Rotations...

In reading quite a few books about the history of famous scientist, I've often been struck by the differences between how grad school used to work as compared to how it is now. Grad school was so uncommon at one point that it appears that you had to go out of your way to contact a professor whose research interest coincided with your personal interests. More significantly, you typically already had to have a a project in mind when you decided you wanted to enter a program - or at least some vague idea.

I've always felt that there's a certain appeal to this system. For one, I think that way too many people are going to grad school as the 'next logical step' after an undergrad; it's pretty clear that there's an over abundance of Ph.D.s and not enough jobs. But also, there seems to be a lot of people who simply aren't all that into research (see my previous post on the topic).

Because of this, I have to admit that I've never been a big fan of the 'rotation' system whereby new students apply to grad school in a general fashion and then do 4 months of work in 3 different labs before choosing the one that they find most interesting to complete their degree. I've always felt that this system downweighs the commitment that should be going to grad school (or at least postpones the decision of what to do until you're deep into the system).

All of this being said however, I recently had a discussion about this topic with a grad student who made a very excellent point: a lot of PIs are terrible supervisors. The benefit of the rotation system is that it can be thought of as an extended two-way interview allowing both student and supervisor to evaluate each other's potential for collaborating.

I'd always narrowly looked at the system from the perspective of indecisive grad students, but having been in work situations wherein I was deeply unhappy, I can now see the logic in a reassessment of my previous opinion. I suppose it's always a good idea to reevaluate one's preconceived notions.