Be Receptive
I came to graduate school with a vague idea of what I wanted to study, and some general idea of who my advisor was as a person and scientist. However, it quickly became apparent that he would not be the best support for the kind of work I originally had in mind. While he’d be supportive, I wouldn’t be working with him as collaboratively as I had hoped, and would end up being more of an independent scientist peripherally associated with his work. That didn’t sound ideal and lead to quite a bit of stress!
Towards the end of my first year I was speaking with him about a conference he had just come back from. Some of the topics were quite exciting to me, and clearly exciting for him. I mentioned this, and (long story short) ended up leading a project that proved very successful combining our mutual interests in this topic.
I have not returned to my original interests during my PhD in any serious way, and, in some ways, this has been a loss. However, dwelling on a PhD I could have had is self-defeating. My PhD has been a joy overall, and the work I ended up doing was immensely rewarding, if unexpected. I believe working on a project that had buy-in from my advisor and my colleagues proved more valuable professionally, intellectually, and socially, than sticking with my initial interests, which, after all, were formed by the most random of events anyway!
The takeaway for me - it’s hard to predict anything about life, and that is doubly true in a PhD. You join your advisor’s lab with limited information about who they are, who you are, and what science is. The decisions we make for ourselves in that informationally impoverished environment are likely to be non-ideal in many ways. Be adaptable! Be receptive to new opportunities!