Category Archives: Tips and Tricks

Looking back: one year after graduation

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It’s already the end of May, which means that we got to watch our graduates take the stage at Commencement this past weekend! While graduation might mean the end of their time as a student at Tufts, it also signifies the beginning of many exciting things to come. Two of our alumni bloggers, Lennon Wolcott, M.F.A. 2017, and Michelle Connor, Music M.A. 2017, look back at their first year out of graduate school. 

How you were feeling this time last year?

Michelle Connor: This time last year, I was feeling a little bit nervous about beginning my search on the job market, especially since I had planned a trip to Italy during the summer months after graduation.  I wanted to stay in Boston due to my love for the city as well as my relationship; however, I felt overwhelmed with all of the opportunities and job descriptions. I spoke with some of the faculty members closest to me as well as former supervisors and they suggested that I continue my work in Admissions. I applied for a position in the Graduate Admissions Office, and I was super excited to be hired for the position and continue my service to the university, especially as an alum. Everything worked out for me!

Lennon Wolcott: This time last year, I was overwhelmed. I was trying to finish and install my master’s thesis show centered on decolonization and the rebuilding of community after a loss of culture through sculpture/paper-arts/craft/performance. While at the same time interviewing for AICAD art school faculty printmaking jobs and deciding what kinds of choices I could afford to make after graduation with the cost of living and student loans to pay back.

How would you describe your first year after your graduate program?

MC: During the first year after my graduate program, I realized that there is more to experience than what is found in the classroom. I have grown so much as an individual and coworker over this past year. I am starting to realize where my strengths and passions lie as well as the tasks that I feel the most comfortable with. I learned what matters most to me, where I am meant to be, and how I want to build my avenue to career growth and success. Not be cliché, but life is what you make it. Use your skillset, take advantage of opportunities, and do not be afraid to explore outside of your comfort zone.

LW: It was hard, after 2+ years of immersive art making, to find myself in a space where I had to juggle full time work responsibilities and find time to keep up a practice as an artist. After graduation my instinct was to jump back into art making immediately. However, I needed time to decompress and think through what I learned during grad school. It took time for me to find how my process and work needed to evolve outside of the academic institution. Re-learning how to adapt and create a life for two full time jobs (art and another) have been my primary goal over the year.  It has taken about a year for me to add art into my full-time work/life routine, and I hope by next year I will be on more solid footing.

How have you been using your graduate degree?

MC: Although I have not been using my graduate degree in the field of research, I use my graduate experience and degree on a daily basis. One of the most beneficial aspects of a Master of Arts is the chance to focus on your writing while writing about a favorite topic. Moreover, in the humanities and arts, you have the many opportunities to explore your potential as a communicator, presenter, and professional. In the Admissions Office, I spend most of my day constructing concise, clear e-mails and communicating with my co-workers, supervisor, and potential applicants. I do my best to write well and in a style that reflects conversational, yet professional, communication. I credit Tufts to my success as a member of the Admissions team. Writing is one of the most important takeaways from the M.A. degree.

LW: This year I’ve worked on smaller art pieces, while looking at residencies, gallery shows and trying to incorporate art into my daily practice. I have been fortunate enough to get to work in a full-time position with artists coming into graduate programs. I speak to prospective students about what it’s like to enter a graduate program, look at work, and have conversations about pursuing a terminal degree in fine art.

What advice do you have for graduate students who are graduating this year?

MC: I encourage graduate students to truly take the time to explore the many opportunities on the job market. I’m not directly using my primary degree in the context of teaching or research; however, I am using the skillset that I have learned over the course of my undergraduate and graduate career. There are so many jobs available, especially in the Boston area. Take the time to apply to the ones that strike your interest and continue to build confidence to pave your own route to success. Keep in my mind: success is defined by you, yourself.

LW: As graduate students, you have spent two years treating art as an important full-time position in your life. As a Master of Fine Arts, you have gained the skills in the SMFA at Tufts program to further your practice and find the artist who you need to be. It will not be easy, but you have the ability through research, skill, and conceptual based creativity to succeed if you are willing to continue the work.

