Six Strategies to Make Graduate School a Successful Venture. From HuffPo.
by Adele Scheele
- Transition from student to professional mode. You are done being a passive student taking any assignment. You have to focus on a career path that ignites you.
- Turn your professors into mentors. Look for those you admire and take advantage of the office hours that they offer. They expect you to come see them, ask questions, follow up with ideas, and develop your interests.
- Use papers, theses, and dissertations to create your career. Gone are the quick and dirty days of college when you chose a topic from a list to complete an assignment without worrying about whether it interested you or not. Graduate school provides a critical time for creating a career through the careful choice of topics for these assignments.
- Make time to connect with other students in your program. You will find that their support, both emotional and intellectual, will help you get through even the toughest programs.
- Get involved with significant people on campus. In addition to professors and other students, advisors, administrative staff, and guest speakers are important people to get to know.
- Take the risk of "linking." Connecting with others is a vital career skill, one that will make you feel uncomfortable and sometimes even terrified. Often we avoid approaching those who could be of great help to us out of fear of being seen as a fool or fraud.
I gotta say that I can't write a recommendation for an undergrad who isn't doing at least half of these things already.
ReplyDeletePretty good advice, especially #1. Sadly, the list omits the most important advice for grad school.
ReplyDeletePeople throw themselves into research. Others take to teaching like a fish to water, or Bubba to bourbon. But too few realize that Networking and Opportunity (capitalized for importance) are almost as vital to a fancy dossier and internships / positive teaching evals / publications.
ReplyDeleteNumbers 2, 5, and 6 read to me like "find x people and use them." In my area of work I don't really need research assistants, and I don't need needy students coming to me and using up my time seeking extra help ..., sorry, mentoring. Number 4 often doesn't work: in my experience my fellow graduate students were more interested in playing mind games and trying to psych out the future competition, or better yet, to make them feel so hopeless about things that they'll quit.
ReplyDeleteNumbers 2, 5, and 6 read to me like "find x people and use them." In my area of work I don't really need research assistants, and I don't need needy students coming to me and using up my time seeking extra help ..., sorry, mentoring. Number 4 often doesn't work: in my experience my fellow graduate students were more interested in playing mind games and trying to psych out the future competition, or better yet, to make them feel so hopeless about things that they'll quit.
ReplyDeleteWhile some of this advice is fair, it also seems to suggest that everything in grad school is rainbows and collaboration. I think there should also be warnings about unethical professors who use their students to do research for them and steal their ideas. Gone are the days of a somewhat nurturing environment in college. Now one's professors may also view one as someone to use and/or steal ideas from.
ReplyDeleteLike Doctor BPD states, sometimes fellow graduate students are also a danger!
And fair warning should be made to female grad students about preying professors. I only have anecdotal evidence from my own experience, but I know of several females who were preyed upon by lecherous professors who should have known better.
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