by Amy Yu | Jan 20, 2017 | Student Voices
Last Friday, I shared Part 1 of an audio blog post, in which four Ph.D. students in the sciences, including myself, discussed the motivations and goals behind our decision to continue on to higher education and pursue a Ph.D. Today I am excited to share the second...
by Amy Yu | Jan 13, 2017 | Student Voices
Student’s paths to graduate school are as diverse as their interests and backgrounds. In this audio blog post, you are invited to listen in when four Ph.D. students discuss their academic and professional journeys, and talk about how they developed a passion for...
by Shana Melnysyn | Jan 11, 2017 | Student Voices
The humanities are under threat. Much ink has been spilled in recent years in an effort to defend the need for subjects like philosophy, history, and literature in a changing job market where the “hard” skills associated with STEM fields allegedly have greater value....
by Shweta Ramdas | Dec 21, 2016 | Student Voices
Dear Santa 3rd Reviewer, On the whole, I have been a good student this year. Please accept all my papers this new year! Naughty List Printing out way more papers than I read Finding empty seminar rooms to take an afternoon nap in Thinking some seriously mean things...
by Deanna Montgomery | Dec 19, 2016 | Student Voices
During my first week as a graduate student, I was inundated with resources from about a week of orientation sessions. Among the stacks of papers that I accumulated that week was a hardcopy of this mentoring guide published by Rackham. I remember thinking it looked...
by Amy Pistone | Dec 13, 2016 | Student Voices
Studies paint a pretty bleak picture for student evaluations, as I noted in my previous blog post. An instructor’s race and gender have well-documented effects on evaluation scores, and that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the ways that sexuality and gender...
by Amy Pistone | Dec 8, 2016 | Student Voices
Now, before anyone breaks into their best Edwin Starr impression, let me preface this by saying that I don’t think the answer is “absolutely nothing.” But, I do think we need to consider what student evaluations are really measuring, because evidence suggests that it...
by Shweta Ramdas | Dec 2, 2016 | Student Voices
Dear first-year grad student me, I think of you wistfully every now and then, remembering your boundless enthusiasm for genetics and optimism about the world. You naive young thing, you. I’m so glad you don’t know what lies ahead. Ignorance IS bliss, but don’t tell...
by Bonnie Applebeet | Dec 1, 2016 | Student Voices
People slowly fill up the seats in a green and gold room before Jay Borchert even arrives. It’s the day of his dissertation defense, a day that is perhaps the most important milestone in a doctoral student’s career, a culmination of five or more years of intensive...
by Jeff Lowe | Nov 19, 2016 | Student Voices
Have you ever thought to yourself, do I belong here? Am I good enough to be a graduate student? What will happen when everyone realizes I'm not as smart as they think I am? Everyone else really seems to know what they're doing; how come I don't?...