 

One Year Down – What I’ve Learned So Far

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A cherry blossom tree in full bloom outside of the admissions office

Written by Alia Wulff, Cognitive Psychology Ph.D. Candidate

Writing a post on the best things I learned my first year of graduate school was a seemingly insurmountable task. Boiling down nine months of hard work, constant research, and new experiences into a few paragraphs is daunting. I finally narrowed it down to these, my biggest takeaways. These have helped me through the amazing days and the not-so-amazing days.

1) Classes are important, but only if they are useful to your interests.

I have determined that the best process of selecting classes is to separate them into two categories: intriguing and pertinent to your area of study. Then you simply sign up for classes that fall into both categories. This way, you are much more likely to enjoy the classes, while also gaining knowledge that may actually be useful for your future. While it may be tempting to take a class purely because it seems fun, you may regret it later when your knowledge of medieval architecture still hasn’t come in handy and you have to take an extra class to get all of your credits in time. That’s not to say you shouldn’t have fun with classes, just make sure you aren’t being flippant about your choices.

2) Listen to students who are well into graduate school.

They are the most important sources of information in your life, I promise you. These students know crucial information like the closest places to get coffee on campus, which professors teach what classes the best, where the office supplies are located, and when buildings are locked for the night. You may receive a small packet of information from the administration when you first arrive that describes basic things like how to register for classes, but nothing compares to the advice from higher level graduate students. Don’t be afraid to ask them questions. It’s better to ask and feel ridiculous about it than blunder around looking for something that has a simple solution.

3) Make sure you take consistent breaks.

This is so important. This does not mean deciding to take a break when you feel like it, because occasionally you will not feel like taking a break and suddenly it’s dark outside, you haven’t moved from your computer in seven hours, and stretching causes your joints to make horrible noises. Taking consistent breaks means making a conscious effort to remember to stand up and move around at least once every two or three hours. While it may feel like you are disrupting your productivity, you are actually helping your brain function properly by improving blood flow. This advice could also be phrased as “make sure you exercise enough!” but I’m not going to pretend I did that regularly. Taking the few steps to the water fountain to refill my water bottle is often all I have time for, and that’s okay.

4) Taking longer breaks away from the office is also necessary.

For example, I made the decision at the beginning of the year that I would not come into the office on Sundays. I work on my laptop at home and try to be productive, but I do not focus all of my attention on school. This allows me time to focus on other things that often fall to the wayside during the week, such as cleaning my apartment or doing the laundry that somehow always manages to have more clothes in it than I’ve worn. Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t do this regularly but trying to relax is better than not relaxing at all.

5) You have to be kind to yourself.

My final takeaway is the most important thing I have learned. I know that sounds like a terrible motivational poster, but it’s true. It is so easy to receive criticism or a bad grade or a terrible review and hate yourself for it. Graduate students have been told time and time again that we are the best students, the top researchers, the brightest minds and that is why we were accepted into graduate school. Just remember that this is still true, even when you make mistakes. Your worth as an academic is not determined by these small and almost entirely inconsequential problems.

My first year of graduate school, aside from a few papers due at the end of May, was officially over on Friday, May 4th. I completed my last final and gave my last presentation before I headed home for a much-needed weekend of doing absolutely nothing. I was back in my office at 9:00am on Monday. I’ve got participants to run, papers to write, an office to clean, exams to sort, and code to edit. My first year may be finished, but I’ve got four more to get through.

 

How To Survive in Grad School

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 Written by Kate Cottrell, Classics M.A.T. 2019

        So you’re considering taking the plunge into graduate school and Tufts. Welcome! You should know that there is no typical grad student. Sure, we all share traits, e.g. weirdly specific information on an obscure topic or an (un)healthy relationship with our favorite lab, library or coffee shop, but there is no typical path to grad school. This is great because it means whatever path gets you there is the right one. Some of us arrived at Tufts directly from undergrad, some took a few years off, some are returning after decades. Some, like me, are returning to school—again—and possibly forever. I graduated with my BA in Philosophy in 2011, took 4 years off and then did my first MA in Theological Studies at Harvard. I made the short move from Cambridge to Medford and now I’m here offering lessons learned during my first program.

