Friends I need some advice regarding publishing journal article. I appreciate your input. I am picking up similar project and will be doing almost identical thesis that was done by previous graduate student. Being a newbie,  some confusions are: is it worthwhile doing similar projects and will it be problem in publishing article later. I want my article to be different. also, Can you guys give us some tips on how to survive graduate school and advisors, paper publishing, thesis and all that ?

thank you

happppy labor day

 When you publish a journal paper, it needs to have new set of contributions.  It is hard to publish a journal paper if someone has solved a problem before.  My recommendation would be to work on a different exciting and novel project.  

To survive in a graduate school, you need to be mentally prepared and disciplined.  I received my phd from a reputed school in USA.  I worked very hard for 4 years (10-12 hours a day for 6 days a week).  I am pasting a couple of links which I think are great from my past experience.

http://matt.might.net/articles/successful-phd-students/ 
http://matt.might.net/articles/ways-to-fail-a-phd/ 

Hope this helps.