Emerging Scholars Blog

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What I Wish I'd Known About Graduate School

What I Wish I’d Known: Managing Time and Having a Life In Graduate School

Before joining ESN as a writer/editor in 2014, Hannah Eagleson wrote her series What I Wish I’d Known About Graduate School just after finishing her PhD in 2011. 

A different perspective on time: the Prague Orloj, a 600-year-old astronomical clock. Astronomical Clock (Astronomical Dial), Prague, Czech Republic by Grufnik, on Flickr.
A different perspective on time: the Prague Orloj, a 600-year-old astronomical clock. Astronomical Clock (Astronomical Dial), Prague, Czech Republic by Grufnik, on Flickr.

Even with good coursework management strategies, semesters can feel overwhelming. Here are some more general tips for managing time and squeezing in a life beyond grad school.

1. Recognize that valuable things can be done regularly yet infrequently

If you don’t have time to meet with your accountability partner once a week, do it once a month. Once a week might be better than once a month, but once a month will probably still be helpful.

If you can’t pick up and see a movie just anytime, schedule one movie viewing a week or a month and stick to it. If you know a break is coming, it will be easier to face the daily grind.

2. Have a list of short tasks that can be squeezed into small chunks of time

Coursework often has a lot of small breaks – an hour between classes, etc. If you make a list of short tasks, like calling the library to renew books or writing a short email to a colleague, you can squeeze them into breaks that might otherwise have gone to waste. [Read more…] about What I Wish I’d Known: Managing Time and Having a Life In Graduate School

What I Wish I’d Known About Graduate School: Surviving the Workload

Before joining ESN as a writer/editor in 2014, Hannah Eagleson wrote her series What I Wish I’d Known About Graduate School just after finishing her PhD in 2011. 

Little known fact: the Wicked Witch of the East was actually crushed by her graduate school workload, not Dorothy's house.
Little known fact: the Wicked Witch of the East was actually crushed by her graduate school workload, not Dorothy’s house. What Grad School Feels Like by kimncris on Flickr.

Managing coursework is definitely a challenge. Here are a few things I wish I’d realized at the beginning of coursework. All of them eventually helped me both to get more out of my studies and to have a life outside of study.

You can’t do it all. Learn to prioritize different academic responsibilities

Most people arrive in graduate school with an impressive record of scholastic diligence. Grad students are usually the people who turned in extra credit assignments, attended optional events, and engaged in academic correspondence with their professors during summer breaks. All of those habits will help you in graduate school, but they also have an unfortunate tendency: they give the illusion that every single assignment can be accomplished as well as one would like to accomplish it. For many people, this is simply not true in graduate school. If you are taking 2-3 graduate courses which expect you to read one book-length primary source per week and critical articles, and you are also carrying a one or two course teaching load, you probably will not be able to read every word of every assignment and also sleep. I found it depressing to realize this, but graduate school in the humanities is probably going to entail some skimming. It’s crucial to decide on a few central priorities for a semester and focus on them. It’s still important to work hard in courses that aren’t central to your interests, but you probably will have to skim some readings.

You can still do it well. Pursue your interests diligently.

When I started my Ph.D., I was frustrated because it seemed that I didn’t have time to do anything well. I felt guilty when I didn’t get every word of every assignment read, and I wanted more time to process everything. Over time I did discover a few tips for giving long-term thoughtful attention to things while still being a productive member of each seminar. Here are a few things I learned: [Read more…] about What I Wish I’d Known About Graduate School: Surviving the Workload

What I Wish I’d Known: Balancing Life and Graduate School

Graduate School Blues by ChilLX1 via Flickr - a U. Chicago student simultaneously writing finals and reading for next term...during Christmas "break"
Graduate School Blues by ChilLX1 via Flickr – a U. Chicago student simultaneously writing finals and reading for next term…during Christmas “break”

Before joining ESN staff as a writer/editor in 2014, Hannah Eagleson wrote her series What I Wish I’d Known About Graduate School just after finishing her PhD in 2011. 

As promised in my last post, here I’m talking about some things I wish I’d known (or just done!) early on to balance my life and my graduate work.

1. Make worship central

Graduate school can feel exhausting and terrifying. The pressure of continuing to produce and trying to impress professors and colleagues can make school seem like the defining aspect of one’s existence. I desperately needed to engage in corporate and individual worship as a reminder that my life and work are defined by God’s Kingdom. In the wake of burnout, it helped so much to recognize that any good thing that happened in my academic career was a result of God’s grace. That’s not to minimize the importance of hard work, but to say that it needs to take place in the context of seeking God’s Kingdom and recognizing who He is. [Read more…] about What I Wish I’d Known: Balancing Life and Graduate School

What I Wish I’d Known about Graduate School: Intro

Hannah Eagleson’s second guest blog series (i.e., following Summer Quotation Series), which she wrote before joining ESN as a writer/editor in 2014. What I Wish I’d Known About Graduate School was written just after finishing her PhD in 2011. Enjoy the trailer for the PhD Comics live-action movie 🙂 ~ Tom

Paul Graham, a programmer and writer who does a lot of work with startup companies, once wrote an essay for high school students called “What You’ll Wish You’d Known”. When I finally finished my Ph.D. in the very different field of English this spring, I realized how much I could have used a similar essay for graduate students. So this series of blog posts, in a similar vein, tries to summarize things I wish I’d known at the beginning of graduate school, or in some cases things I did know but didn’t implement very well. [Read more…] about What I Wish I’d Known about Graduate School: Intro