        1. Set Boundaries

          Burnout is real. Boundaries are necessary. Our innate curiosity and intellectual drive combined with the demands on our time as students, TAs, and humans with family, friends and lives academia-adjacent is dangerous and volatile. Boundaries will look different for everyone. One limit I’ve set is that I don’t check my school email overnight between 9pm and 7am and only once a day on weekends. Learning what works for you, what will keep you sane, requires trial and error, and failure. But it doesn’t mean it can’t be fun along the way; give yourself the space to indulge in that Netflix binge, or to read that novel that you really want to read just for the hell of it, or go to that concert on a school night.

        2. Protect Your Mental Health

          There are some troubling studies about the mental health of graduate students. I suggest not looking at these in the middle of a 3 am “what am I doing with my life?” spiral of worry. We are (mostly) all scared or insecure and stressed. This, of course, manifests vastly differently for each person. This is a call for you to take responsibility for your mental health. Tufts offers mental health services for graduate students if that’s what managing your mental health means for you. This isn’t something I, a stranger on the internet, can pretend to advise you on: know yourself, know your needs, find the help necessary to support yourself.

        3. Find Your People

          Making friends as an adult is hard. It is especially difficult if it involves moving to a new city. Luckily, school is a great catalyst for building friendships. Practice setting boundaries with your academic work and taking care of your mental health by doing fun things with your cohort—go to restaurants, or hiking, or have a board game night. Really, anything really that drags you off campus and into the bustling city that is Boston is ideal. Spending hours in the library/coffee shop/your apartment pursuing academic questions only you seem to be asking can be isolating, but there’s no reason to go it entirely alone. I mean, who else are you going to frantically text about the homework due tomorrow?

        4. Trust Yourself

          Remember that you belong in graduate school. No, you did not trick the admissions committee into getting in. You put in the work and have built the skills that will help you be successful. There is work still to do—there is always work to do—but trust yourself to do it. Whether this means trusting your gut in proposing hypotheses, offering to sight read in a language class, or submitting and giving papers at conferences, try it. It will likely go really well. But if it doesn’t, trust yourself in failure. It does not mean you do not belong here. It’s a sign of growth and growth is uncomfortable.

        5. Remember Why You’re Here

          This second degree is humbling in ways I did not anticipate. After all, I have mastered material. I am a classically trained scholar with an oversized piece of heavy stock paper to prove it. And yet I still find myself struggling to translate participles and don’t even get me started on the way my brain shorts out when gerunds and gerundives are mentioned. I never thought I knew everything—learned that lesson from Socrates during my bachelor’s—but I did and still do have parts of my identity intimately tied to excelling in school, to being smart, and to performing intelligence. This process takes patience and self-forgiveness. Being healthy in grad school, as in life, takes work. The first step of that work for me is reminding myself daily that I am here to learn. We are all here to learn.

 

Moving to Tufts

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Written by Michelle Connor, Music M.A. 2017

      Bucket List Item: Attend Graduate School in or near Boston. Fall 2015: Check!
      Ever since high school, I dreamed of moving to Boston as an undergraduate student. Unfortunately, many people told me that I would not be able to afford the cost of living and that I would be better off moving to another region in the United States. Taking advice, I listened to them and did not apply to any universities in my dream city. Instead, I attended a university in the south of Ohio but every so often fantasized of my time in Boston. After four and a half years of undergraduate study and two degrees under my belt, I was determined to make it happen. When it came time to apply for graduate school, I applied to Tufts and two other schools, and all of them were in the Boston area. Once again, I was reminded that I would not be able to afford or manage the Boston housing market as turnover is very quick and I would be navigating the tricky market from a distance. But I got into Tufts, and look where I am!

