Diary of a first-year grad student

[MathEcon12]

Talk to mostly anyone who has went through a PhD program in economics and they'll tell you how hellacious the first year can be. Since I am now a first-year PhD student at Michigan, I thought it would be a good idea to keep a "diary" to chronicle this infamous experience. I put diary in quotes because I really only want to focus on things that future grad students and potential applicants are interested in, for example, how many hours a day are spent studying. My purpose in doing this is to give future grad students and potential applicants an idea of really what to expect, that is, a better approximation than "it's soo hard" and "you'll have no time to do anything" and etc. So to help me help the community, I'd like to ask all of you what sort of (reasonable) things you are interested in finding out about first-year grad student life; what information would it be beneficial for me to keep track of?

[Econophobe]

Awesome idea. I was browsing Youtube earlier in hopes of finding a vlog about the experience but I didn't have any luck.

Thanks for taking the time to write about it. I have a few things I would like to know but I'll have to post them tomorrow. I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow.

[James Taylor]

Well I think it'd be helpful to know how much outside work time is necessary because of actual assignments and how much is necessary to due the challenge of understanding the concepts. There may be overlap here, but I feel like stuffing your nose in a book for hours trying to grapple a theory would be more demanding. I don't think I ever had homework in undergrad theory classes, are grad classes similar in that respect?

[The MAN]

There is a blog that started out with the same concept (if I remember correctly). You can check it out here: Noahpinion

[tm_member]

Talk to mostly anyone who has went through a PhD program in economics and they'll tell you how hellacious the first year can be. Since I am now a first-year PhD student at Michigan, I thought it would be a good idea to keep a "diary" to chronicle this infamous experience. I put diary in quotes because I really only want to focus on things that future grad students and potential applicants are interested in, for example, how many hours a day are spent studying. My purpose in doing this is to give future grad students and potential applicants an idea of really what to expect, that is, a better approximation than "it's soo hard" and "you'll have no time to do anything" and etc. So to help me help the community, I'd like to ask all of you what sort of (reasonable) things you are interested in finding out about first-year grad student life; what information would it be beneficial for me to keep track of?

The only problem is that you will end up with no time to write the diary ... :-/

[econsd]

Good idea ME12, if you have time. I'll be interested in seeing how everything is going with you either through this diary or over tinychat sometime. Good luck this year.

[Humanomics]

Outside "get ready to rumble" generalizations about the first year, I've only been told it requires about 60 hours of study a week. The same person also told me that everyone goes in scared shiteless the first semester, and studies like nuts to make sure they're not at the bottom of the distribution, and that after exams everyone starts to calm down a little and ease back.

That's the only information I've ever gotten on it, and would really like to know more details. . . . . Whatever you feel is pertinent.

[anonecon]

Depends on where you're at. I know someone at a T15 that said that their first semester was super easy because the cohort was very large and thus full of duds. As long as you weren't a dud, you could coast.

[Humanomics]

I'd like to hear more from the graduate students on what they went through regarding potentially getting discouraged, working through it, the number of hours worked, whether they had to improve their study habits and how, what their texts and problem sets were like relative to the rank and UG courses they came from, etc. I'm not particularly interested in what a tippy-top candidate who got mis-placed into a not-T5 program has to say about "duds," whom would be the first two standard deviations of candidates - i.e. most of the people reading here.

[Tikal]

I'd like to hear more from the graduate students on what they went through regarding potentially getting discouraged, working through it, the number of hours worked, whether they had to improve their study habits and how, what their texts and problem sets were like relative to the rank and UG courses they came from, etc. I'm not particularly interested in what a tippy-top candidate who got mis-placed into a not-T5 program has to say about "duds," whom would be the first two standard deviations of candidates - i.e. most of the people reading here.

I recently read a PhD memoir call "The PhD Grind" that would satisfy most of your requirements.