Near the end of my Master’s program, I had the good fortune to attend a small workshop with Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley. Dr. Tinsley was generous enough to end the workshop with a Q&A. As all private Q&As between young profs and grad students are wont to do the questions eventually Read more…
In our special summer series on rest we have covered why grad students are bad at resting, and what activities definitely do not count as rest. In the next part of this series, we are introducing four essential types of rest. Like a well-balanced diet blends your macro-nutrients so a Read more…
In preparing to launch this site I interviewed over 40 graduate students. In my near-decade in graduate school I have informally talked with hundreds of graduate students, post-docs, and faculty about how they structure their time. I’ve always been interested in how people create balance for themselves and I’ve gotten Read more…
Long ago, I took a class in HR Management. We all try things. To this day, the class in HR Management remains one of my favorite classes of all time. I have dozens of good memories from that class and one not-great memory from that class. Guess which one I’m Read more…
Yesterday someone I follow asked the Twitterverse how to keep working when one’s natural impulse is to drive to the Trump administration’s concentration camps and tear them down with their bare hands. Yesterday, I had an answer–something about trusting that our work is dedicated to tearing down systemic injustices and Read more…
If you search for “academic work-life balance” you will get a lot of contradictory results. You may see some advice that says the main responsibilities of a graduate student are producing research (here and here). Then you will find more realistic advice which acknowledges that academics, including graduate students, are Read more…
Our theme for this month is rest. Seems simple, right? Who needs to be told to rest? Let alone, how to rest?! Seems ridiculous. Maybe, to a lot of people, that idea is ridiculous, but for most graduate students I know struggle with knowing when or how to take a Read more…
Over the month of March, I’ve tried to focus on the challenges faced by working-class and first-generation PhD students. Yesterday, I shared a story about a recent meeting with a committee member which was disturbing because of some basic information I should have known but didn’t. The TL;DR version is Read more…
I don’t remember how old I was when I started my first “job.” I wanted to save money for something but I wasn’t earning any money so I couldn’t save any. To remedy this my mom got my aunt to “hire” me to clean her house on Saturdays. I was Read more…
I was supposed to share this post yesterday but didn’t because I am *deep* in dissertation edits trying to defend this semester. I thought about apologizing but then I realized that nothing could more effectively prove that these pieces are coming from an actual PhD in the humanities than being Read more…