Decoding the Academy | Rackham Graduate School: University of Michigan

September 3, 2025 | GradWell Season 2

Give this episode a listen and let us know what you think! Follow GradWell and join us on our journey to greater well-being for graduate students at the University of Michigan.

Guest

Terra Molengraff is the program director of first-generation initiatives at the University of Michigan. She graduated with her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota’s Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development Graduate Program. Her research focuses on how colleges and universities support first-generation college students, with an emphasis on institutional change agents and organizational change. As a first-generation college student, her work now supports first-generation students and focuses on the intersections of the first-generation identity and how the structures of higher education can be changed to support students.

Resources

Transcript

Sam Hobson:

Hey, welcome to GradWell, a limited series podcast that explores various ways the University of Michigan can support its graduate students and their journey to greater well-being in their everyday lives, brought to you by Rackham Graduate School. This season we’ll be talking to members of our academic community whose research intersects various dimensions of well-being.

I’m Sam Hobson, a PhD candidate and a GSSA in Rackham’s Professional Development and Engagement Office. My fellow grad students, it’s time we start placing as much importance on ourselves as we do our work. You’re worth the effort.

Terra Molengraff:

You have relationships that you build in these spaces are actually the ones who construct your path.

Sam Hobson:

Today’s resource is Dr. Terra Molengraff, program director of First Generation Initiatives in the Office of Academic and Multicultural Initiatives here at Michigan. Today, we will be highlighting the research Terra and colleagues did to write the book Decoding the Academy: A roadmap for first-generation college students through graduate education, to explore the intersection of professional and social well-being. I am super excited to have y’all with Terra and me today. Okay, we’re going to jump in.

So Dr. Terra Molengraff is the program director of First Generation Initiatives at the University of Michigan. She graduated with her PhD from the University of Minnesota’s Organizational Leadership Policy and Development graduate program. Her research focuses on how colleges and universities support first-gen college students, with an emphasis on institutional change agents and organizational change. As a first-gen college student, Terra’s work now supports first-gen students and focuses on the intersections of the first-gen identity and how the structures of higher education can be changed to support students.

Hi, Terra. I am so excited to have you here with me today. How you doing?

Terra Molengraff:

I’m great. I’m excited to be here as well.

Sam Hobson:

Wonderful. Okay, so to get started, how did you get into this academic focus?

Terra Molengraff:

Yeah. First and foremost, I am the first person in my family to attend and graduate from a four-year institution and pretty much college overall, the first person in my family overall. I’ve always really loved thinking about and looking at how structures, organizations, institutions are created or structured to support people generally. And then as I got into undergrad, I started to focus more on education, how is education accessible.

The first few years of undergrad, I met a friend who was a first-generation college student, and I basically just did exactly what she did. It’s very, very common in the first-gen experience to find somebody who did the thing that you want to do and just try to follow them through, and that’s kind of what happened.

Sam Hobson:

That makes sense. It does. What was the research that your colleagues did for first-gen students and first-gen college students? And why study this at all?

Terra Molengraff:

My dissertation work is focused on how colleges and universities support first-gen students from an organizational level. So, many of these structures were created, higher education institutions were created without first-gen students in mind. They just aren’t structured to really support that group of people, so there are built-in inherent challenges and barriers.

And I really wanted to look at them, the barriers, name them, figure out how we can do well to support these students. And in that process, my academic advisor or my research dissertation advisor, Rashne Jehangir, at Minnesota, was really doing a lot of different projects about supporting first-gen students in different facets. And one of the things that we realized in the research, that there’s very little research about first-generation college students who enter into graduate school or who are now in graduate school. This doesn’t include students whose parents only got undergraduate degrees and then went to grad school. It is just the students whose parents have never experienced college, and so there’s very, very limited research.

For undergraduate students, the challenges and barriers that they experience as first-gens, we know about them, but as students go onto graduate school, it is even less structured than undergrad. There are more discipline-specific pieces of knowledge that you have to know that sometimes no one tells you. There is its own book of hidden curriculum of how to navigate through graduate school. The experience of a first-gen student in grad school is entirely dependent on what they experienced in their undergrad, was their undergrad research-based? Not research-based?

