grad student development – Page 4

Grad student stress and distress

I am sharing this story because I want readers to know what graduate student distress sounds like. I want readers to be moved and affected by these graduate students and their peers.

There’s something about graduate students

This is the time of year when many grads and postdocs, curious about non-faculty careers for people with advanced degrees, ask me about my journey to my present position as an “assistant dean” in a graduate school. Inevitably, I find myself explaining the field I’m in now and what “graduate student development” means.

Crossroads of heart and mind

I’ve witnessed a lot of distressing, prolonged, overwhelming, and inconvenient-to-productivity experiences among faculty, graduate students, and staff. Here I want to share some trauma-informed practices that promote individual and community healing and support interdependence.

Finding my voice/Finding your voice

I want to catch you up – for those who know me and those who are meeting me for the first time – with what I’ve been up to between 2017 and 2022 and what interests me now.

Graduate School as a Hero’s Journey

[Image of Moana from the 2016 Disney movie, Moana] “What all myths have to deal with is transformations of consciousness. You have been thinking one way, you now have to think a different way. Consciousness is transformed either by the trials themselves or by illuminating revelations. Trials and revelations are what it’s all about.” -JosephContinue reading “Graduate School as a Hero’s Journey”

What’s love got to do with academia?

“Love is the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” In All about Love, bell hooks “Graduate school should be hard,” a faculty member said bluntly in the summer of 2020 during a meeting of an ad hoc committee I participated in on graduate student mentalContinue reading “What’s love got to do with academia?”

I think about grad student wellbeing. A lot.

Image: several people with cupped hands holding a small plant in dirt. Graduate students: I want to speak with you directly in this blog about your holistic wellbeing during your studies. Graduate school IS really, really hard with substantial intellectual hurdles. There are also mysterious bureaucratic labyrinths and opaque professional development expectations (see Dr. JessicaContinue reading “I think about grad student wellbeing. A lot.”