Discover Rackham
I came to Michigan to study Southern accents…or so I thought
I came to University of Michigan to study Southern dialects in the media. That's right. I left the South after spending the first 25 years of my life split between South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina in order to do research on Southern dialects. The usual...
Let’s Talk About Prelims, Part 2: Lessons Learned and Others’ Experiences
As April comes to a close as I finish writing this post, I’ll have had about two months of reflecting on my prelim experience. If I had the knowledge I have now about the process, I would’ve done some things a little differently. I feel like I waited until the last...
Let’s Talk About Prelims, Part 1: A Quick Summary
As of March 7, 2016, I passed my preliminary exam and will officially be a Ph.D. candidate Fall 2016. I took notes throughout my experience for the purpose of writing this post, and I’ve included some visuals to break up the text to really convey how this experience...
Slightly Odd Things to Do in Southeast Michigan
As the summer approaches, I will once more be headed to Greece to do my fieldwork. But for those who will be in Ann Arbor and will (hopefully) have a bit more free time than usual, here are some delightful-yet-quirky things to do I have discovered over the past year....
Diving into the Unknown: Tackling Theater in a Detention Center
This semester I’ve taken the plunge into becoming an amateur actor. My only formal acting experience was appearing in my elementary school’s annual fifth grade musical. As the mayor’s wife in The Music Man, I was able to capitalize on my talent for singing...
Student Spotlight: Vivian Truong
Like many undergraduates, it took some time for Vivian to find her bearings. Fortunately, once she discovered her passion, she didn’t look back. “I thought about marine biology and my dad wanted me to be a doctor, but when I took an ethnic studies class, things...
Alumni Spotlight: Gisselle A. Vélez-Ruiz
Gisselle has been hanging around Rackham for a long time. Initially, she came to participate in the Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP) when she was an undergraduate student at the University of Puerto Rico - Mayaguez. Through the program, she was drawn not...
Behind the Scenes with Graduate Student Participants in CAPS Mental Health Video Campaign
On March 15 of this year, Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) launched a video series entitled Real Stories of Leaders at Their Best to help our campus see day-to-day examples of mental health and resilience. CAPS in Action, the student group of CAPS, was the...
Your Field’s Big Meeting Isn’t Pointless
Last month, I had the opportunity to attend the American Chemical Society (ACS) national meeting in San Diego. The ACS meeting happens twice a year, once on the west coast and once on the east, and about 20,000 chemists from all over the world come to participate. The...
Student Spotlight: David Carruthers
“This has been a transformative experience. I’m falling in love with research, this school, and this community. I’m excited with these opportunities and I want to move forward with them in a constructive way.” With a background steeped in hard sciences, David is...