And then also what they want to do after grad school. So if you enter into grad school, some students might not know that there’s a pretty specific trajectory that’s either faculty or not faculty. And sometimes students who are first-gen don’t know that that is a disaggregation or separation. So they might enter into grad school and be like, “I went to grad school because I’m trying to get a job.” Where some grad programs are not really… They’re more research-based, they’re not as practice-based.

But they don’t always describe that in ways that make a lot of sense. So we wanted to do this research on first-gen students and their experience because we wanted to name these pieces and to draw attention to the fact that graduate schools, a lot of them have this expectation that once a student has completed their undergraduate education, that they should be good. They understand how college works. They should be fine in grad school. And that is not true. And there’s still a lot of support that is required because of all of these structures and policies that are very specific to graduate school, that no one tells you about until you’re there. And unless you have people around you to explain those things, you are just dropped in the ocean and you’re trying to just figure out, not just getting used to your classes, but it’s everything. Right? It’s a whole new environment, very different expectations.

Sam Hobson:

Terra, that sounds like a lot. I just feel like it sounds like a really complicated web that first-generation students have to navigate on top of the complicated web that is graduate school already. So I know that we’ll get into, well, what can we do about it, later? But just to ease people’s minds right now, what was it like for you? How did you make it through?

Terra Molengraff:

I made it through because of the people. I was in a master’s program before my PhD program and had very different levels of support in my master’s program versus my PhD program. My PhD program, my advisor was… She wanted to get to know me. She spent a lot of time knowing what I value, what I was hoping to get out of it. She invested a lot of time and energy in our relationship. And then the people that I was around, I found other first-gen students who were just a couple years ahead of me, who I was able to ask all of my questions to. And because I had gone into a master’s program prior to the PhD, I had much clearer questions to ask.

Before I went to my PhD program, a part of my job, my full-time job was working with grad students to do mentorship with undergrads. And as I was applying to graduate school, I was supervising this group of graduate students and I was telling them that I was going to graduate school. And they were like, “We would like to give you a list of all the questions you should ask.” And I was like, “Ask what?” And they were like, “When you go to visit day, what you should ask your advisor, what you should ask the program director to see if there are supports there.” It was a list of 30 questions from these five graduate students and they were like, “Ask them all, and how they decide to answer, what the answers are, that will help you decide.”

The questions were very specific, but just so helpful around funding, around the expectations of students, how we are expected to do research, all of these really intricate pieces that are really important to know before you enter into graduate school or choose a graduate program, but that nobody… I would’ve just gone there and been like, “The vibes are good. I’m going to go,” which is a way. It’s a way, but you really do want to know if you’re going to be forced to find funding every summer. And it never occurred to me to ask for that.

So after undergrad, I think it was the experience of naming that I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Being like, “I’m not sure how this works.” And then also studying the experience of being first-gen in higher education, and through my education, I started to realize that I had a right to be able to ask all these questions and it didn’t reflect on me as if I was someone who shouldn’t be here because I didn’t know the answers. It reflected on the institution for not telling me in the first place. So a lot of times I felt like early in my undergrad career and even my first grad program, I was like, “I don’t want to ask these questions because I don’t want people to look at me like I shouldn’t be here.” And as I went into my PhD program, I was like, “It doesn’t matter.”

Sam Hobson:

I am so glad that you had such great support, that you’ve had people that tell you, “Here are the questions that you need to ask. And also, you need to be asking questions.” That idea at all I know is frightening and can be scary to accept. That is a very important part of graduate school. I’m really glad that you were able to find people to help you decode the academy, if one could say. So with that being said, what is necessary for grad students to know when they’re trying to decode the academy?

Terra Molengraff:

Yeah. I think this information is relevant to all grad students. I think it’s especially relevant for first-generation college students now in graduate school. And it is that relationships are the most important piece, the most important thing you can invest your time in. And in the research, one of the themes that we focused on was relationship building and how first-gen grad students do that with peers, how they do that with faculty, how they do that with staff on campus, and how they do that with their advisors.

