<p>For those of you who have done or are currently doing M.S/PhD research, I'd like to know how much time it typically takes to complete the project. A few months? An entire year? I'm just getting started this summer. My advisor has a lab rule to not allow new grad students to do anything within the first three months -- not do anything as in not going to the lab and doing the experiments, but reading literature, planning, coming up with the problem, discussing, getting everything ready. Is this typical?</p>
<p>I have a feeling the experimental work is only going to take a few months, but is allowing students time to take their time.</p>
<p>Mine took a year and 9 months from start to finish. My supervisor wanted me to make more changes, but I had to leave town to start a job, so I convinced him it was good enough. I discovered I don’t like research very much.</p>
<p>For your research, who gets to finalize the project topic and expected deliverables? The student or the advisor? </p>
<p>Currently I have been reading tons of semi related-publications about past works, but don’t know what to do next. I’ve never felt so ambiguous about what to do since there are seems to be no instructions.</p>
<p>Ideally, both people make that decision, but it really depends on your advisor. You probably feel that ambiguity because a lot of advisors essentially throw you into the deep end and let you fend for yourself at first. If you are goo enough to swim, they figure you are worth their time. I would argue that pretty much every grad student has felt the same way as you at some point in their time in grad school.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reassurance. I’m just sick of receiving publications to read, without actually doing any experiments/tests yet. I’ve read about 15 publications, and only understood about 30-50% of the concepts in it. I wish I were at the stage where the problem statement is defined so I can “get started” on designing an experiment and reading relevant papers,.</p>
<p>It’s been a month now, do you think this is the time where I should take initiative and say “This is what my project is about, now I am going to go to the lab and get started.”?</p>
<p>Honestly, ask any professor and they will say it takes a good year before you really become useful, so I don’t think that trying to throw your weight around now will have any effect. That said, you can’t get useful without actually working in the lab and getting your hands dirty, so it may be worth it to ask your advisor what you can do to get acquainted with the lab work.</p>