Hi there, thank you so much for the fantastic, detailed reply, I appreciate the effort.
It’s really good to hear your perspective on being able to choose my own project, as that’s something I’m concerned about too. The second supervisor did mention that that is a challenging thing for students to manage, and so I am more drawn to being able to complete a pre-designed and well-constructed research project than trying to pull one together on my own.
I just realized that I completely neglected to mention in my original post that I am from Australia, which is a pretty major detail but only really means that that advice about the NSF GRFP doesn’t apply. Given that I (hopefully) won’t be in as much debt completing my MS in Australia rather than the US, I hope that that might give me a bit more “slack” as you say. Nevertheless, I understand what you’re saying about being “pulled” in a certain direction and that’s something I’ll take care to be aware of.
The advice about making sure my work is directly helping someone else’s is excellent, and I know for sure that that will be the case for the first lab, as the supervisor clearly explained how the research is contributing to the lab’s agenda, and there is a postdoc in the lab that has similar research so will be apparently guiding me throughout.
On the last point, I might try to recontact the first supervisor to get a general idea of what techniques they use in their lab and that I would be using, to try to gauge how marketable my time in the lab would make me.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to write such a thoughtful and useful reply!
Absolutely! It sounds like your were intuitively being pulled in this direction anyway, so it sounds like you have good judgment and that will take you far. Best of luck.
Hi there, thank you so much for the fantastic, detailed reply, I appreciate the effort.
It’s really good to hear your perspective on being able to choose my own project, as that’s something I’m concerned about too. The second supervisor did mention that that is a challenging thing for students to manage, and so I am more drawn to being able to complete a pre-designed and well-constructed research project than trying to pull one together on my own.
I just realized that I completely neglected to mention in my original post that I am from Australia, which is a pretty major detail but only really means that that advice about the NSF GRFP doesn’t apply. Given that I (hopefully) won’t be in as much debt completing my MS in Australia rather than the US, I hope that that might give me a bit more “slack” as you say. Nevertheless, I understand what you’re saying about being “pulled” in a certain direction and that’s something I’ll take care to be aware of.
The advice about making sure my work is directly helping someone else’s is excellent, and I know for sure that that will be the case for the first lab, as the supervisor clearly explained how the research is contributing to the lab’s agenda, and there is a postdoc in the lab that has similar research so will be apparently guiding me throughout.
On the last point, I might try to recontact the first supervisor to get a general idea of what techniques they use in their lab and that I would be using, to try to gauge how marketable my time in the lab would make me.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to write such a thoughtful and useful reply!
Absolutely! It sounds like your were intuitively being pulled in this direction anyway, so it sounds like you have good judgment and that will take you far. Best of luck.