The environment of grad school was never constructed for first-generation college students. It was constructed for people who had parents who are doctors or lawyers or PhDs, and it hasn’t shifted that much. There are some more accessible online programs, different schools do different things, but it was really constructed with a particular student in mind that is not a first-generation college student.

The students who we talked to, they continuously talked about the networks that they built from undergrad, from their jobs, from their communities, their home communities, that served as a support and help them navigate through graduate school. And this can be more interpersonally, like just being supported in terms of your mental health, in terms of just being okay at a baseline, and then there were supports who were faculty. Sometimes if their faculty at their institution that they were in grad school maybe weren’t helpful or maybe not as accessible, they would call or email their undergrad faculty that they had closer relationships with and they would talk to them through it.

So the piece that I really want to highlight is that there are many different types of ways to be supportive. So I think it’s an environment of support that is built with multiple people. When I talk to grad students, that is the thing that I say, I’m like, “Spend your time, if you’re new here, spend your time just meeting people because that is how you’re going to make it through.”

Sam Hobson:

Something that you said that stood out to me was that our relationships need to serve multiple purposes and how perhaps our relationships that are connected to our institution may not serve us in every way, particularly in ways that are outside of the institution or outside of our professional journey. For instance, like you said, your home support might remind you, “Have you eaten today?” And that might not ever come up if we talk to just the people in the institution, which yeah, makes me feel a little sad, but it also, I guess, makes sense that there’s a focus in our relationships that are connected to our institution. So it is very important to diversify all of our relationships so that all of our self can be filled and be tended to. To think that we could perhaps fill all of our self with just our relationships that are connected to our institution might feel a little lacking, but we may not know why that’s happening because maybe we have a lot of relationships, but maybe they’re all interconnected with our department and our field and graduate school in general. And then my brain is spinning right now, yeah.

Terra Molengraff:

One of the things I’ll say, one of our participants, she actively sought out a therapist who was a woman of color, not in the institution, so not in counseling services or anything like that, because she needed somebody who was not embedded in academia to just keep her grounded in what her values were. And it was really important for her to seek that outside of the institution.

So graduate students have limited resources, but sometimes within the institution you just can’t find those spaces or sometimes they’re hidden away or in niche groups. But you have to prioritize what you need and understand, for grad students, it is your responsibility to get through, the experience of graduate school. In undergrad, I feel like they’re trying to get you through. They’re like, “You will graduate.” In grad school, they’re like, “You can hang out here for years and be fine.” And it’s like if you’re first-gen, you may also be low income. So time is money, like loans. So thinking about the purpose of your relationships and whether or not they support you in these different ways. And if they don’t, then find something else.

Sam Hobson:

Yeah. So I’m hearing that we are more than just graduate students and sometimes we forget that.

Terra Molengraff:

Yeah.

Sam Hobson:

And the best way to make it through is by not only us remembering, but by having an anchor to those other aspects of ourselves, typically through other human relationships that can remind us when we tend to forget.

Terra Molengraff:

Yes. Yes, exactly.

Sam Hobson:

Okay. So what do our relationships have to do with our professional and social wellbeing?

Terra Molengraff:

The social piece and the professional piece are really intermingled because you really do need people to ask ask your questions of. And not even just ask your questions of, but also to problem-solve with. The graduate school environment is not necessarily conducive to interdependence, and very much rewards independence and it very much rewards this do it yourself mentality. And first-gen students tend to come from communities that are more interdependent, and so it feels like such a jarring, what we call the jarring juxtaposition, just trying to navigate what felt like a true value to them, but in an environment that was not rewarding it. So we needed other people around us and for the participants also talked about it just to, yeah, exactly, ground yourself, but also help you navigate these professional experiences that are very foreign in some ways.

And sometimes they’re not, right? Some students come in and they’re like, “I know what graduate school is.” First-gen students are like, “I know what research is.” But you still have questions and it can still feel difficult to ask those in a larger group. So that competition in grad school with just the other grad students generally can feel in contrast to values that you hold, and so it’s really important to having other environments where you can share all of these pieces and ask those questions, because, yeah, your professional environment only gets more, not complicated, but it just gets more intricate as you go.

