it’s all about the administrators
It’s amazing what a big role administrators can play in academics. From the administrator in the graduate program office to the departmental administrator who puts in grant applications, administrators can make your life easy or extremely difficult.
In my experience, I can tell you that the administrators in our MD/PhD office and my graduate program as well as thesis lab were key in making my life easy. During the course of medical/graduate school, there are a lot of situations that can potentially come up where it is useful to have someone who will take care of things for you, e.g. deal with the registrar, dean’s office, budget office, etc. As non-administrators, we don’t know many of the tricks that can, for example, cut the time it takes to get a hold of the right person at the registrar’s office from an hour to 5 minutes. Who here has called an administrative office, like the registrar, and not received an answer? Leave a message and we’ll get back to you–beeeeeeeeep. Not cool when you need something taken care of in the next hour or even today. In these situations, it’s nice to have someone who knows the right person to call as well as the right internal number that is sure to be answered (yes, these numbers exist). Over time I’ve come to learn a few of these tricks but am not nearly as proficient as some administrators I know. (as a sidenote, next time you get sent to an answering machine inside your university–administrative office or even within the hospital–try hitting the number zero; sometimes that will direct you to a phone that will be answered!!!)
The same can be said about the administrator of our graduate program who was extremely helpful when I was getting everything together to fulfill my requirements for graduation as well as our lab administrator who had my back throughout graduate school and took care of lots of little things that made my life much easier. In contrast I have heard horror stories about administrators in other programs who not only don’t do their work but actually make life harder (e.g. losing things, not filing things). One person I know almost didn’t get to graduate from graduate school because the program administrator kept losing the requisite forms that needed and were filled out by the student. That’s ridiculous!!!! Another person didn’t get reimbursed for conference expenses for over a year. Can you really afford to shell out over $1000 for a conference and not get reimbursed for over a year?
I wish I could say that this nonsense stopped at graduate school but it never does. A junior faculty member I know turned in a grant application two weeks before the university deadline only to find out that his administrator sat on it and forgot to turn it in. When he asked her about it, she sent him to five different offices around the university looking for his grant application when he finally realized that it had not gone anywhere to begin with. Are you serious about that?!?!?!!? This was for a junior faculty member whose career depends on grants. Unbelievable.
I guess my point is that administrators are an often overlooked part of our evaluation of new places we go for work. Having more experience with an MD/PhD program, graduate school program and joining a lab, I can definitely attest to how important a good administrator can be during those times. So, if you are going to be interviewing for an MD/PhD program, graduate school program or even for joining a lab, make sure you ask other students how good and supportive the administrators are. It’ll be obvious from peoples’ reactions just how good or helpful the administrators are. Just remember, these administrators are the people who are supposed to be helping you (at least, not hurting you) for a sizeable period during a critical point in your training. It’s definitely something to consider.
