Well! Yesterday’s post on Planning a Research Year got a little bit of traction, which also gave me a bit of material to work with for a second part right away.
More than one Tweep made a comment about something I wrote that I hadn’t even thought twice about when I wrote it:
A word of warning on archivists saying they have nothing about your topic: my very first day at a new-to-me (large) archive the archivist told me straight up “you won’t find anything” when I explained my research topic. I stayed. They were wrong. Very, very wrong.
— Juneisy Quintana Hawkins (@JuneHawk20) July 18, 2019
She’s right, y’all. My bad.
First off, let me explain what in the world I was thinking when I wrote this:
I had one archive tell me point blank that they had nothing useful for me — disappointing, but far less disappointing that it would have been had I spend time and money going out there to get the same answer.
This happened, and I have no reason to suspect the archivists were lying to me. That said, the reason I feel comfortable saying this is that the archive in question belongs to an organization that was founded during my research period, and seemed, from its website and catalog, to only hold the international organizational files, whereas what I really wanted was reports from the Egyptian branch.
Knowing this to be the case, I reached out by e-mail to ask if they had anything from my target dates pertaining to the eastern Mediterranean region, and they responded that they did not. It was the answer I somewhat expected, confirmed.
That said, Ms. Hawkins is absolutely correct, especially when it comes to larger archives. The archivists at smaller, specialized institution know their collections pretty well. However, at the U.S. or British (or French or so on) national archival collections, where the material is so vast and covers so much time and space temporally, the likelihood is that, unless they have specialized archivists covering your specific interest/time/place, you’ll be dealing with people who want to be helpful but may not necessarily have the familiarity to assist you with your specific search.
After she tweeted me, I immediately thought of a conversation I’d had at the help desk at the British National Archives, wherein I pointed out that I had correspondence from one side of a conversation, and asked where I might find the other half. The very well-meaning archivist thought for a second and then asked if I’d considered trying the Egyptian National Archives in Cairo, since colonial correspondence that was kept in former colonies usually got transferred to the national archives after independence.
She’s probably right. At the same time, travel to Egypt for research was impossible at the time, which is why I was in London in the first place, and not in Cairo.
In short, if your gut feeling is telling you that there might be something there that’s useful to you, especially if you’re still at the point where articulation of your project involves a lot of handwaving and drawing diagrams on napkins (guilty!), by all means follow your instinct.
For example, as someone whose project morphed from the history of epidemics to the social history of disease, I’d often have to clarify that I wasn’t looking for medical reports, which is what most people assumed I wanted. You are, ultimately, the judge of what constitutes “useful” in the context of your own research.
This is great! I’d add—1) try to learn the archival terminology in the language of your docs and the language of the country the archive’s in 2) touch base w anyone who has used the archives and get their up-to-date tips 3) find out about bribing/gifting customs.
The best advice is going to be from someone who has been there before.
Unfortunately, one of the best resources out there — the Archives Wiki that the American Historical Association used to run — has been taken down; a lot of it was out of date, but it did at least give a starting point on what to expect (helping a lot with number 2).
There was a short-lived project called World History Archives (I contributed several entries myself) but it seems to have been abandoned.
If you work on the Middle East or North Africa, Hazine is a good starting point.
The issue of <polite cough> “gifts” is one that you should be aware of. In smaller archives, in out of the way places, this is where having some recent local expertise is going to come in very handy.
I have heard, for example, stories about how flowers or the head curator’s favorite sweets from a particular bakery will start things off on a good note.
Remember that in a lot of places, the people who work at archives are going to be poorly paid public servants, and you’re asking them to do things for you. I don’t like using the word “bribe” here because it has such a negative connotation (if ‘gift giving’ becomes a daily practice, then we can call it bribery). Think of it as a token of your appreciation, expressed in advance.
I never got into the Egyptian National Archives to put any of that advice to practice, but in the days when I used to run study abroad programs in Egypt, my first visit on arrival in Cairo was usually to the supermarket near my hotel to pick up provisions–one of which was always a carton of Marlboro Red cigarettes. Each morning, I’d toss a few packs into my backpack and use them to earn the loyalty of our assigned tour guard, or help the door keeper at an out of the way museum suddenly remember where he left the key, and various and sundry things like that. (Cash can be so gauche to hand off in a crowd.)
