In the Spring a student’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of graduate school.
– Alfred Lord Tennyson, more or less
In recent weeks, I’ve addressed whether graduate school was a path a certain doom (no) and whether getting a tenure-track job was a futile dream (probably). Most students thinking about graduate school, however, aren’t planning on a PhD. They’re thinking of a professional degree with a specific career path in mind, a master’s to explore their discipline further, or (in many cases) simply continued study while figuring out the next stage of life.
While graduate school leads in many different directions, and takes on different forms for different people, there are some common things that you can do to prepare. ESN has created the Getting Ready for Graduate School seminar with some basic ideas for preparing for graduate school. Here are the four items that we thought were most important for future grad students to consider. Read through them, and then let us know what you think.
What do you think students need to get ready for graduate school?
Biblically-Based Faithfulness
Faithfulness is important for two reasons. First, because graduate school is all about preparation (after already spending 16 or more years in preparation!), successfully completing graduate school requires faithfulness to complete this leg of the journey. Second, graduate school is where the pressures to conform to the ideal of your chosen profession or discipline greatly increase. I remember reading the testimony of a PhD student several years ago, who described graduate school as a competition between becoming conformed to the image of Christ or to the image of his advisor. In his case, this tension was especially pronounced, with his advisor even pressuring him to stop going to church on Sundays in order to spend those hours in the lab.
Most of us don’t face such overt pressure to compromise our spiritual life, but covert pressure might be even more dangerous. The Getting Ready for Grad School seminar uses Daniel and his three friends as examples of Biblical faithfulness in an intense, graduate school-like experience. The late Christian Anible wrote a Bible study, Faithfulness at the U. of Babylon, that uses Daniel 1 as the foundation for faithfulness in the midst of grad school pressures. [Read more…] about What Do You Need to Get Ready for Graduate School?