For this edition of “The Grad Activist,” I spoke with my friend and colleague Omar Gowayed, a Ph.D. student in materials chemistry at NYU. We spoke last year about his vertical farming project, which has since evolved into a local company and an undergraduate course that Omar teaches at NYU. More...

What makes a great teacher? Is it their passion for the subject? An engaging teaching style? A personal connection? For many of us, conjuring an image of a favorite teacher from the past takes us back to our early days in elementary school. More...

This summer ended with much of the world following Greta Thunberg’s zero-carbon voyage across the Atlantic from Sweden to New York. One month later, I joined thousands in the streets of Frankfurt as the world rallied around #FridaysforFuture. More...

I will start this post the way I usually start my posts – with my transition from India to the USA as an international graduate student. While committing to the University of Pittsburgh for its Ph.D. program, which is known for its strengths in Postcolonial Studies and Critical Race Theory, there were a lot of factors that I took into consideration. More...

As graduate students, we find ourselves embedded in a system of metrics that crudely represent our progress and seem to pit us against one another. Despite this, we are consistently told not to compare ourselves to our peers and to focus on our own journey. More...

There’s a lot of great advice out there about how to give good presentations at conferences, especially from the “GradHacker” community (here and here and here). We’ve written about everything from how to make your presentations exciting with audio-visual elements to using improv to improve your communication skills. More...

It’s that time of the semester -- there’s tons of grading left, writing for assignments are due, you’re working on a syllabus for next semester and you are sending out yet another grant application so that you have some money for summer research -- the to-do list keeps increasing every day. But here’s the good news: Thanksgiving break is almost here, and you can’t wait for it. More...

November has come and we are nearing the completion of another semester. This semester is particularly significant to me as its completion marks the halfway point of my doctoral degree. More...

The prospectus is often a frightening step in one’s program, as it opens the door to full ABD status and is the initial guiding document for one’s dissertation. Despite knowing dissertation topics change and the proposal is a work of speculative fiction, it can be easy to spend more time on a prospectus than is necessary. More...