My sock-less feet felt slippery in my tan loafers. It was warm for an autumn day, or so I thought, compared to fall in New England. I wasn’t in New England anymore. I was now living in Missouri. A Twenty-four hour car ride from the crisp, pine-scented, spaces I had called home for twenty-four years.

I moved to Missouri more than a year ago and took a job in a pharmacy while taking graduate courses at the local university. I had concluded that the only way to earn a livable wage in the sciences was to obtain a graduate degree, but I had no idea if I needed a master’s degree or Ph.D. Frankly, I wasn’t sure if I was capable of either one. I loved science and learning, but I had no evidence to indicate I was “graduate school material”. I did well in school but I never had a 4.0 GPA and I certainly looked nothing like any of the pictures of scientists I had ever seen. Even here, now, in the university’s Natural Resources building, a prominently mounted image of Aldo Leopold, a famous environmental scientist, seemed to disapprove of me as he stared off into the distance; stoic in his distant, monochromatic gaze, below a heavily receding hairline.

I was now waiting nervously outside the office of a professor of soil chemistry, staring at a collection of glass encased, three-dimensional, soil profiles that spanned the entire length of the hallway. I was waiting to meet with Dr. Main. This was the twelfth such meeting I had had in two months and Dr. Main was the last on my list.

Did I mention I had a list?

I had gone through all the science professors I could find on the university website and made notes about their research. I contacted each one I thought was doing something I could get behind. I liked plants, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend years researching algae. I liked avian ecology too, but the lab that studied birds sounded risky. What if those flighty creatures just didn’t show up to my future study site? How would I make a degree out of that? I met a variety of people in this process. I was delighted to discover may professors were full of passionate curiosity, even among those who appeared to be in their 60’s. Regrettably, many of these researchers lacked funding to pay a graduate student for their research efforts and cover the cost of their tuition.

Yes, that’s a thing! I discovered as an undergraduate, graduate degrees in research often come with funding!

Occasionally, I also encountered professors so full of their own self-importance I couldn’t imagine working with them over a period of YEARS. I didn’t want to make a difficult thing unpleasant as well. After a long search, I discovered in the soil microbiology class I had enrolled in, that a newer professor, Dr. Main, was looking for a master’s student. I had made this discovery several weeks earlier, but I had put off meeting with him. One of the other students in my class had labeled him as grumpy and unfriendly. Apparently he didn’t smile much, and had a reputation for having very high standards. Standards, I was not certain I would meet. But here I was. Waiting.

I had expected him to come out of the office door behind me, which had his name plate on it. As I sat in the small chair in the hall, I heard steps coming up the stairs. A slim, youthful man with as shock of sandy-blond hair came around the corner and made eye contact with me. He walked quickly. I moved my feet expecting him to whisk right by, but he stopped. He greeted me by name and suggested we talk at the rectangular table by the windows.

This was Dr. Main?! So far, not so scary. I once had a towering, music teacher who bellowed at my terrible clarinet playing until he turned as purple as a hot gas flame. This guy seemed ok – certainly not physically intimidating.

As we took our seats I noticed he sat at a right angle to me, not directly across the table. I liked that too. So far he didn’t seem like a power-play kind of guy. Dr. Main asked me questions about my background in chemistry. I listed the litany of classes I had taken, but quickly confessed I rarely ever received an “A” unless it was in the lab section, and my undergraduate degree was actually in biology. I told him I currently worked in pharmaceutical compounding, but immediately informed him that that was mostly mathematical ratios and conversions, which required little actual chemistry knowledge. Then he asked, “would you be ok traveling eight hours on some weekends and staying overnight to collect samples of Ozark forest soils?”

I studied his face for a moment. His gaze was steady and his thin lips revealed no sign of humor. I said, “you want to pay me to go camping and dig holes?” This sounded too good. He was interested in taking me on as his student AND this was the work! I was in.

I still don’t know exactly what prompted Dr. Main to take me on as his student. Looking back, it may be that there simply were not that many students eager to trudge through the Missouri Ozarks carrying shovels and 40 lbs of soil strapped to their backs. After meeting several other graduate students, however, I did discover that I was not the only graduate student without a 4.0 GPA, especially as a master’s student. I suspect the programs that accept students directly into a Ph.D. program, without a master’s degree first, may have more strict GPA requirement. This is certainly true for professional degrees like for medical doctors, or veterinarians.

It has also been my observation that a huge concern for an academic advisor, which is the person a graduate student reports to, and the person who has procured the research grant, is that the student will quit, fail out, or otherwise leave the program prior to completion. This usually results in the advisor failing to fulfill research promises in the timeline agreed to in the grant, and can cause them problems when seeking future grants. This is one reason graduate advisors and institutions look for prior laboratory experience in applicants for master’s or Ph.D. programs. Such experiences indicate the student is familiar and comfortable with the often fastidious, and occasionally solitary, nature of lab work.

Has anyone else been worried about getting into graduate school? Or maybe you have questions about the process? Leave a comment below or reach out on twitter (@LabMom20). If you like this post, subscribe with your email for new posts updated weekly, delivered straight to your inbox.

* Please note, all names, other than my own, have been changed to protect the privacy of others. All accounts are based on my own experiences and memories.

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