Also…and this is key, especially for Americans who are seen as brash and rude…remember to start every conversation with a smile, a “Good morning. How are you?” before getting into what you need.
Every new person you talk to is a new person — a simple statement, really, but remember that even though you’ve told the same story sixteen times, you haven’t told it to this person. Patience is a virtue, often rewarded.
Next up
In another post, I will address another question that came up — how to reconcile all the funding applications with what you actually want to do during your research year. It’s not as complicated as you’re afraid it might be.
It probably won’t be as complete as some people would like, and it may go into details others don’t find helpful – the best way to figure these things out is to get advice from different people and see what works best for you.
So, here goes.
Where to Go
Get out the map
You’ve probably identified the archives you want to visit, at least initially, and have a short (or possibly long) laundry list of cities you want to travel to.
One of your first questions is likely to be whether or not you want to do one big trip, or several small trips.
This is, obviously, going to depend on the level of funding you have and other considerations, like whether you’re keeping the lease on an apartment in your home base, or you’re going to be functionally homeless for a few months while traveling–these are all important considerations to bear in mind.
You’ll also probably want to maximize travel efficiency: see what cities are close to each other and cross several archive collections off at once. People from other parts of the country are usually surprised by how short travel distances in the American northeast are, for example. If you’re going to a new country you often have no concept of relative distances, Google maps is pretty good about showing distance in terms of travel times rather than as-the-crow-flies distances.
In general, both in the United States and elsewhere, flying to larger, busier airports is less expensive than flying into small, regional airports that have only a handful of flights in a given day, and/or are only served by one airline. For example: Cheyenne, Wyoming is less than a two hour drive from Denver International Airport, while Wilmington, Delaware is functionally a suburb of Philadelphia. If you’re likely to need to rent a car while you’re in town anyway, save some money on the flight and see a new part of the country.
If you’re going to be traveling internationally, you’ll also need to check things like the passport and visa situation for where you want to travel to (for example: US citizens don’t need a visa to visit the UK or the European countries that share a common border known as the Schengen zone–but, you can only stay in either for up to 180 days in any 365 day period, so if you’re planning to stay longer, you’ll either need to rethink the length of your stay or figure out how to get a visa for a longer stay. Also, if you’re drawing funds from a local research institution or organization, that may change the requirements, so make sure to check well in advance).
Where to stay: I’ve probably contributed to gentrification using Air BnB a few times, but it worked out less expensive than staying in a hotel or using a rental flat service. I also like cooking for myself, and that factored heavily into the equation. You might want to poke around on message boards, listserves, or as the advice of people who’ve been there — each location has its own quirks to learn.
There are other fiddly bits to take care of. For example, I encouraged you in the last post to plan out the workflow you’ll use to get documents into a form you can use later when you’re writing. Depending on where you’re going, you might run into issues with electrical outlets being shaped differently, or having different voltage. The US, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and much of Latin America use 110 volts AC, while most of the rest of the world’s electric current is 220-240 volts AC. Most computers, cameras, and electronics can handle either these days, but do check before you accidentally blow something up.
{Rant: Also, I don’t care what the travel guides say, Switzerland does have different plugs than the rest of continental Europe, and the ones that work elsewhere don’t fit Swiss outlets. Fortunately the Swiss are used to this and sell adapters pretty much everywhere.}
In short: do your research so that when you get to where you’re going, you can focus on doing your research.
Archive Access
Spend some time looking up the various archives you want to visit and make note of what you’ll need to gain access to them. This can vary wildly, and it’s not always easy to gather everything at the last minute, or from a remote location.
It’s pretty common that you’ll need to produce photo ID when first registering at a new archival location. Within the US, for example, my driver’s license is usually enough. Internationally, however, the most useful and widely accepted ID is going to be your passport, not your home country driving license–although the latter is particularly useful (in addition to your passport) if you need to produce some sort of official documentation with your home address. Your university ID may also be needed to verify your institutional affiliation.
In addition to the type of ID you’ll need, pay attention to the number of forms of identification you’ll need to produce. I went to one archive that required three for some reason, which required me to go into the back of the closet and dig out that box where I keep important things that I only need to access once a decade or so.