Sam Hobson:

This perspective or understanding that interdependence is such a necessary part of being a mammal, right? And yet as mammals in an academic institution in higher ed, that is not something that is valued on our journey, but is necessary for our journey is wild. So if relationships are a vital aspect of success in graduate school, but we’re not really given any guidance on graduate level relationships when we get here, what is the graduate environment telling us explicitly, implicitly about relationships?

Terra Molengraff:

I was in a graduate school practicum course and it was the first class of this with my cohort of other PhD students. And the director of the program came in and he listed… He started, he was like, “Hi, everyone.” He did this really beautiful activity that made me feel like he really understood our values and how we do this. And then he was like, “These are all the things that you need to do.” He was like, “You need to build relationships with your faculty. You need to take courses. You need to do research and you need to do your own research, but you also need to do research with other faculty, not just in your department, also external to your department.” He was like, “You need to go to conferences. You need to present at conferences. You need to seek out relationships and resources outside of our school and college because that will help you expand your professional network.”

He gave this super long list, and I am sitting there with the foundation of those grad students that I worked with who were like, “Ask the questions, Terra.” And I was like, “Okay, this is the moment.” This person is telling me that I need to do all these things, and so I asked, I raised my hand and I asked, “Could you prioritize some of these? Let’s just make the assumption that I can only focus on two of these things maybe at a time. Could you tell me what my priority should be?” And he was like, “They should all be a priority.”

Sam Hobson:

Of course.

Terra Molengraff:

I was like, “Yeah, okay.” And he was like, “No, I’m very serious. They should all be a priority.” And at that moment, I was like, “Okay, this is maybe not the person who I need to ask more questions of about this because they are telling me something important about how they view what I should be doing with my time. So maybe I’ll seek out other people to ask that question to.”

But I think that graduate schools explicitly and their environments tell us, “You have to build strong relationships with faculty. You have to go to professional conferences. You need to do research. You need to do research with your advisor. You need to do research on your own.” And it’s all these tasks or things that you need to accumulate, accomplishments. And they are this checkbox, all these things. And these are the things they tell you that you must do explicitly.

And then implicitly, what is underlying all of these things is that if you have relationships that you build in these spaces are actually the ones who construct your path. They ensure you have research opportunities. So it’s all of this stuff that you have to do, but really, if you focus on building relationships with faculty, it doesn’t have to be this checkbox of do I have this research? Do I do this? It’s more about investing in the relationships that are around you because over time, if you have those supports, the pathway will be led for you. Your faculty will be like, “You need to apply to a conference,” or one of your friends will say, “I’m going to this academic conference,” or, “I’m presenting at this thing. You should do that.” And it is so much less about this checklist and so much more about collaborating with other people.

So in the research, a lot of the students would talk about their advisor as someone who is an all-encompassing support for them. They could say, “There are challenges in my family,” or, “I’m balancing these things.” And then some would say, “I haven’t heard from my advisor in a month and a half and I’ve emailed them three times.” And it’s not like… I try not to place judgment. I try to just be like, “Then that person is prioritizing different things.” And if a student were to come to me to say that’s what’s happening, I would be like, “You got to find somebody else to help answer your questions or you got to find a way to work with this person. So find other students who have worked with them and ask them how they work with them because it’s just not…” Some relationships you must have, and some you’re like, “I don’t really need this or I can find it somewhere else.”

So I think that one of the pieces, as you mentioned before, that interdependence piece, I would say first-generation college students in grad school are great at that. They are exceptional at building these networks because they have to, but also because they’ve had them modeled for so long. And I think that those students, this is what I tell institutions, I’m like, “You need these students because they build environments that ensure that ideas and collaboration happen in ways that have never happened before.” So you’re exploring topics and areas of your discipline that have never been able to be looked at because these students are giving you their experiences and telling you how to do this more interconnectedly.

