described seven ways that my experience as a faculty member is different from when I was a graduate student.  While the two are different in various ways, they are also similar in a few. Thus, I present three ways that my current professional life as a faculty member is similar to my previous professional life as a graduate student. 1. Both require hard work, grit, tenacity, and resilience. Graduate school required a lot of hard work; no surprises there!  There were courses to take, research rotations to complete, classes to TA, research projects to work on, comprehensive exams to pass, and the thesis/dissertation projects to propose, execute, and defend.  Anyone who has been through graduate school knows that successful completion of any one of these items requires hard work, grit, and tenacity.  It takes time and dedication to learn the content knowledge from the didactic years of graduate school, so that that it can be applied to the m...

 A few months ago, I gave a virtual presentation to a group of fellow scientists about my journey into academia.  Since most of the folks attending my presentation were graduate students with a few of them contemplating careers in academia, I decided to include a few slides about how faculty life differs from graduate student life, at least from my own experience.  Thus, I present seven ways that my current professional life as a faculty member is different than my previous professional life as a graduate student. 1. Increased salary and benefits as a faculty member. This is probably the most obvious difference between a full-time academic faculty job and graduate student status.  I do not pull in a six-figure salary, but I do have a solid income with benefits like health insurance.  For that, I am thankful.  In the spirit of fully disclosure though, I will say that I did receive a merit fellowship, stipend, and benefits as a graduate student, as did my hus...