Less common things I have been asked for include a letter of introduction. This is, essentially, a letter of verification from your home department at your university that says that you are who you say you are, that you are affiliated with them, and that you are legitimately conducting academic research toward completion of your doctoral or master’s degree. It is usually fairly critical that it be on letterhead and signed by someone who isn’t you.
It’s probably not a bad idea to write one up, have your advisor (either your dissertation advisor, or the department graduate advisor) sign it, and make a few copies before you set out on your research trip just in case (also, scan it so that you have an electronic copy that you can send by e-mail).
Pay close attention to when new users can register and where to go–registration hours for new researchers may be different than normal archival access hours; in my experience you’ll probably want to get there when they open.
Let Your Fingers Do the Walking
If you’re a young’un, you probably don’t recognize this subheading as AT&T’s slogan for the yellow pages, which used to be this actual physical book of phone numbers everyone had in their house before Google happened. The idea was that, instead of driving around from place to place to see if they had what you needed, you could save time by phoning from the rotary phone in your kitchen (which had a cord) to ask in advance before you left the house.
The idea is the same, even if we’re now in the era of the Internet.
Some archives allow you to register online in advance, which will save quite a bit of time when you arrive because your information will be already filled out and in the computer system. (This doesn’t always work; I did have a glitch once that had three tech people at the British Archives scratching their heads, although it did make me feel better to know it wasn’t just me.)
Some collections allow you to request items in advance online to have them waiting when you get there the next morning; this may not be an option for new researchers who haven’t yet arrived in person, but it’s worth checking. The British Library, for example, not only lets new users request items before they get their reader’s ticket (in American: library card)–but doing so lets you skip the part of the registration process where you describe your research interests.
Pay very close attention to the need to reserve a time slot at an archive. In my experience, archives that require reservations in advance are very strict about not allowing walk-ins.
Ideally you’ll want to have things sorted early, especially if international travel is involved, but I have contacted some archives with just a couple of days’ notice (“By any chance, might you have an opening…?”) when, for example, I found a file folder in one collection in London described the activities of an organization that seemed relevant to my research–and a quick online search revealed that the organization had its own archival holdings in another collection close by. (This is why having extra sets of documentation helps – you may think you’ve got a set list of everywhere you want to do research, but sometimes discoveries happen!)
Another reason to be in touch early (even if it’s optional), especially if an archive doesn’t have its holdings fully cataloged online, is to describe your project and determine whether there is useful material in the collection. Archivists often know their collections fairly well and this can help you decide how to allot the time you have.
I had one archive tell me point blank that they had nothing useful for me — disappointing, but far less disappointing that it would have been had I spend time and money going out there to get the same answer. Another archive, it turned out, had the files I was asking about digitized and just sent them to me electronically (the World Health Organization in Geneva).
The UN archives in Geneva, especially for the League of Nations period, doesn’t have the most useful online catalog; the archivists there are superb and pointed me in all sorts of directions I never would have considered otherwise.
In short, it never hurts to let someone know you’re coming. The worst thing they’ll say is “we don’t have anything that matches that”–which, while disappointing, is still useful information. If they do, they’ll almost certainly help you gain access if they can.
How Long?
Now. You may have noticed that the one thing I haven’t discussed is this: how long you’ll need to spend in a particular place or at a given archive. And, in short, this is because I can’t answer this question for you.
I would suggest that if you can, you take a few days and visit a collection to do exploratory research–my home department gave small sums of money for this, and I spent a week in London digging around.
The consideration of time is not just about how long it’ll take you to work with a file; it’s also about how long it takes files to be brought out to you, how long you’re able to work with them, whether the reading room closes for lunch, high tea, or something else, etc.
If you can bring a laptop or camera into the archive room, the process will go faster. If you have to transcribe everything on a pencil and pad, it’ll go slower. (Also pay attention to whether a ban on cameras extends to cell phones–some archives don’t like cameras because of the noise, but are okay with phones).
You’re probably going to want to get a sense of all of this before you book A Big Trip. (And, at the risk of repeating myself, it’s also a reason why you want to have your workflow established before you head out — you won’t want to be spending time in the archive itself trying to figure out how to take photos in low light, or realize that you need a cable you didn’t bring).