So it makes it a more conducive environment to success, but it also makes our research better. It makes our practice better because people are able to collaborate in ways that the traditional grad environment doesn’t necessarily allow. So I think when I have first-gen students talk to me about going into grad school or wanting to choose programs, I’m like, “They need you. They need you a lot more than you need them,” because first-gen students will be successful. They will find a way through. It just might not be the way that they originally thought, but that may actually end up being really beneficial in the long run.

Sam Hobson:

Terra, I love that. I love to hear that, that first-gen students are going to find a way. And it’s going to be through creativity and community and abundance in a way that these institutions don’t necessarily know how to lean into. So with or without you, a way will be found. And I really appreciate that perspective because I know that things can feel real hard at times throughout these programs of ours, and so I think that is a beautiful reminder.

If a grad student were looking to cultivate stronger professional and social relationships, what should they do? Where should they go? How do they start?

Terra Molengraff:

If they’re a new grad student, new to coming to Michigan or moving here, or is this their first year, I tell them to hyper-focus on building relationships with their peers right away. Especially if you’re in a really intense research place, I think that the initial drive is like, I got to make sure I got my classes down. I got to make sure that I’m reading, I’m doing these things. And when I talk to new graduate students, I’m like, “Those things, definitely important, but your relationships, they’re the ones that you’re going to end up calling when you’re trying to figure out how to write this paper.” And that beginning time is so intense with relationship building. They do all those introductory socials, all this stuff. So use it, use that time. I’ll say this now, but de-prioritize trying to do super well in your classes in the first week or two because you’ll get there, it’ll be okay. You’ll figure it out, but you might not have the same opportunity to build relationships that you do at the beginning.

So this is different. If I talk to master’s students because they’re here for such a short period of time, I tell them to hyper-focus on their department or their school and college. I would love for them to get involved with Rackham Student Government, the bigger pieces, but I’m like, “You’re here for two years. You need to already be thinking about professional development,” not to stress them out but, “and the way that you do that is you stay in your department and you start using the college’s resources immediately,” their career centers, their staff that are program coordinators that are trying to help students figure that out, because a lot of master’s students will be like, “Michigan is so big, I want to do everything.” And I’m like, I love that and I want you to be able to do everything. You’re here for two years, so let’s make sure that what you came for, if it’s a master’s degree to get you transitioned to a PhD or a master’s degree to get you into a job, that that happens, that that happens at the end of this.”

And then the other piece that I’ll say, if they’re interested in creating these spaces, is if they don’t exist or if the people in the spaces like writing groups or things like that that they go to are maybe not aligned with their values or they don’t feel like they can be their full selves or maybe doesn’t serve the purpose that they need, you can seek out other departments and other areas of the university that might have people who resonate with you more.

In our study, I remember a student who was like, “There’s a writing group that I’m a part of that’s with other people in my department. And I’m there, and when I’m there, I’m doing work and I’m asking questions about my topic. I’m very specific. And then there’s a writing group that I go to process, to write, but also to be in community, to feel out how I’m experiencing my research.” Two different spaces, but they were like, “That group is just not the group that I can be that in.” And it’s disappointing and there can be grief with that because you have a lot of expectations about grad school, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist somewhere. It might just not exist there. And I think that it’s important to leave room to process that grief of I wanted this experience to be like this, it isn’t, but you have autonomy to either create a space that is like that or to find one that exists.

So it’s really taking the time to meet your classmates, to meet your faculty, and go to all these weird social things that you do at the beginning of the year because those are the people that get you through. When I think about grad school, I think that I was successful because I had a couple of other students who I could be fully transparent with, that we served as a mutually beneficial resource to each other and connection, and that was how I made it through.

Sam Hobson:

It really sounds like what you’re saying is you have to find your people and you have to invest the time to find your people. I really appreciate you recognizing that the very beginning of your graduate program, you’re in this energetic season where connections and relationships are being built that you don’t want to pass up because a lull sits in where everybody has found their ways and their groove, and it’s harder to make those connections afterwards. And I understand getting caught up in the trap of, oh, I really want to do well in my program, and so therefore we think that we should be doing well in classes in the first month or two. But to do well in one’s program means that you need to make these strong connections, and that needs to be our focus when we first get here, and the rest will come. The work will be there. The work is going to be there, right?

