no no show

My advice if you are considering going into a PhD program is "don't".

However, if you simply must anyhow and you now find yourself in grad school wondering which of the many guidelines, advice sets, and plans you need to follow and which are more meant as suggestions, here's a bit of concrete must follow advice for you.

Whatever you do, whatever happens to you, you cannot disappear.

Disappearing acts - a series of little ones or even in some cases a single poorly timed one - will cause faculty to lose faith in you faster than pretty much anything else (short of plagiarism) you can do.

This especially applies if there's been anything shaky or spotty about your graduate career thus far but you are lucky enough to have an advisor or other faculty member who is willing to advocate for you. If you fail to show up and fail to call up, you will lose that support quite quickly.

Even for the non-troubled grad, face time is key. Contact is important. For the student to whom fate has conspired to add multiple life crises on as an extra-curricular activity, the importance of these things becomes even stronger.

Say your mother was just hospitalized, your cat is having seizures, you wrecked your car, and you yourself just broke up with your partner of 10 years leaving you needing to go out and find a new place to live lest you sleep in your wrecked car starting next week, at least call and/or email your advisor to give them even a cursory overview of what's up. During this conversation, tell them when you anticipate being done with what's up. If it's going to take some unspecifiable period of time which is more than a few days, promise to follow up with them at some agreed upon time and then DO SO.

What prompts this warning is that I'm watching a student disappear her way out of my program right now. Genuine crises abound, but the disappearance is making it hard for her advisor to continue to advocate for her. It is truly a terrible thing to witness. To borrow a phrase from a friend, it's like watching a train wreck every day.