First off, if you are considering applying to Tufts, but you are concerned about the housing market – do it anyway. Tufts is located outside of Boston, in Somerville/Medford. You’ll make it work if you really want to be here! And sure, you may find it a little stressful and realize that you need to put some time in to figuring out the resources as well as the options, but it’ll all be okay. I started looking with some other students in March and secured a place by May. It didn’t happen overnight, but it all happened. Where do I begin? Let me guide you through the Boston area housing market with some advice:

1. Connect with your department and see if there is any ongoing communication regarding housing among current graduate students as well as prospective graduate students.

2. Use the University resources. Tufts’ Office of Residential life has information for Off-Campus Housing! They have even done most of your research for you and can give you access to a list of available housing.

3. When you’re admitted, the Office of Graduate Admissions will provide access to a forum as well as a Shared Wiki. Here you can discuss with other Tufts graduate students, also looking for roommates, about the housing availability near Medford. I found two roommates from the Biology department through this forum, who ended up being some of my closest friends at Tufts! One of them is from Montana and the other one is from Virginia. We both cracked the housing market together and found a three bedroom on a street near the Tufts’ gym for only $2,100 a month! This is the most ideal situation, as you want to live close to campus where the majority of Tufts students are located! Otherwise, you might have to drive/walk/take the T to campus in this:
4. Another option is searching through Craigslist. I know what you are thinking, but you’re intelligent and you’ll be able to tell the difference between a scam and a real listing! You may also stumble upon other Tufts graduate students also searching for housing which is how I met one of my friends from the history department. Although we couldn’t get ourselves together for a housing option, she understood and we continued to be friends throughout graduate school. And we still joke to this day about how we met.

5. Be prepared to have at least the first month’s rent, a security deposit (one month’s rent), and the Boston broker’s fee (one month’s rent). Some places even require last month’s rent. In other words, if you are looking to rent a room for $700, be prepared to have $2,800 and celebrate if you aren’t required to pay the broker’s fee. When thinking about the broker’s fee, consider it as part as your monthly rent. If your rent and broker’s fee are both $700, divide $700 by 12 months and consider it an extra $59 as part of your monthly rent that you must pay upfront.

6. I highly recommend looking for two other roommates from Tufts, so that you are on the same schedule for leasing an apartment. The housing market isn’t so bad. There is constant turnover and if you start looking in April and feel a little worried about finding a September 1st lease, there are always options for an August 1st Moreover, sometimes there are more options for August 1st than September 1st. And who wouldn’t want to have a month to themselves, exploring Boston sights such as these…

Copley Square, in front of the Boston Public Library

Skyline view from East Boston

One of my favorite places: Boston Public Garden

You won’t regret moving to Boston. You’ll see the beauty and charm of the city, convenience of the public transportation, learning opportunities at cultural centers, and the affordability of a city frequently travelled. Sure, you may have stressful days during the search but you’ll see – you will find a place that you are able to afford too!

Midterm Season Tips and Tricks

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Written by Keri Carvalho, Psychology Ph.D. Candidate

Ah, yes, it is that time of year again. Midterm season. Despite the beautiful foliage surrounding us, we are all moving a bit slower, becoming ever more stressed and are very much sleep deprived. In a time where it seems like due dates and assignments are never ending, it may seem that the only goal is to survive the madness. However, as a time management consultant, I can tell you there are some things to consider that just might make your life a bit easier once and for all.