In general, having more time than you’ll think you’ll need is better than the opposite. It gives you more time with the material, and more time to follow leads to new collections you might not have considered visiting beforehand.
It’s taken me longer to produce the next post in the grad school survival guide, and there’s a rather simple explanation that I posted about on Twitter.
In personal news: I’ve been having a prolonged bout of depression this summer. I’m done with the Ph.D. and unemployed for the first time since I was 14. I’m functional, but some days emptying the dishwasher requires a massive amount of willpower.
So, there it is. A couple of weeks ago I realized I wasn’t okay, in the grand scheme of things, and that it was more than just me being bored.
What didn’t surprise me was the number of “Me too” responses I got. In fact, I was prompted to make this admission when a friend, Ian Morris, discussed his own bout with depression on a recent episode of the Abbasid History Podcast (it’s in the last three or four minutes of the episode). I figured if someone as brilliant as Ian could do it, I could too, and maybe if more of us say something, we can begin to normalize discussion about it.
Enough patting myself on the back.
The point, dear readers, is that mental health problems often present themselves in graduate school, and there is nowhere near enough discussion about it nor about what one should do. It’s time to change that.
The following post is not even close to a comprehensive listing of dos and don’ts, but random thoughts based on my own experience.
While mental health issues can hit at pretty much any time, they seem to cluster:
At the beginning of your program
Between the end of coursework and comprehensives
After comprehensives
After the dissertation defense.
What all four of these have in common is that they’re all major changes to the way your life is structured. The first usually involves trying to adjust to the change (especially if you’re returning to academia); the last three involve that feeling of drifting–when you’re going from a very structured, high pressure environment to having very little structure, pressure, or deadlines.
When you get to graduate school, assess the mental health services available to you.
It probably goes without saying that this is best done before you need such services, but I’ll be the first to admit I’m not that prepared. If you have the opportunity to assess these before you accept an offer of admission, even better (but, again, I’m not that on top of it. I actually thought my institution had a medical school when I enrolled. It doesn’t. Oops.)
Is there a student health center, and does it include mental health services? If there is not, what arrangements exist to address student needs?
Is there a student disabilities office, and if so, are mental disabilities included? (They should be, but policies differ from place to place). As an instructor, I have sent a number of students to the one on my campus because anxiety, depression, and test anxiety were all conditions that “counted,” so to speak.
If you’re a teaching assistant or assistant instructor, are you eligible to use your campus’s employee assistance program? This is a service that students often overlook because they don’t know that they’re eligible. If you’re employed by the university, an EAP can often help you find a counselor who accepts your insurance, which saves you a lot of extra research.
Avoiding Drift
There’s probably a better name for this, but it’s what I call that feeling when you’re suddenly on your own to read for comprehensives, or researching, or writing, and you’ve gone from meeting friends and colleagues on a regular basis with very little effort to being on your own, sometimes in a completely different city, without a support network.
During comprehensives and writing, if you’re stationed in your home base, a reading or writing group can help. Set up a regular meeting with friends or colleagues and discuss what you’ve been up to.
The caveat here is that this is likely to be most helpful if it’s more of a check-in with other people; if the way you’ve structured your group becomes something that requires you to do additional work above and beyond what you’re already doing, it quickly becomes an annoyance that you or your colleagues will start trying to avoid.
For that reason, I was pretty resistant to doing this during the writing stage–I work best on my own, and the idea of adding to my workload by agreeing to read others’ work and offer feedback on a regular basis was just a non-starter for me. If it works for you great, but, again, knowing your own working style will help a lot here.
And, if all else fails, a regular lunch or happy hour date once a week will get you out of your head for a bit. All work and no play only ever boosted Jack Nicholson’s career, and let’s face it: we ain’t Jack.
Self-care on the research year
I’ll discuss the details of my own research year in a forthcoming post, but let me offer the tl;dr version here: I had no funding and crammed it all into six weeks, and I absolutely exhausted myself mentally and physically. I had been in London for almost two weeks before I left my rented flat for a purpose other than going to the grocery or to an archive.
I cannot overemphasize this enough: do not do this to yourself.