Terra Molengraff:

Work will be there.

Sam Hobson:

So yeah, I really appreciate you saying that because I felt it when I was at the beginning of my program, but I don’t… If I had sort of been able to articulate that that’s what I was doing and that’s what needed to be done, I think I would’ve done it better.

Terra Molengraff:

Yeah. You figure it out. If you spend the first three weeks just trying to find your classes and just can’t engage because there are too many other things that are brand new, that are just overwhelming, it doesn’t mean it’s over, that you won’t be able to find it. It just is a reprioritization around what it means to be successful and what tools you need to be successful because I think immediately, you’re like, “I got to do all my classes. I got to do my reading.” And it’s like those things are important, but that beginning, the people are the ones that are going to make sure that you get through. It’s not going to be you getting straight As, it’s going to be people who are the ones that are there to help you through it.

And then, from that investment, you will get better grades or you’ll engage more in the content, but it feels so backwards, I think, especially if you’re at maybe a more intense institution than you were at in your undergrad. You can feel like you have something to prove. Those relationships, that’s where you will find the most, when you invest in those relationships and that community that you build. That will be the thing that will make sure that you are doing well, although sometimes it can feel like that’s not really what’s prioritized actually by a program, but internally, you have to prioritize it.

Sam Hobson:

Yeah, definitely, definitely. And my hope is that people will hear this and know that… Because I know it can feel scary, I feel like I’m not doing the right things. But if you follow what feels right or what feels maybe good rather than what feels right, I think that perhaps we can get to the ultimate goal in a more useful way, is my hope.

Terra, to what extent is it our responsibility to make sure that we get the things that we need to be successful? And to what extent is it the institution’s responsibility to make sure that its students get the things that they need to be successful in grad school?

Terra Molengraff:

It’s so hard for me not to be like, “It’s the institution.” It’s definitely still the individual’s responsibility because you choose an institution. And if they don’t have the supports you need, you can decide either stay at that institution and figure out how to either build those or find that support, or you can go somewhere else that maybe has a better system of support, but the institution creates these environments. They create graduate school and that kind of stuff. And they know the students that are coming. They know your grades. They know what your research experience was. They know who you are. So we know what resources, from an institution perspective, we know what resources students have.

There is a scholar, Anthony Jack, for undergrad students, he says, “A lot of times we extend an invitation without preparing for the occasion.” And it’s this idea that we admit students that we know have some challenges in some areas, some really exceptional talents in others, and we do not prepare for when they actually get here to make sure that they’re successful. It’s really placed on them. And I feel, personally and professionally, that it is the responsibility of graduate schools to address these gaps.

One of the gaps that I can see that comes up in this area of support is that a lot of first-gen college students who are now in graduate school tend to concentrate or study something that is really close to who they are or their personal background. And it is an incredible service of these first-gen students to focus on these things because they provide that nuance in research, right? And they also draw attention to reciprocity of communities and all these really incredible ways of making our institution better, but our institutions are very underprepared for how to help these students process the experience of studying something that is so close to who you are, while being at an institution or looking at research that is telling them things from a deficit lens.

I studied first-generation college students and that was so powerful and incredible, but half of my work, I had to do a literature review, which means going all the way back to whenever we started saying first-gen and looking at what they’ve been saying about first-gen for the last 30 years. And most of it, at the beginning ,is just like, “These students, we don’t know. They will survive or they won’t.” And it’s hard. It’s hard to read that.

So going into graduate school, if students are studying topics that are close to who they are or just studying in general, graduate school, it puts you through it. It challenges you intellectually. It challenges your understanding of your own capacity, your energy, what you value, why you value it. It’s a whole bunch of internal stuff that has not a lot to do with your actual reading academics, those pieces. So I think that if you are studying these things, it’s really important to know that if the school doesn’t provide those supports, that you need them anyway. And it will be an investment in that over time. So even if students aren’t studying something that’s personal to them, graduate school will still be difficult. The experience will still have a lot of challenges into it.

