The Importance of High-Intensity, No-Rest, Workshops

Seriously, how many stories do you have about friends, life, or learning that involve a sleepover?  Weren't sleepovers the best when you were a kid? Why? - because they involved popcorn, staying up too late, and ghost stories?  Maybe, but I've got a different theory. The high-intensity, high-impact, no-rest time frame made memories extremely impacting.  Those times were effective memory creators.

My past weekend wasn't exactly productive as a graduate student: I spent all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at a Draft-Legal Triathlon Camp for the Northeastern Collegiate Triathlon Conference (hence the swimming picture above).  I didn't get any labwork done, but I learned an incredible amount as a triathlete.  The Camp was 3 straight days, during which I was going the whole time, contributed all my mental energy to learning new skills, and teamed up with amazing triathletes from around the region.

After leaving the camp, I realized that the 3 days were extremely effective at teaching me triathlon skills! Committing a solid and confined period of time to these skills helped me to put them in practice much faster than if I had incorporated the learning into my regular routine.

How does this apply to grad school?  
I wondered why we don't do similar things as graduate students.  Going to conferences is similar, but I don't learn nearly as much at a conference.  I wondered - what made this camp so effective?

Practice Practice Practice - At the camp, we would first learned about a skill, training technique, or tactic, and then we practiced it a ton!  The opportunity to practice things immediately helped you understand what you were learning and gain a personal connection to the instructional point. It was interactive learning!
Feedback - The whole camp was run by very qualified coaches.  We received continuous and immediate feedback from an outside observer who knew more about the skills than we did.  Each skill was learned more effectively because we could adapt to the feedback.
Immediate Improvement - When we combined feedback and practice together, we were able to improve immediately.  This improvement was a positive feedback cycle which helped promote our confidence, investment, and knowledge.
Find Your Weaknesses - We were "forced" to do things that we wouldn't normally attempt or fit into our regular routine.  By practicing and working on a lot of different points, we were able to determine our strengths and weaknesses.  By compacting all of these skills into a small time-frame, we were able to compare our strengths and weaknesses to each other.  When you don't compare your strengths and weaknesses, it becomes easier to think that you are better at a weakness than you really are.  When a weakness is directly compared to a strength, you can determine how much work is needed to improve that weakness.
Develop a Goal - When individual practices are completed with a large amount of separation between them, the feedback cycle can be too discontinuous to give you a clear vision of direction or goals.  When the feedback cycle is shortened considerably, goals are easy to define and conviction for the goals are solidly concrete. During the camp, we effectively determined goals for ourselves which would incredibly improve our future in the sport, and these goals were backed up with a high degree of confidence.
Bonding and Building - More importantly than what we did individually what we did with the other members of the camp.  We learned how to work with them as a team, trust each other because of team help and input, developed friendships, and look forward to interacting with each other in the future.  These are the types of the relationships that can develop over longer periods of time (months or years?), but are highly accelerated when spending so almost every waking hour with the same people.

Why are workshops missing in grad school?
Sometimes, working in a research lab can seem like the same day-in-day-out.  Why aren't there short periods of very internse skills learning, mentoring, practicing, and results seeking, and goal setting in the research lab?

There's room to change it up!  What's collection of skills to people need to learn that can be taught by other grad students and post docs?  What huge research questions needs answering and hypothesizing?  We should all be able to trust each other with research results, questions, processes, and any other part of the labwork.  Why do I have to wait on getting research feedback for over a week?  Why is it the same-ole-same-ole?

Grad School Workshop! While it's a large commitment of time, the effectiveness is incredible.  What better way to learn, teach, complete a task, organize a goal, brainstorm, get to know your coworkers, trust in everyone's knowledge and skill, and value the impact of your work?  There's room to step out of the mold and make a difference!