I have searched a lot and I am surprised that this topic hasn't been discussed yet. I am an M.Sc. Student in Computer Science. Our lab is actually a dry lab in which we need to do a lot of reading of heavy maths on a daily basis.
The problem is that some people (mostly senior students such as PhD candidates) sometimes speak loudly to discuss their new papers with lab mates, etc., which is totally a must-do activity but disrupts my mind and obviously some others that are not involved in their discussion.
I have tried many ways such as music, white noise, natural sound, etc., but all of them had drawbacks that forced me to abandon them. I even think of studying in the library sometimes, but I think it is not a good idea because it may make me isolated and also it may cause people to think that I am not working as expected. I also don't like the idea of speaking with the Prof. about this, because: first, the prof himself doesn't pay attention to speak low in the lab and I think this would be strange to him and second, I am so new and it may harm me.
What I want to know is: is this situation actually normal? And if not, how can I cope with that?
Answer
Is this situation actually normal?
Yup, pretty normal. It's what is called "office life".
I am almost tempted to vote to close this as a boat programming question, as it is really no different to any other "we-are-in-a-shared-office-but-my-office-mates-annoy-me" situation in any job. Anyway, I think this is common enough in academia that it may make sense to answer here.
Essentially, there are really only three ways to fix this:
- Change the office layout. Either get smaller offices (very unlikely to be possible), or re-arrange the PhD student seating so that the quiet workers share offices as well as the enthusiastic discussers. Of course, if you have one big lab for all students, this solution is probably a no-starter (not common here in Europe, but I have learned that this is common in the US).
- Home office. Probably the easiest, most immediate, and most common solution to the problem of the annoying other students is to spend more time working from home or another suitable location, especially if some high-concentration tasks are in the queue. Of course this requires a modicum of trust that PhD students that are not in the lab are actually still working, and not sleeping or using their XBox. Given your concern that you may appear as "not working enough" when you are not in the lab, this may indeed be a problem.
- Noise cancellation. When we had this problem in our lab, the easiest fix was to buy a set of high-quality noise cancellation headphones from Bose. The ones we bought are massive enough that even just wearing them alone without any music already blocks out a lot of the regular room acoustics, and they are high-quality enough that you can wear them for hours without pain. Students that want to work now wear their noise cancellation gear, which incidentally also is a good "Do not disturb unless important" sign for other people that just want to chat.
I should mention that "talk to the other students and make them stop" isn't really a practical and permanent solution. There are just too many people with too many differing characters for too many hours a day in a typical PhD student office - if somebody is the chatty type, she or he will chat.
Btw., I feel for you. My productivity when I am alone in my office is twice of what it is when we are two persons, which is again twice of what it is when we are three. I was never in an office with more than three persons, but I presume I wouldn't even need to bother coming in. This Dilbert comic strip is representing my feelings regarding the current trend of "open floor plan offices" pretty well.
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