My advisor used to say to us at the very beginning is she would say, “Find the communities that pull you back.” When you are deep in the research and you are at the library for hours, you’re in it, find the communities of people or people who can pull you back and be like, “You’re a whole person. Let’s come back.” And still remind you to rest mind you, remind to take care of yourself. That can maybe be home communities, it can be other people. But also, you need people who you can be angry with, that you can process the experience of graduate school, what you’re studying, that can be there with you through it. My advisor used to tell us, “Find your co-conspirators.” So find people at the institution who are thinking about things in similar ways as you or that they’re talking about things that you find interesting.

When I talk to grad students, I’m like, “You can’t wait for someone to provide it for you because you’re already here.” You are at graduate school right now, and it is one of the most powerful experiences that you can have to learn about yourself, to learn about some really, really interesting topics and to really set you up professionally for wherever endeavor you want to go to, but you cannot wait for the institution to provide you the supports that you need because it might never come.

And you’re here now. So the students who are listening to this podcast, you’re either incoming or you’re already here in this experience, there are supports here. There’s a lot that you can use, but it’s that idea of expecting your graduate school, your units, your departments to provide you the support that you need. But if they don’t, then you also have… My co-conspirators in my grad program, we would message the faculty and be like, “Hey, this process that you’ve created is not working. We would like more clarity on it.” So they would join in that advocacy work because it needed to get done. I needed to write my preliminary exam, but I was confused about something and so were my other graduate students.

So it is the responsibility of the institution because we know what experiences students have before they get here, and we know what support that they might need. But because students are already here, it is also your responsibility because, yeah, if you wait for them to do it for you, you’ll be waiting a long time. And you don’t have a lot of time. It goes back to the question, what do you want to spend your energy on? What do you want to be? What energy do you have and what do you want to spend it on? And then be very protective of that.

So I think graduate schools are getting better. I think they’re forming more areas to support first-gen students in grad school, but it’s still a developing area. So there’s a lot of opportunity. That support, it’s around you. It’s around the student. It’s just you have to seek it out, which it’s like, should you have to seek it out? Should it be that difficult? I don’t know if it should be that difficult. Probably not, but it is, or you might find it to be difficult. So it’s just like, how do we navigate that? How do we get you to a place where you are your most successful self in the context that you exist in for however long you want to be here? Obviously, I want you to graduate, but I’m here with students being like, “Let’s get you through this experience and get as much from it as you can while really respecting yourself as a whole person,” which is maybe not something the institutions will do because they don’t have that same priorities. They don’t think about you as an individual. They think about everybody.

Sam Hobson:

Okay. Ask the question. That’s what I’m hearing. Ask the question. Okay.

Speaking of support, what resources can you share with us that can help us better cultivate and navigate our grad school relationships?

Terra Molengraff:

I think that the book that we wrote is useful in a lot of ways for students who are first-gen. It’s not written for a student, right? It’s a lot of feedback and a lot of information for departments and stuff to say like, “You need to be creating these environments,” but at the end of the day, it is still the participants’ experiences of being first-gen in grad school. And so I think that the information is still very, very useful to that because it’s really powerful to read other people’s stories and see your story reflected in that, right? Even if the research isn’t what you’re studying, because it is definitely, it’s a research study, I think that the book is useful.

And then I would say other resources… I think Rackham has really good professional development opportunities or professional development workshops and things like that, and so I would say use those and use those early. I was looking on the website earlier and they have all these grad 101 workshops. That’s great. You should use that now and in the future. And because grad students tend to be a particular type of person, I would say, get the information you need that’s relevant to you at this current moment, and don’t worry about a whole bunch of information that you might need later because I feel like, for me, I would be like, “Let me watch all the grad 101 workshops.” And it’s like maybe just watch one of them and then take some time looking for student organizations or going to socials.

