“Older and Wiser” Students
Today we had a student panel come to our first year Ph.D. seminar to answer our questions about going through the program, meeting milestones, keeping life lively, and generally managing grad school. They had some very helpful points for working through the first years and moving to areas of specialization and dissertations, including:
- Think about what you really want to know, what you care about. What are your questions? What will you need to know to move towards a dissertation in your area?
- The areas of specialization should grow naturally out of what you’re interested in, but remember that they don’t have to be reflective of everything you’re interested–they’re just a way to move you forward to prepare for orals and the dissertation.
- Stay connected with your cohort beyond the first year; graduate school can be isolating in the later years when you’re focusing on your own work. Staying connected with colleagues in the program helps keep the momentum going from milestone to milestone.
- The dissertation might be 3 papers of publishable quality, rather than one enormous paper. This can be a more manageable alternative, and a really good choice for people who want to go into academia or another job where journal publications matter.
- In defining interests and research focus, you vote by what you feel passionate enough about to write a paper on. Think of class papers: which would you write again? For me, this would be the immigration papers I’m writing this semester, and the language papers I wrote last semester.
- As a way of learning about conferences, look at people who you’re interested in, check out their CVs, and see where they’ve presented their work.
- It will always be the case that there are more useful or interesting opportunities than you can take on.
It was striking to me both how far I have to go, and how well my current job and Master’s have prepared me to get there. Given that this program is so research focused, it really helps to have had several years of research experience. Yet there is so far to go, and the only way to learn it is to keep taking on each bit on a daily basis and trying to learn what I can to move forward. With many things, I’m aiming for some level of mastery, which raises the bar…especially with statistics and other methods and analysis topics!