Thursday, April 19, 2012

Plan Your PhD Event Today

Please remember to stop by Rome 771 from 3:30-4:30pm today for our final professional development event "Plan Your PhD." We are going to cover all the necessary information for making it successfully and thoughtfully through our PhD program. We also have updates on department policies, a new program tracker called DegreeMap, and a group of students who want to share some strategies and tips for handling each "step" in the path to a PhD. Also, don't forget to stick around to meet your new EGSA board from 5-7 (drinks provided).

As a preview for the event, we would like to share this article from the Chronicle with some helpful advice about your Graduate experience. This article comes highly recommended by your EGSA board and GW faculty.


March 27, 2012
Brian Taylor for The Chronicle
By Karen Kelsky
One of the most common questions I hear from graduate students, whether they are in their first or their final year, is what they can donow to prepare for the academic job market.
Excellent question. As a graduate student, your fate is in your own hands, and every decision you make—including whether to go to graduate school at all, which program to go to, which adviser to choose, and how to conduct yourself while there—can and should be made with an eye to the job you wish to have at the end. 
 To do otherwise is pure madness. I have no patience whatsoever with the "love" narrative (we do what we do because we love it and money/jobs play no role) that prevails among some advisers, departments, and profoundly mystified graduate students. But for those graduate students and Ph.D.'s who actually want a paying tenure-track job and the things that go with it—health insurance, benefits, and financial security—here is my list of graduate-school rules, forged after years of working in academe as a former tenured professor and now running my own career-advising business for doctoral students. 

Early in Graduate School
Never forget this primary rule: Graduate school is not your job; graduate school is a means to the job you want. Do not settle in to your graduate department like a little hamster burrowing in the wood shavings. Stay alert with your eye always on a national stage, poised for the next opportunity, whatever it is: to present a paper, attend a conference, meet a scholar in your field, forge a connection, gain a professional skill...(click on the link to read the full article). 

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