Goal Setting for Grad School

In the spirit of the season, I've devised a list of fairly specific goals for my upcoming grad school career. It's time to transition from med school to the PhD years, and I want to be very purposeful about what I'm doing. If you're not careful, grad school can be period in which you become a highly trained technician, but not really a scientist that can think and act independently. To guard against that, I've laid out the things I want to learn and do in the next 4+ year. I'm putting it up here mostly to hold myself accountable, and also to invite feedback and criticism. I welcome you, dear readers, to help me with this list. For those of you in grad school, what are your experiences? What things do you wish you knew to focus on from the beginning?

Here is my (preliminary) list:

• ❑ Perfect art of presentations

• ❑ Learn meticulous scientific method and experimental design in general

• ❑ Improve general problem-solving skills

▼ ❑ Acquire robust data analysis skills 

• ❑ Learn statistics

▼ ❑ Become proficient in using computers to assist in research

• ❑ Programming

• ❑ Bioinformatics

• ❑ Web development

▼ ❑ Establish seamless workflow using digital tools

• ❑ Papers2

• ❑ Devonthink

• ❑ Anything else?

▼ ❑ Acquire outstanding domain knowledge and expertise

• ❑ Neurobiology of pain

• ❑ Acquire general knowledge of chemical biology

• ❑ Build a repository of techniques to use in pursuit of interesting scientific questions

• ❑ Perfect grant and scientific writing

• ❑ Crowdfund a science project

▼ ❑ Build strong network of smart people who I can call on to work with in the future

• ❑ Weekly lunch roundtable

▼ ❑ Self-track productivity

• ❑ Time studying

• ❑ Time working

• ❑ Output

• ❑ Attitudes

• ❑ Write science/medicine blog

▼ ❑ Extend knowledge in my domain

• ❑ Publish at least 2 first-authors papers

• ❑ At least 1 review article

• ❑ PhD thesis

▼ ❑ Improve/enhance self-learning methods

• ❑ How can I teach myself stuff throughout life?