By Natascha Chtena. As long as you are pursuing a PhD, most people assume that you love or at least like teaching. Pressure increases if your degree is in the humanities or some other “ridiculously inapplicable” discipline. Then, they just see a “budding pedagogue” when they look at you. This stereotype, however, completely obscures the struggles and challenges related to working as a TA. Whether it’s a supervisor from hell, a bunch of backstabbing colleagues, a fear of public speaking, or just a crazy workload that ruins the experience, the truth is many of us can’t—or at least at some point couldn’t—stand teaching. Read more...

By Laura B. McGrath. When people ask me what I actually do all day, I tell them: I sit and read. I also sit and write, and I also sit-while-driving. The demands of my scholarship require me to be stationary while I expend immense amounts of energy and attention on other stationary things. And as Katie outlined last week, all this sitting can have disastrous effects on your body. I’m sure you’ve seen research on the benefits of staying active, even in the smallest ways.  Studies have suggested a positive correlation between exercise and brain power.  Exercising can improve your mood, and promote better sleep. It can also improve your mental health. Bottom line: there seems to be no shortage of benefits of physical activity, and no shortage of risks associated with physical inactivity. Read more...

By Ashley Sanders. "Skill is the result of deliberate, consistent practice. And in early stage practice, quantity and speed trump absolute quality. The faster and more often you practice the more rapidly you'll acquire the skill." (Kaufman, Chapter 2) 
As a grad student, it is incredibly difficult to learn how to perform new skills at the level necessary for academic work.  And yet, we're expected to do so, whether it’s learning a foreign language, technical equipment, digital skills, or research methodologies. What’s more, if there’s something we want to learn just for the fun of it or for our health (yoga or meditation, for example), forget about it! We often feel our schedules couldn’t possibly accommodate it. Josh Kaufman's book, The First 20 Hours, offers a solution: rapid skill acquisition (RSA).  Kaufman defines 10 principles of RSA, walks the reader through each one, and offers tips and suggestions from his own experience. Read more...