Being a Successful Grad Student

A talk for students starting out in research. I give it most often at Aarohan, IIT Gandhinagar's orientation for incoming PhD and MTech students. There is an icebreaker built around a game of trust, and a typical PhD timeline: coursework and qualifiers, a thesis proposal, and eventually consolidation. The core of it is ten balancing acts: breadth and depth, persevering and pivoting, saying yes and saying no, perfect and good enough, brooding and asking, reading and writing, luck and work, organization and chaos, journey and destination, and quality and quantity. I also share messages from academics and Matt Might's illustrated guide to a PhD.