Graduate Students Rejoice

Today, buried in his speech to the National Academy of Sciences, President Obama made the following statement:

"My budget also triples the number of National Science Foundation graduate research fellowships"

To any graduate student in the sciences (physical, biological or social) this statement is enough to make you salivate. The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship is a nationwide fellowship given to graduate students in their first couple of years of grad school and lasts for 3 years. I was lucky enough to have one for my first three years of graduate school and I can't say enough how wonderful it was. I'm not just talking about the extra cash it put in my pocket. The real benefit it gives is flexibility and freedom to the graduate student who is usually little more than an indentured servant. We teach or work in a lab to earn our living stipends, which can be useful and rewarding, but can also be painful and a hindrance to our progression. If you are spending all your time teaching you can't make progress on your research, as many of my theorists friends have found. You can get stuck in a lab doing research you don't like or working for somebody you don't get along with, or you might not be able to work in the field you want to because there is not enough funding from the group. The NSF GRF saves the graduate student from these fates by giving her independent funding so she can find her own way to the research field of her dreams. It lasts through the first 3 years of school, which is generally enough time for the student to find her way into a stable group that she is happy with.

Midway through my first year of grad school I realized I was unhappy with my research situation. Normally I would've been stuck there until I could find my way into another group that had available funding, which would've taken at least a semester. Instead I simply contacted the professor I knew I wanted to work with, finished up my outstanding projects and moved on to my current group. The situation could have gotten much more ugly if it were not for that GRF.

So thank you President Obama (or Steve Chu or whoever suggested it) for remembering the grad students!