Rumors spread like wild fire for wee little grad students (1st and 2nd years) and one thing we would chat about around the chalk board was that grad students for some “unknown” reason disappear during their third year in grad school. Sometimes they return, sometimes they don’t… and they’re never seen or heard from again. What happens during this time? Do they turn into trolls… get eaten by trolls… go off to fight trolls… (and why am I talking about trolls)? Having just finished my third year, I thought I’d reflect a little on this.
Ha! you caught me, I just liked this picture 
It’s an important time in any young grad student’s life because you’re growing into a little scientist. Like teens finally getting the keys to drive, you’re finally out on your own… in that your parents still mostly cover for you, but now you can drive yourself to school.
students first keys
You start to answer your own questions about research, realize that sometimes you have to figure things out for yourself, and that sometimes your advisor isn’t going to answer his/her email as soon as you’d like. It’s weird because in essence we’re in 19th grade (20+ years of school) and we’ve done pretty well with that, but research is different. There’s no more 8 am classes to go to or tests to study for. And finally you also are able to help other people – those now pesky younger grad students who joined the group a year or two after you did.
I have to give the disclaimer that I’m speaking mostly for myself and the friends I’ve spoken to, but at least in my circle this is a pretty common. I know my postdoc buddy, and fellow science blogger, thought that my naiveté when I first arrived at CERN was (I hope) endearing. I eventually learned better ways to fit functions, found more efficient ways to write code, updated my operating system (yeah, got lots of bad times about that), and had more realistic ideas about experimental research. Although I still have child-like innocence to shed before I become a grizzly post doc (probably a couple more years worth), I hope one day I too will be a wise learned scientist who with a mere glance can force code to compile, grants to be granted, and students to work harder.
-Regina
While your comment about disappearing college students may have been meant as humor, there is such a problem.
Remember Brian Shaffer? How about Maura Murray, Michael Negrete, Josh Guimond, or Justin Gains? They are all still missing.
Ahmad Arain recovered and remembered his mail address after six weeks. He had left a bus in Watts and walked to Mexico in an altered mental state.
Subliminal Distraction exposure is the most likely cause.
There are enough cases to suggest that some die suicides or accident victims while in the early stages of the SD caused mental event.
This problem was discovered and solved forty years ago with the office cubicle. No school warns students or provides Cubicle Level Protection in high risk areas.
I disappeared after passing the qualifiers, in about my 3rd year of physics grad school because I’d reached the point where there was nothing left to know about the nature of the universe other than guess work. To hang around after that meant an unappealing struggle for a series of temporary academic positions. And since I was at an experimental school (UC Irvine), it was likely that I’d end up doing engineering for less pay than in the real world. And I hate writing papers, so I left.
There was an English grad student I heard about who, after completing their quals went bumming around Europe for 3 months without contacting his advisers or other grad students. Then showed back up and completed his degree after worrying them that he had died in some crevasse.