At the end of the day, for undergrad or grad students in this experience, you need one person who you can ask questions to or who can help you kind of think through questions to ask people. So using the resources that are provided to you in your department, the socials, going to the research talks and stuff like that and mingling with your faculty is really powerful. And now I’m sounding like that list of all the things you can do, but don’t think about it as I’m doing as much as possible or trying to do as much as possible. Think about it as how valuable is this really going to be for me? If I go to every social, if I’m really burnt out on all that, I’m not going to get anything from that, or I’m not going to be able to build the relationships I want to. So it’s really about protecting your energy and protecting everything to make sure that you’re keeping yourself well, while also investing in the relationships that are around you.

There are a lot of department-specific things like events, stuff that I would advise students to use, same with career centers that are in their schools and colleges. I would tell them to maybe start doing those things earlier, like just going to a career center and being like, “Hey, I’m a first-generation college student and I’m in grad school and I want to make sure I get a job after this master’s degree. What do I do?” And that staff member, when you start building a relationship with them, they get invested in your journey.

So over time, there are staff members who email me and they’re like, “I want to go to the first-gen graduation because I want to see this graduate student walk across the stage because I was in an appointment with them once a month for the entire second year to try and find them a job.” Because there are people who are really, really invested in wanting to support grad students. And you just got to find them. And if you don’t find them explicitly, talk to other students and see who they find to be helpful.

But I think there’s a lot of power in those spaces that we have and a lot of opportunity for students to create new spaces that function the way that they want them to function. I would love if a grad student came up to me and was like, “I want to start a first-gen writing group,” because it gives my little research PhD student heart just so many good feelings. But I don’t create something like that because no students come to me and say, “This is what I want,” but there are so many opportunities to do and build those things, and so I think using the department resources are really, really important, but it’s all about the relationships.

Sam Hobson:

Got it. Got it. Terra, thank you so much. Is there anything you’d like to add before we go?

Terra Molengraff:

I spend a lot of time talking about challenges and barriers and things like that, but first-generation college students view the world and view opportunities in such an incredible way because frequently, they use these experiences to give back to their communities. And I think that that is not something that should ever be forgotten, like for the student, it’s like, who is this really about? Who is this really for? And to emphasize to colleges and universities, that is such an important perspective.

First-generation college students bring so many incredible strengths with them, and all we have to do is set them up for the best success that they can, and then they’re able to use those strengths, without having to try and figure out how many credits they need. It’s like then they have the capacity to use those strengths in the ways that would not only benefit them, but benefit their communities, benefit the university overall. So there are a lot of strengths that first-gen students in graduate school bring, and I just wanted to highlight that.

Sam Hobson:

Thank you. Thank you for that highlighting. It’s always an important reminder.

Terra, thank you so much. Thank you so much for this conversation. I am truly grateful to have been able to spend this moment with you. Thank you for sharing not just your research, but also your experience, your expertise, your stories with us. Yeah.

Terra Molengraff:

Thank you. It was a pleasure.

Sam Hobson:

Here are a few takeaways from this episode for your well-being journey. One, relationships are the most critical factor that helps determine not just if you get through grad school, but how you do so. So focus on investing in strong and diverse relationships, and all of those boxes that need to get checked during your time here will end up getting checked off. Two, don’t wait for the things that you need to just come to you. Even though it’ll be wonderful for the institution to provide us with the things that we need, at the end of the day, it is our responsibility to get ourselves through this experience, which leads me to number three, ask the questions. Ask for what you need. Ask for what you’re not sure about. Your questions are valid and you’re not supposed to guess at the answer, even if it may seem like that at times. Don’t hold yourself back. You deserve to have a very clear understanding of this program and this process.

You can check out our website for all of the resources Terra mentioned and more at rackham.umich.edu/gradwell. You can reach out to Terra with any questions you have at [email protected]. You can contact us about the podcast at [email protected]. And you can join us next time when I chat with Dr. Vanessa Thompson about the importance of belonging in grad school. See you then.

Hey, hardworking grad student. Thank you for turning into GradWell. I hope you can take something away from this episode with you. If you like what you heard, be sure to write a review, like, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. For more information, check us out on social @umichgradschool.