While having a set schedule on research leave does help (get up at normal time, be at archives when they open, etc.), I did this six days a week–and that only because everything was closed on Sunday, or I would have done it seven days a week–and I failed to see the signs of burnout until I moved from London to Geneva and just couldn’t deal. I was only in Geneva for eight days … eight miserable days … but the change in routine, operating language (to French, which I can read but not speak), and the massive increase in the cost of everything caused a mental shock that I could barely deal with.
Part of the mistake here was the eight day bit. I wasn’t in Geneva long enough to really have the motivation to do much other than power through. Had I been there longer, I could have put in more effort to meeting people and getting out more. I’m an introvert, so that can be a bit difficult for me.
As it is, I have a very funny (to me) story about the Museum of the Reformation that I may share someday. (“The presentation on predestination is beginning. You don’t want to miss it!”)
If you’re on a fellowship provided by a local institution, you may well find yourself with a cohort of other fish out of water to form a social group with.
Don’t forget the existence of Meetup.org — need to find other expats? There’s probably a group for that.
But again, all work and no play … makes for a very lonely research experience. If you’re in a new place, remember to take time and smell the roses.
Be open and honest
This brings me around to the reason I posted about dealing with depression on Twitter in the first place: a lot of these battles happen behind closed doors, and there is a taboo around speaking about them.
Mental health resources were not discussed at my own graduate student orientation (either of them). It came up in conversation, and I only knew the answer because I was also a full time staff member.
Be open with yourself–this seems kind of self-explanatory, but, honestly, I didn’t really figure out what was going on until a few weeks ago. I’ve been in a funk since May; it’s now July. And, honestly, part of the issue is that my mental issues usually involve anxiety–depression is new, different, and weird to me.
Be open with those who need to know–your adviser (dissertation supervisor, if you’re at that level) should be in the loop.
If you’re still in coursework and don’t feel like having this conversation with multiple instructors, student disability services may be able to help–again, your situation may be different, but at the campus I’ve taught at, part of SDS’s job was to notify instructors formally of these things and we got a lot of training on confidentiality (‘Please do not approach the student in class and say, “SO! I hear you’re suffering from an STI!”‘)
And I’m pushing my own agenda here, but I really do feel like the more we talk about this, the more normalized it’ll become, and we can start moving away from the issue of mental health in graduate school being such a taboo subject.
So, now you know how to read in the way your professor expects you to. But you’re taking three seminars, and maybe also a foreign language class, and somehow you’re supposed to read four books a week and do two hours of homework a night. Is your social life over? Will you ever see daylight again?
Let me say that I am no stranger to this question. Halfway through my first year in the doctoral program, my first long-term relationship (11 years) ended. Trying not to commit academic suicide by negotiating a move while working full time and enrolled in two classes, I remained co-habitating with my ex through the end of the spring semester (this was probably a bad idea). A few years later, I got married (also in the middle of a semester), but I was reading for comps that year. We’ll cover comps soon.
For the first six years of my graduate program, I worked a full time, 40-hour a week job. I was fortunate in that said 40-hour a week job was at the same university in which I was enrolled as a student, so it was both a source of financial aid (staff education benefit), and lenient enough that I could swap out a 3-hour block of time during business hours for shortened lunch breaks other days to make up for it. (I also took a reduced course load, averaging 6 hours per semester instead of the usual 9).
So, what I’m saying is that you can have it all! Or you can have enough. And part of this is accomplished by developing study habits that give you what you need to be successful, but don’t take over the rest of your life.
One of the things I see lots of graduate students doing is acting as though their career as graduate students is temporary and “normal life” will resume when it’s done. Considering it takes an average of 7 years to get through a doctoral program, that’s a lot of “putting life on hold,” and, more to the point, John Lennon was right: life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.
You need to be able to maintain a work/life balance. Everyone knows that one apocryphal student who only studies and never goes out because there’s a lecture on something on a Friday night or there’s an exam in three weeks — whatever happened to that guy, anyway? (It does seem to always be a guy, for some reason).
Don’t be that guy. Here are some things I’ve learned about organizing your studying and reading life.
1. Your professor doesn’t expect you to have the book memorized.
First off, buy nothing before you get the syllabus on the first day (unless it’s otherwise requested). Look at the syllabus. If there’s a different book every week, that means that you’ll literally be reading each book to discuss in class once.
