Over the Rainbow: Making the Transition to Graduate School
When starting graduate school, you're likely to feel amazed by your surroundings; you'll meet some of the most interesting and intellectually challenging people in your life, although you may find some of them strangely intimidating. You'll experience a newfound independence while, at the same time, battle feelings of insecurity and loneliness. There may be moments when you'll feel like you've made a bad decision — "there's no place like home" might become a temporary mantra.
At the root of these emotions is the reality that graduate school differs significantly from undergraduate studies. Dorothy's ride on the Kansas twister was like the typical undergraduate experience — it covered a lot of distance, engendered both excitement and terror, taught her a great deal, and in the end required her to make the most of where her house eventually landed. In graduate school, however, you'll have much more control over what and how much you learn, just as Dorothy's journey through Munchkinland to the Emerald City required her to make her own choices, follow her own path, and enlist the help of valuable mentors.
In their book, The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career, John Goldsmith, John Komlos, and Penny Schine Gold discuss the distinctions between undergraduate and graduate education. According to Goldsmith, undergraduate studies are aimed at providing a general education while graduate studies are aimed at "creating a professional ...it's about training graduate students to become researchers... and teachers, in a research environment... Psychologists create new psychologists; linguists create new linguists; musicologists create new musicologists." Komlos notes that "while undergraduate education concentrates, in the main, on learning a body of knowledge in a wide range of fields, graduate school is essentially about exploring the frontiers of knowledge in a particular field... Being on the frontier of scholarship... is not always a comfortable experience. There are no guideposts to tell you which path to take."
In other words, you might start out on the yellow brick road, but there are no sure signs that tell you which way to go when you come to a fork in it. However, we have some general suggestions that might help you "ease on down the road" of that transition.
1. Attend your department orientation for new students. It is important to learn about the social and political structure of your new environment. Also, if your campus sponsors an orientation for graduate students, take advantage of this opportunity to meet your peers and learn a bit more about the programs, resources and services available to graduate students on campus. Both the departmental and campus orientations are specifically designed to ease the transition into graduate school.
2. If you've been assigned a faculty adviser, begin to develop a relationship with him or her immediately. If possible, try to meet regularly with your adviser — it gives you motivation to make regular progress, explore your research interests and keep your adviser aware of your work. And prepare for your meetings. Go with a list of topics to discuss, a summary of what you've done since your last meeting and questions you need answered. Afterwards, e-mail your adviser a brief summary of the meeting. It will help avoid misunderstandings and provide a great record of your research progress.
3. Choose your courses wisely. Consider the course requirements and how the course will contribute to your research goals or overall career plan. Most departments will require you to meet with a faculty adviser before you select courses for a specific program of study. And this is good. Your faculty adviser can help you identify the courses that you'll need to satisfy program requirements, keep you informed of important deadlines, and keep you on track so that you'll graduate on time.
4. Do your best work. It's important to do well your first year. Graduate students are expected to maintain a minimum 3.0 GPA and receive no grade lower than B in any course taken as part of the degree program. More important, you want to show the faculty that you can do the work necessary to be a successful graduate student.
5. As early as possible, talk with faculty about your research interests. You might want to involve yourself in a couple of research projects early in your graduate career. This will help you define your research goals, give you important research experience and engage you in the life of a scholar early in your graduate career. Your research focus may change over time, but you need to start early to begin the process of identifying and refining what it is that interests you.
6. Use your time wisely. Set up a reasonable work plan/schedule. And set priorities (e.g., your research or teaching responsibilities should override your need to go rock-climbing on weekends!). Maintaining a balance between your personal and academic life is one of the most important things that you can do during your first year of graduate school. While you don't want to neglect your personal relationships such as those with your significant other, family members, and friends, you also don't want to be pulled away from study time. Setting priorities and keeping a regular schedule also will help you manage stress.
7. Get to know the people in your department: the professors, the secretaries and the other graduate students. Your department is like a neighborhood community. There are people there to help answer questions, to collaborate with, to provide you important support. Rely on them. Recent research on the graduate school experiences of female doctoral students in the sciences indicates that the emotional support from peers contributed to students completing the doctoral degree (Osburn, 2005). Building a support network with people who are in the same situation, with whom you can study and discuss the challenges of graduate school, is important. But be sure to maintain boundaries with faculty, peers and undergraduate students. Don't gossip or share overly personal stories with either your peers or your undergraduate students.
8. Be an active, engaged learner. Attend department colloquia and seminars. Participate in your department's graduate student organization. Engage faculty in discussion of their research, whether or not it's in your area of interest, and you'll gain a broader understanding of your discipline. Learn about the professional societies in your discipline; if there is a student chapter on your campus, join it. These student organizations are often a good entry point into local and regional conferences.
9. Make a commitment to the highest standards of academic integrity and professionalism. Incorporate the ethical standards of your discipline into everything you do, so that academic integrity becomes central to who you are as a scholar. And, if you have any doubt about doing the "right thing," talk to a trusted faculty mentor.
10. Take responsibility for your graduate studies. Know the rules and what is expected of you. Read the Graduate Studies Bulletin. Familiarize yourself with the policies for course requirements, taking preliminary/qualifying exams, and admission to candidacy. Find out deadlines for completing these requirements, both at the department and university levels. Once you know the policies, come up with a timeline for completion of the milestones early in your program.
Take a lesson from Dorothy's experiences in Oz. Above all else, believe in and trust yourself. It's common to question yourself; you may even feel like quitting. Dorothy, too, had her fears ("lions and tigers and bears — oh my!"), but she persevered. Know that you can do the work — otherwise your house never would have landed in the world of Oz in the first place.
Your journey through the fantastic — sometimes frightening, sometimes magical, but always exhilarating — world of graduate school will take you to a wonderful place where you'll rise to the elite rank to which you have aspired. Recall the Scarecrow's desire for knowledge and his ultimate reward: the degree of Th.D., Doctor of Thinkology. And with your skills and your passion for learning, you'll do just fine!
Sources:
Goodsmith, J. A., Komlos, J. & Gold, P. S. (2001). The Chicago guide to your academic career: A portable mentor for scholars from graduate school through tenure. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Osburn, K. A. (2005). Articulating attrition: Graduate school experiences of female doctoral students in the sciences. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Purdue University.