  • Do not underestimate the importance of self-­‐care! This includes showering, eating, and sle Now, these might seem like the basics (and they are), but during hectic times, we students have the tendency of letting our academic lives overtake the importance of these other basic needs. For some of us, our stress leads to lack of appetite and for others binge eating. Know your tendencies and keep an eye on them during midterm season. Perhaps keep a food journal, or maybe just remember not to keep too many of the sugary or salty snacks that you’re drawn to in your room. And of course, there’s sleep. Sleep is much too important for our body’s proper functioning to give up. This is the time when we consolidate information, and recalibrate our bodies to work for us the next day. Make sure that you are getting at least 7 hours of sleep to help stay alert the next day, and of course to keep the flu at bay!
  • Along the same lines, get to the gym. The doctors are not telling us to get exercise for no reason. It’s not only good for your heart and lungs; it’s good for your brain! Regular exercise can help your memory, thinking skills, and perhaps most importantly, your mood. We all know this, and yet, so many of us don’t make time for it. You might wonder when you could possibly have time. While starting a new exercise routine is not advised during midterm season when an intensive routine could become another stressor, it is advised to consider exercise as part of a daily habit as soon as midterms are over. You will have another tool in your belt to deal with the stress when it comes time for final exams. For now, if you don’t have a regular exercise routine, get outside! Walking around the hilly campus in the crisp fall air just might make your heart and mind a little happier.
  • Reward yourself. Exam season is tough, and there is nothing less satisfying than handing in a midterm paper only to turn around and immediately move into studying for an exam. You don’t need to take the whole weekend off, but don’t be afraid to spend an hour or two doing something that feels rewarding to yo Haven’t seen your best friend in a few days? Spend an afternoon together. Haven’t eaten your favorite food in awhile? Go to Davis Square and explore your options.
  • Mini-­‐breaks are I know this comes as a surprise, but we are not robots-­‐ not even during midterm season. We cannot possibly continue to study, write, edit, review, and on and on for hours on end. Our minds simply cannot focus so intensively for an extended period of time. Therefore, let’s consider the mini-­‐break. What’s a mini-­‐break? It really depends on an individual’s preference and what works best for you, but it’s the idea that we give ourselves some time after working for a certain amount of time to do something that feels good for us. It usually works in cycles, so for example, if you work for an hour straight, maybe you then take 15 minutes to watch Netflix. I know, I know, you might not be able to pull yourself away, which brings me to my next point.
  • Timers can If you do decide to take mini-­‐breaks, it’s important to not only time your breaks, but also time how long you’re working for. Knowing how long certain kinds of work takes can be really helpful when planning out your daily schedule moving forward in the semester. It also can be helpful to know how long we’re actually doing work. Many people think they’re spending a lot of time doing work, when in fact they are spending much more time worrying about completing the work than actually doing it! Just don’t forget to stop that timer when you start socializing.

Managing Time as a Graduate Student

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Written by Priyanjana Pramanik, Economics M.S. 2018

Having been a Jumbo now for one semester, I now feel entirely qualified to pass on the wisdom I have learned since arriving at Tufts in September. During orientation week, one of the pieces of advice I heard a lot were ‘You’re going to have to learn how to manage small amounts of time’. Another was this: ‘No matter what, try to maintain some semblance of work-life balance’. And I thought, ‘Piece of cake.’ As you can imagine, I was very, very wrong. In grad school, the workload creeps up on you: it is very reasonable and completely manageable, but you have to stay on top of it, all the time.

It’s Monday. You have an assignment due Thursday, and you think you have lots of time, because you do. You can’t get to it until Wednesday, but that should be okay, right? Except that on Wednesday, you receive a stack of papers to grade, plus there’s a recitation section you have to teach immediately after class, and now there’s a paper you have to read for Friday’s class. You wanted to go to office hours before your Thursday class, but now you won’t have time because of everything you need to do. And you need to do the dishes. And laundry.

Oh yeah, and next week, you have a project due, and your partner for it tells you he’s leaving town tonight and won’t be back until the day before.

That kind of snowballing kept happening to me towards the beginning. So I ended up staying up late to grade, waking up ridiculously early to finish assignments and generally turning into a sleep-deprived mess. I felt like I was working all the time, but was never getting on top of my work. I’m pretty sure this is a pretty common problem in grad school, but when it happens to me I feel like I’m out of control and everyone else has it all figured out, which is probably not true.