If you buy them all, that’s a lot of money you’re pretty much wasting on books that will be read once, put back on the shelf, and resold at the end of the semester for a fraction of what you paid for them. Just don’t.
In all likelihood, the copy that your professor put on reserve in the library is going to suit you just fine. Don’t run out and buy every book listed — if you think something is going to be useful for your research later on, then you can buy it from the used listings on Amazon or at the local used bookstore.
Okay! So, you went to the library and got your course reserved book, and it has to be back in two hours. Now what?
Remember the four questions I posed in my previous post?
What is the argument that the author is making?
How is the author’s argument new and different?
Does the author’s argument make sense?
Does the author successfully prove his/her argument?
Prioritize the two hours you have with the book to answer those four questions.
I’m going to repeat the importance of these four questions over and over again. Get used to answering those four questions. You’ll need them every week in seminar, and they’ll be doubly important when reading for your qualifying/comprehensive examinations.
As you progress, you’ll notice that seminar discussion really doesn’t stray far outside of these questions. Anecdotes that either the professor or other students share from the book’s content will mostly be presented in the context of addressing these.
I pretty much guarantee that your professor will never give you a pop quiz and ask what happened on November 10, 1789 (Ronan, that was for you!) unless what happened on that date was important to the author’s argument, in which case that’s probably what the question is really about. And there will almost certainly never be a pop quiz.
Take detailed notes and bring them to seminar with you. Personally, I liked handwriting my notes because I felt like I retained the information better. Some people do this just fine with typing. Try both, see what works for you.
You probably won’t need the book in front of you (notice that students who bring the book to class don’t open their copy that much, if at all). I would wager that half of the students who bring the book to class are trying to look prepared primarily in order to impress other people. Ignore this.
If you don’t trust yourself to be able to carry the conversation without paper backup, scan or photocopy parts of the book that you think are important to back you up–the intro and/or conclusion are the obvious suspects, or a section where you feel that questions 3 and 4 are being illustrated well (or poorly, depending on how you answer the questions).
In short order, you’ll learn to extract what you need from a book — and what you won’t need. This will give you a good sense of how long you need to spend with a book to get what you need — and that’s key for maintaining a good work/life balance.
2. There will be weeks you don’t have all the reading done.
It happens. Hopefully it won’t be the same week that everyone else in your seminar had a massive research assignment due for someone else. At the very least, plot out two hours to spend some quality time with the book so that you have something to say, and focus on the four questions above (it’s always about the four questions).
I focus on getting it done in two hours because that happens to be how long you can borrow course reserves at my university’s library, but also because I learned how to get through a book in two hours and answer these questions. It may take you a while to learn the mechanics of it, but you can spend just a couple of hours with the book and arrive at seminar with things to contribute to the discussion!
If you have one of those weeks where it just all went to hell and you didn’t even look at the book … well, speaking personally: If class participation is part of the seminar grade, your professor would probably rather you didn’t come at all than have you sit there for three hours not contributing. You’ll notice early on that you can always tell who’s trying to BS their way through the conversation without having read the material. Just because no one said anything doesn’t mean they didn’t notice.
“Dad, isn’t this usually the time of day you pull out a book, and I help you read by rubbing my face all over it?”
3. Schedule study time, and make it sacrosanct.
This is really important for the work/life balance. If you have people in your life (partners, children, parents, friends) who aren’t also in graduate school, it’s very easy to treat your workload as an inconvenience or secondary in importance. Don’t.
I set out certain blocks of time that were Study Time. In my case, they were more procedural blocks of time (i.e., Saturday after the grocery store run, Sunday after breakfast) than, say, a firm “I will study from 3-4 on Wednesdays”–but that also works. The important thing is that you have a mental time slot when you “should” be studying and to get both body and mind to expect it, and to signal that something is off if you’re not doing it.
The firmer you are about this, the easier it is on everyone else. I liked to read in the mornings because my brain was fresher, and because it was less intrusive: usually if we were going to leave the house for something it would be an afternoon movie or to go out to dinner. It also made it much less stressful for me to schedule plans with friends with confidence; otherwise they become sources of tension and angst on your part.
