The forty-seven percent.

A must-read for anyone who is, or knows, a current or prospective PhD student:

The awful cost to getting a PhD that no one talks about.

From the article:

"The days I spent pursuing my PhD in physics were some of my darkest. It wasn’t the intellectual challenges or the workload that brought me down; it was my deteriorating mental health. I felt unsupported, isolated and adrift in uncertainty. Anxiety attacks became a part of my daily life. I drank and cut myself. I sometimes thought I wanted to die. 

"I might not have felt so alone had I known how many people struggle with mental health issues in academia. A 2015 study at the University of California Berkeley found that 47% of graduate students suffer from depression... But the stiff-upper-lip attitude that pervades the ivory tower can prompt many people who struggle with mental health problems to keep their problems hidden, while others simply accept depression as par for the course."

A partial list of things you can talk to a senior grad student about.

The chances are that you know a grad student. Those wobbly, skittish creatures that you find slinking around a lab or office, easily mistaken for stray grasshoppers. You may, on occasion, attempt to engage these entities in casual conversation. But be warned: under the smile scrawled upon their faces may lurk - unbelievably - a slew of actual human emotions. Uncertainty, anxiety, hope, frustration, hilarity, sadness. As outlandish as it may sound, students are capable of feelings, which only become heightened as they near the inevitable departure from studenthood and the accompanying life changes that can be equal parts welcome and unwelcome.

It's a transition that needs to be talked about - and that's for them to do with their research mentor(s), and it hopefully catalyzes some empowering, encouraging, insightful discussions.

But if you're not mentoring the student in question, what are you to do? What on earth could there be to ask a grad student about, other than the date of their thesis defense? Don't they relish having a neon red countdown clock affixed to their head?

The answers may surprise you: grad students don't actually want to talk about being a grad student in every single conversation. Rest assured, they know that they need to defend their thesis, find a job, clear out their apartment, move away from their close friends, etc. It can be exciting and stressful and painful - and honestly, you're better off not picking at that tangled web and triggering thoughts that they might be trying to shelve away for a little while.

So if you're not going to ask a senior grad student about their end date, are there any conversation topics that are appropriate, or should you just shun their company? To answer that question, let me ask you some other questions:

1. What was the last book you read or film you watched?
2. What's your favorite dinosaur?
3. What's your least favorite song? 
4. What are you passionate about? 
5. If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
6. Would you rather have a free lifetime supply of coffee but never have chocolate, or a lifetime supply of chocolate but no coffee?
7. Do you like hiking? Bird watching? Bungee jumping?
8. Have you ever solved a Rubik's cube?
9. Who in history would you most like to spend a day as?

All of these questions, and others, could potentially be employed during conversation with graduate students! But please keep in mind the personality and interests of the student that you're talking. I'm assuming that if you're talking to them, you have some interest in getting to know them better and aren't simply emitting words to pass time.  

Are there non-work things you wish (or wished) people would talk to you about during the years that you're working on your PhD? Or do you disagree, and enjoy talking about the logistics of finishing up? Comment below! 

Good hard vs. bad hard: What type of research challenges are you experiencing?

In a laboratory setting, researchers, postdocs, and graduate students can find themselves alone and lacking confidence in the face of some common challenges. Those difficulties are often lumped together as an inherent part of pursuing a research career, but we think they could be divided into two types—challenges that are hard in a good way or in a bad way.

Good-hard challenges include rigorous tasks that lead to scientific discovery, and can be surmounted with discipline and focus, while bad-hard challenges are those that are extraneous to the research process and can lead to debilitating personal stress, poor self-image, and stagnation in the work.

We’ve created a partial list of both types to help researchers differentiate between the two. Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education.