Anyway, while I haven’t figured everything out (I’m writing this at 7 a.m., think what you will), things are definitely better. I set a few rules for myself, and since I started making an effort to follow them, my workload hasn’t been quite as overwhelming.

  • I take sleep very, very seriously, and would probably spend more than sixteen hours a day at it if I could. One thing I’ve learned is that the less you sleep, the less you get done.
  • Do things before you need to do them. In my admittedly limited experience of grad school, there are times when you have a mountain of work and times when you have none, at not too many in between. Get things over with long before they’re due, and you can stop worrying about them.
  • Make notes on everything you need to get done. Until I got here, I’d never had a planner, or used the calendar app on my phone. Now, I use both. I schedule obsessively.
  • If things are already overwhelming, get a handle on it before you take on more. If you feel like you’re completely swamped, communicate. If you’re behind on your grading, or struggling with an assignment, talk to the professor you TA for, or your course instructor.

Problems with time management take away from how much rewarding and enjoyable graduate school really is, exhausting as it might be. And it’s okay not to have things completely under control from the beginning: we’re all learning as we go along.

The Story of Us All

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Written by Alexandra Carter, English Ph.D. Candidate

After two years as a graduate student at Tufts, I have learned a lot, but one thing sticks out to me as I sit down to write this blog post: writing is perhaps the most demanding, anxiety inducing, and gratifying work we undertake as graduate students, especially in the humanities. And yet, I actually don’t believe this challenge is limited to humanities students. Indeed, what I am really suggesting is that we are all writers, no matter our discipline, and, additionally, that writing is hard work.

Because I am a Ph.D. student in the English department, I spend basically all of my time reading and writing. Thankfully, these are (not surprisingly) my two favorite things to do. But just because I take tremendous pleasure in reading and writing does not mean that they are easy tasks. Novel fatigue is real, and saying what you truly mean is actually quite difficult. In fact, sometimes it feels like reading and writing get harder and harder, despite the fact that I’m theoretically getting better and better at both.

I’m not alone in this. As graduate students, we all devote a lot of time and energy to reading and writing. Right now, though, I want to focus my attention on the issue of writing as a graduate student. While it may not be the only thing we do—we might find ourselves in the lab, on a stage, or conducting fieldwork—it remains a challenging aspect of nearly all of our graduate student careers.

My aim here is twofold. First, I want to acknowledge that figuring out how you write might be one of the trickier things you do during your time as a graduate student. I know that I am still very in much in the process of pinpointing how I do my best work. In truth, teaching in the First Year Writing program here at Tufts has prompted serious self-reflection on my own process, which has been an invaluable, albeit stressful, experience.

Second, I want to offer some suggestions and resources. The Academic Resource Center (ARC) offers writing tutors for graduate students in any discipline. I cannot urge you enough: go meet with one. Just try it. The tutors are trained to help with writing at any stage in the process, and they can be instrumental in getting you un-stuck and back on the right track.

This leads me to my next point: share your work with your colleagues. If you wait for what you have done to be perfect before you let anyone else see it, you will never let anyone else lay eyes on your work. If the spirit behind all of our work is communicating complex ideas with as much rigor as possible, then we should use the resources at our disposal: each other. (Plus, sometimes you just need to talk things out to see if you are making any sense.)

Finally, just get started. As a graduate student, it can be so easy to spend too much time second guessing yourself and not enough time allowing your ideas to flow. Questioning our work is one of the most important things we do, but don’t allow that to keep you from getting started. Challenges will undoubtedly arise along the way, but try not to let them get you down.

In fact, writing this blog post prompted a series of peculiar challenges for me. How do I write about writing? Is it possible to make my readers chuckle while talking about graduate level writing of all things? Can I make my readers realize that they are not alone in the pursuit of perfect prose? I suppose what I would like whoever is reading this to take away from my own experience is that yes, you are a writer, and while writing may be a challenge (and it likely always will be), it is not one that you have to tackle on your own.