That said, I did have to put my foot down a few times and ask my fiancé (later husband) not to schedule things on the weekend without consulting me first, especially toward the end of the semester when I also needed to be doing research and writing.
However, on the flip side, once I had developed a set schedule and knew what I could accomplish within it, I also had more confidence about scheduling leisure activities in my free time.
4. Environment is important.
Where you study is just as important as when you study. Find a place where you can study successfully. I highly recommend that it not be the same place you do other kinds of reading (leisure reading) or watch TV. It should “feel” like the place where you go to get things done.
For me, it was the dining table. We don’t use it much, so I could leave books there. Books went flat on the table, my feet were flat on the floor, I was sitting upright. It’s also quiet, although occasionally I did have some unexpected help.
“Your thesis was not valid, so we deleted it. You’re welcome.”
A lot of people like to go to coffee shops or the library to study – if that’s your thing, great. It doesn’t work for me. The popular campus coffee shop where everyone at my university likes to hang out is loud and boisterous and the chairs were clearly designed by a devotee of the late Marquis de Sade, and I just don’t understand why people think it’s all that (and the coffee tastes burnt).
In addition to my well-documented hatred of That Place, I also always felt like that I was putting too much pressure on myself to be productive once I arrived, got situated, and opened a book. I felt like I would spend more time evaluating whether I had “done enough” to justify the trip than I did paying attention to the material. I also discovered that if I drank coffee after noon I would have problems sleeping.
The idea is that you should feel like you’re in a place that merits serious attention. When you’re here, your brain is primed, and your body reacts accordingly. This is why I don’t recommend mixing the physical locations where you enjoy leisure time with the location where you’re being studious. (This is an actual thing, psychologically speaking, and it can lead to both anxiety–which there’s enough of in grad school as it is–and insomnia.)
5. Know your limits.
I worked full time for 11 years before starting my doctoral program. During that time, I got used to the concept that when I got home from work at 5:30, the rest of the day was mine. It was a very hard habit to break myself of–in fact, I never successfully did so.
When I first started my graduate program, I tried my best to come home and be productive, but I was usually tired (because I was in the office at 7:30 am), and my brain was uncooperative. The most productive time I was able to eke out on a weeknight was about an hour. I could get through an article (singular), but it wasn’t enough time to get through a book, and I realized that my ability to retain any information about a book was diminished if I split it up over multiple days. I also noticed that I was looking at the clock a lot more than I did on weekend mornings.
Eventually, once I realized this, I shifted most of my productive time to the weekends (this was why I had to be more militant about ensuring that I had some control over weekend scheduling).
I also noticed that I was better at working through books with longer stretches of time (like two hours), and that I was at my best if I didn’t try to get through them right before the seminar where they would be discussed.
Your mileage may vary, and you’ll realize your own quirks and how you work best. Pay attention to the mental and physical cues your body and mind give you, and don’t struggle against them.
6. The first five are a lot. Speak up if you’re struggling.
Your professor is probably teaching at least two other classes, and in all likelihood the other two classes are undergraduate lecture courses that require a lot of work. Most of us operate under the assumption that if a student needs help, they’ll say something. And, whether by hook or by crook, graduate students tend to get less attention because it’s assumed that they’re more mature and capable of speaking up if they need something.
Unfair, but true.
Graduate students often experience depression and anxiety, and it can be bewildering if you’ve never experienced it before. And as difficult as it can be, often times it is incumbent upon the student to make the first move.
But please do.
If you’re struggling with the workload, talk to your professor. Speaking personally, I will bend over backwards to help a student who is struggling (and reward the effort come grading time.) I can’t help if I don’t know.
If you’re struggling with your mental health talk to … someone. Your professor. Your advisor. Friends.
Look up the student disability services office (because mental conditions count) and see what services they offer.
Find a yoga class.
Work out.
Take a mental health break.
Take care of your mind. After all, graduate school is about training your brain, so keep it in tip-top shape!
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This post has gone on long enough at this point, so I’ll wrap up and promise that, in the next installment, we’ll discuss what happens when the reading becomes your entire life: how to prep for your qualifying/comprehensive exams!
What else do you want to know about grad school? Post questions in the comments section!
Christopher S Rose 