Coursework
What They Don’t Tell You About Coursework
How your skills as a student can hold you back in your PhD.
Uncategorized
How to Fail
Earlier this week we shared that a crucial part of making progress on your dissertation isn’t just letting go of perfection but actively giving yourself the freedom to fail. Today, we’re going to share our favorite ways to fail. If you take lessons in acrobatics, stagecraft, or tumbling, one of Read more…
Uncategorized
Mindfulness
Some days rest is easy: the sun shines, the breeze blows, and your inbox is empty. These days are magical. And Rare. If you’re a typical PhD student your days are more likely to be spent in a small, windowless office shared with several other graduate students. Other graduate students Read more…
Uncategorized
Wonder: Your Superpower
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…
Uncategorized
Mindfulness, Mindlessness, Flow, and Wonder
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…
Uncategorized
Rest
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…
Uncategorized
How Many Hours Are In a Day?
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…
Uncategorized
We Bend So We Don’t Break
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…
Uncategorized
Balance
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…
Uncategorized
WTF: Rest
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…