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...
The Grad Abroad: A Critical Look at My Academic Air Travel
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...
Benefits of a Graduate Students’ Union for International Students in the US
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...
Comparison, a Healthier Approach
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...
Taking Your Conference Presentation to the Next Level
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...
Staying in Town During Thanksgiving Break? Recharge Yourself!
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...
The Midway Milestone
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...
Producing a Finished Prospectus
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...
Making Conference Food More Inclusive
Conferences can be a big part of academic life. By participating in conferences, we can make connections with potential employers, meet collaborators and share our own work. Organizing a conference can be similarly helpful: we learn about conferences themselves and how to manage people and plan events. More...
Mindmapping(ish) to See Where You Fit
I see and hear the word interdisciplinaryall the time. I think most graduate students do, though I might encounter it even more, since I'm in the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at the University of Rhode Island. Yes, this means my degree is going to say I have a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary neuroscience: neuroscience that happens when we cross multiple fields of study. More...