This week's topic: You're not alone

One of the best resources I have found out there for help/advice and sympathy (other than PhD Comics), is the Chronicle of Higher Education > Advice > Graduate Students (http://chronicle.com/section/Graduate-Students/559/) For example, there is a whole section on “Writing the Dissertation” for you to peruse at your leisure. One of my favorite articles in the bunch is Frodo Baggins: A.B.D. (http://chronicle.com/article/Frodo-Baggins-ABD/45036/) which I suppose you can only appreciate if you’ve read the Lord of the Rings series or seen the movies…There are also columns on finding your first position, being a graduate student with kids, and much more. 

The long and short of it is this: being in graduate school can be exciting, amazing, liberating, fulfilling, and at the same time, isolating, stressful and lonely. Family and friends don’t understand what you’re doing or why. Significant others can feel neglected or like “dissertation widows”. If you have young children, and deadlines, AT THE SAME TIME, it can be even more stressful. We’ve almost all gone through a period where things were not going as we had hoped, and our options seemed limited. Many of us have been there, or are there right now.  

Please read this article on the Chronicle: What I Learned About Surviving Graduate School (http://chronicle.com/article/What-I-Learned-About-Surviving/131247/). Here’s a poignant excerpt: 

“I immediately recalled an episode of The Simpsons in which Bart mocks the plight of young scholars by saying, ‘Look at me, I'm a grad student! I'm 30 years old and I made $600 last year!’ To which Marge replies: ‘Bart, don't make fun of grad students. They just made a terrible life choice.’”

 

All kidding aside: YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

 

Read about other students’ experiences. If you’re comfortable, you can talk to your advisor or another trusted professor. Hopefully s/he knows you well enough to be able to give you some good advice. Talk to other graduate students…in other departments if you’re worried about things getting back to your advisor. You can always talk with the people at the Graduate School. Dr. Patricia Koski is amazing and will meet with you to help figure out what you might need to do or what changes you might need to make. Email her and she will get back to you. I promise. If things seem too hopeless, like you’re just too overwhelmed or stressed to function, go talk to someone at CAPS. They’re housed in the Pat Walker Health Center and are available to all students. (Even students only enrolled in one hour – you know who you are). They’re awesome people who are there to help you. It can be about school, relationships, family, health, finances, whatever.  

Graduate school can also be amazing. You learn all kinds of new things and have access to an astounding amount of information – for free*. It can be life changing. You may discover something new and exciting that can carry you through your program and beyond. You have the opportunity to meet amazing people through conferences, seminars, presentations and events on campus. You are doing research and “adding to the body of knowledge.” It's a chance to meet people with different backgrounds, cultures, languages, traditions and viewpoints from you. Go out and meet them. Join an organization outside of your discipline.

While being a graduate student has it's ups and downs, here's to celebrating the ups, asking for help when you need to make it through the downs, and to your success after graduation wherever it may take you. I'm going to get done and so can you.

To borrow a line from A Prairie Home Companion, “Go out, do good work, and keep in touch…and send me your questions/topic ideas.” 

-- Dawn

 

*By “free” I mean that you have access to thousands of journals, books and other references paid for through your student fees. TAKE ADVANTAGE. And ask our librarians for help. They’re amazing too…