My brother and I have always dealt with relaxation in very different ways. We’re both graduate students, him in his second year, and me in my fifth year. When we visited my parents for breaks like Thanksgiving and the Winter holidays during undergrad, we had extremely different reactions to the free time. He read […]
![[Image creative commons licensed by Flickr user bottled_void]](https://www.gradhacker.org/files/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/2204059683_09eb09601b_m-150x150.jpg)
Have you ever been part of a similar conversation?
Colleague: Hey, I heard that you completed [insert task] (comps, proposal, thesis dissertation document)!
You: Yes, it feels great it out of the way!
Colleague: I bet. So now you just need to [insert next daunting task] (do your proposal, write your dissertation, find […]
Friends, it’s time for a serious conversation. We need to talk about your coffee.
Bad coffee is a common affliction. With our busy lives we tend to seek out the things that are easy to use. We believe that grabbing that giant container of Folgers pre-ground coffee and paper filters and tossing everything into […]
It’s the most arduous time of the year-academic job market season. If you’re a grad student actively seeking academic employment now, you will need to secure those ever-important letters of recommendation in the next few weeks. For some folks, this is a terrifying prospect. It often feels like an imposition, a distraction or a drag […]
By this point in the semester you’re beginning to get the lay of the land. You’ve navigated the administration of classes, bookstores, parking passes, and coordinated the eight different campus offices required to pay for it all. You are likely carrying several more pieces of plastic in your wallet and have dozens more passwords floating […]
A few months ago, I did a post on hacks for successfully navigating an academic conference. Many of you sounded off in the comments and on Twitter with more advice for conferencing, and there were so many good ideas that I decided a sequel post was in order! This post is Successfully Navigating Conferences […]
It can be quite exhilarating when you’ve been sitting on a problem a long time and, after allowing your mind to wander, the solution comes when you least expect it. Research has even shown that there is an upside to zoning out. But what happens when this great idea comes to you at […]
As a grad student in my last year of study, I enjoy a pretty flexible schedule and work environment. I work from home a few days a week, and conduct a lot of my research in online spaces, so being constantly connected to the internet is essential for me. However, this constant connectivity is a […]
So last year I was on a Fulbright in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Setting aside all good judgment I agreed to rent a room in an apartment with a group of “mature professionals and graduate students.” Because, conveniently, none of them were home at the time I visited—which was already the first of the month—I had […]
Ashley Wiersma is a doctoral candidate in the department of history at Michigan State University. You can follow her on twitter at @throughthe_veil.
As we prepare for a new school year, many of us will write lectures either by choice or because we feel or are told we must. I confess […]
