<p>What do you mean you are worried about the adjustment?</p>
<p>Everything has an adjustment - a new job, a new degree, a new location, everything. How easy or difficult the adjustment is has in part to do with the program, but in larger part how adaptable you are and your previous preparation for the degree.</p>
<p>Find out how early you will be expected to TA, and if possible, find out what your TA assignment is well before you arrive on campus. My department does TA assignments for continuing students in April and assigns new PhD students shortly thereafter, when they accept the program, so new PhD students in my department would find out their placement over the summer. That way you can do some brushing up if you need to over the summer and feel better prepared. Hopefully your program won’t require you to TA until your second year (mine doesn’t until your second semester of your first year).</p>
<p>As for independent research, that comes with time. Your research will likely not be very independent in your first 2-3 years. You will work on what your advisor works on, but you will plan your own analyses and little offshoot projects of that. As time wears on, you will do more and more of your own planning of projects, and tandem planning with your advisor. The two of you may write a grant together, or you may decide to do independent analyses of data he already has to write a paper. Maybe you will collect supplemental data to do a comparative study or extend what he’s doing, or run a new experiment with the stuff he already has. The classes and the long years are designed to make you feel able to design and carry out your own project. I’m nearing the end of my 4th year and I feel confident that I could design and execute my own project, including writing a grant to win the money to do it. I didn’t feel that way when I first entered graduate school, so I know I learned it here.</p>
<p>I will say, though, that at least in the sciences “independent” research in the grad school years is less independent than most people think it is going in. The reason is time and money. For example, if I wanted to do I could do my own data collection project for my dissertation. My advisor would probably support me, too. But I’d have to first get the money for the equipment and participant incentives, which would take at least a year, and then I’d have to collect the data myself, which would probably take another year for even a small sample of about 100 people. Then a year for analysis and writing, if I was lucky. Sure, I could do that, if I were interested in adding 3 more years to the 4 I’ve already been here, but I am much more interested in graduating in 5-6 years so I’m doing new analyses on data I collected as part of a large project my entire research team is doing. Because I joined the lab at JUST the right moment, I had a lot of say in the design of the study and what measures went in, so I was able to get measures I was interested in and me and another grad student even added an interview component that we were interested in.</p>
<p>Just take it slowly, and keep your ears and eyes open. Listen and learn from everything, including the negative incidents that make you roll your eyes.</p>
<p>Also carve out some time for yourself. Take a day off a week - in the beginning, this may only be a half day, but as you finish up coursework you will be able to schedule in more me time. You need to recharge your batteries to really do good work.</p>
<p>I think the marathon, not a sprint, advice is the best advice. I often hear new PhD students, or people considering a PhD, wondering how long this will take and how quickly they can finish. I was like that, too. Don’t. Take your time. This is a process that just takes some time to finish, so really hunker down and dig in. 5 years really isn’t that long, honestly, to build the best possible case for a job in the future - and my first four have flown by, I can’t believe that I’ll be beginning my dissertation this summer.</p>