Editor’s note: This summer, we’re putting the information from our welcome guide for new graduate students online. First up, tips for the incoming cohort from veteran graduate students.
Once they’ve learned the ropes, fellow graduate and professional students invariably have formed opinions about how to survive and thrive at Cal. We asked senior graduate students to reflect on what they’ve learned. Here are a few of their tips for starters. Students in your program will have more specific advice. Find out what they have to say and incorporate whatever will work for you.
Photo by Flickr user Estoy Cansado
1. The administrative staff and graduate advisors in your department are invaluable. They oversee the day-to-day workings of graduate life, from copy machine access to payroll. When you’re teaching, the undergraduate advisors are great resources, able to answer all your questions about grading, requirements, and so forth. Departmental staff are often overworked, particularly in light of current staff and budget cuts. Get to know these members of your department; they will be the ones to help you navigate the University bureaucracy, from dropping a class to submitting fellowship applications to scheduling a room for your qualifying exams.
2. Fellow graduate students – your friends and colleagues – can be the key to thriving at Berkeley. Better than anyone else, they understand the unique situation of being a graduate student. Friends in your program will understand the inner workings and particular stress of your department, while friends in other departments can provide some perspective. Together, they will be the people you turn to to celebrate, to unwind, to vent, and to get support. As one student writes, “In most ways, I have learned more and been helped more by my graduate student friends than anyone else on campus in the last six years.”
3. Even though Berkeley has a wealth of academic resources, it is important to build relationships and networks off campus. These can be key to making your research happen, say, if you need access to a particular community, area, set of samples, or specialized equipment. These off-campus connections are also part of your professional development and will serve you well as a student and afterwards, leading to invitations to participate in conference sessions, special issues of journals in your field, and more.
4. Know now that things will not turn out precisely as you expected. Almost no one’s research goes exactly as planned for a nearly endless number of reasons: your topic may change completely (more than once), you may not get the permit you were counting on, the analysis you’re doing may be harder to master than you thought, funding may fall through, and so on. These roadblocks and detours will be disappointing, but try not to think of them as failures, recognizing instead that coping with these setbacks is part of the process.
5. No one regrets learning a new method or honing a skill. Think early about what methods you would like to use for your research or in your career. Then take advantage of opportunities, whether a class, workshop, or field experience, to learn or practice that skill. If you think you want to learn GIS, for instance, sign up for a class early on. Even if you don’t end up applying it in your research, chances are you’ll be glad you know how to use it.
Stay tuned for tips 6 through 10….