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I am a first-year PhD student who worked with a professor over the summer. I get along very well with her, and I would be happy to work with her if I was certain that my interests aligned with hers. She is a very popular advisor and has a lot of students wanting to work with her, so she gave me a deadline to decide whether I wanted to continue so that she can decide what to do concerning summer funding. If I work with her, I will have to work with her for the remainder of the PhD program.
My problem is a personal problem: How do I know what area of research I want to do? It is difficult to decide for a number of reasons, including that the more I learn in graduate school, the more it seems to me that I need to know more still in order to figure out what area of research I wish to work in. My guess is that this problem has occurred for a number of those who went to graduate school. So here are my questions.
(1) If you had this difficulty, how did you get over this hump to decide what research area to work in?
(2) Do you have any suggestions to figure out what one's research interests are? What questions could one ask oneself, especially at this stage of being a still fairly ignorant graduate student?
(3) What sorts of considerations might one have when it comes to deciding between advisor compatibility and uncertainty of whether research interests align? (If there is even an objective way to answer this question; I'm not sure there is.)
My problem is a personal problem: How do I know what area of research I want to do? It is difficult to decide for a number of reasons, including that the more I learn in graduate school, the more it seems to me that I need to know more still in order to figure out what area of research I wish to work in. My guess is that this problem has occurred for a number of those who went to graduate school. So here are my questions.
(1) If you had this difficulty, how did you get over this hump to decide what research area to work in?
(2) Do you have any suggestions to figure out what one's research interests are? What questions could one ask oneself, especially at this stage of being a still fairly ignorant graduate student?
(3) What sorts of considerations might one have when it comes to deciding between advisor compatibility and uncertainty of whether research interests align? (If there is even an objective way to answer this question; I'm not sure there is.)