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[shakie]

What a great forum!  I'm glad it was added....

I'm about ready to return to school this fall...   I have my MFA so I've been teaching and working at Universities already - but now am going to go for my PhD.  (In the arts...)

Any advice for someone just starting???  Especially things you did or wish you did in your first few months on campus????

Thanks!

[tenuretracker]

Hi Shakie,

Congratulations! What an exciting time for you.
Things that help:

Do not choose an advisor that has never guided students through the dissertation successfully. Even if they are the only faculty with research interest similar to yours!  It may work out, but why take a chance?

Do make sure that you are aware of the prodedural issues for the prelim and dissertation. Though it may seem like a long way off, make a timeline of the next few years leading to the defense. Everything takes a long time when engaged in this process. Over-estimate the amount of time you think things will take.

Do begin attending conferences and networking as soon as possible.

Go in with the idea of publishing  as soon as possible.

Do find at least one person in your program that you can talk with.

Most of all, enjoy it as much as you can!!

AP

[grasshopper]

Congratulations! Sounds like fun stuff! What kind of art do you do?

When I first started my program, the most important thing I did was make social connections right away. Make friends in your program early on, before things get too hectic and everyone's way too busy to meet for beer/coffee/dinner. I would be going insane right now if I hadn't gone out of my way to make friends with my fellow students in the beginning.

There's precious little 'community' in my department, so we really had to go out of our way to make one. But it was worth it, let me tell you. When I simply cannot read or write another line, there's always someone I can call who understands exactly what I'm going through. And then there's also the more practical help they can offer, like reading suggestions, proofreading, going with you to that first conference presentation and telling you that you weren't a complete idiot :) Plus, it's been a lifesaver to know that I'm not the only one who sometimes feel like a fraud. It's easy to see your colleagues as doing all this stuff effortlessly, while you're toiling along, clearly not cut out for this academia stuff. But it's not effortless for anybody. And it's good to know that sometimes.

[sylvie]

Congrats Shakie!  Enjoy the journey...

I would not have survived the doctorate if it were not for my grad school friends.  Go to any function thrown by your department for grad students.  Hang out before and after class and during breaks, even for a few minutes. 

Also, try to get to know your professors.  It is essential, when thinking about who to put on your committee, that your committee members share similar values and assumptions about research.

Start a research and bibliography data base, right away, using End Note or RefWorks.  This will make life MUCH easier as you go.

I've probably overwhelmed you with too many suggestions!  Take it one day at a time for now.  Keep us posted on your progress.

[figee]

Are you starting your research immediately?  If so, what I found helped was:

• set up your document settings on your computer to the correct ones for the final submission (in terms of margins, font size, referencing etc etc).  It makes life less stressful as your final product won't then spontaneously repaginate itself when it comes to the final formatting.  Do the same thing for journal papers
• get in the habit of writing a little bit every day

And have fun!

[francie_]

I'm going to back up here and give you some tidbits to think about in your first few days and weeks.

If you are starting at a new university, pay attention to all the stuff sent to you by the graduate school and your department before you even arrive on campus.  Attend as many graduate student orientation events as you can (assuming that there are any).  Go to a library orientation seminar.  Take time to stroll around the campus and also your new community.

Graduate school, especially the "dissertating" phase, can be extremely isolating, so I also think it's very important to find at least one non-academic activity.  I strongly recommend finding a faith community as well.  This doesn't have to be a traditional church, but any group that focuses on spiritual well-being and provides fellowship.

Good luck to you!

[larryc]

Random Advice for New Graduate Students:

1. The other grad students are not your competitors, they are your future professional network.

2. Learn to read a book in an hour, and take concise reading notes as you do.

3. Keep a research journal where you jot down ideas, citations, and all those other things you think you are going to remember.

4. Date outside your program.  (see "the two body problem.")

5. Take care of yourself. Get some sun and exercise. Don't live off the snack machines and caffeine.

6. Develop a good filing system.  And a good virtual system on your hard drive. Buy an external backup hard drive (less than $80 on sale) and set it to automatically back up your files at least once a week.  In fact, burn your documents file to a CD periodically and keep it somewhere else, so you don't lose your professional life if your apartment is robbed or burns.

7. Beer in quarts is often a good value and is always a social occasion.

Congrats on going back to school, it is a wonderful intellectual adventure.

[bibliologos]

Another piece of advice that may or may not be field-specific:

Write every one of your course papers on a subject close to what you think you will be writing your dissertation on.  Even use the same body of primary source material if possible.  Then you will know your primary material like the back of your hand, and you will have a good handle on the secondary material.  Very useful when writing the proposal!  You will get breadth through  doing the reading and hearing the other presentations in your courses (as well as in your comps); you will develop depth through organizing your research and writing around one particular subject.

[tt_wannabe]

Bibliologos: a very good idea. Thanks.

LarryC:  Thanks for your tips. Do you really read a book in an hour? I think I'd need a speed reading course for that.

Can I tell my wife that you recommend that I date outside the program?

[larryc]

Do you really read a book in an hour?

Indeed I do--though to parapharase a great American, it depends on what the definition of "read" is.  Here's how you do it:

1. Create a clean space--a table, the book, paper and a writing utensil, and nothing else.

2. Read two academic reviews of the book you photocopied beforehand. Don't skip this step, these will tell you the book's perceived strengths and weakness. Allow five minutes for this.

3. Read the introduction, carefully. A good intro will give you the book's thesis, clues on the methods and sources, and thumbnail synopses of each chapter. Work quickly but take good notes (with a bibliographic citation at the top of the page.) Allow twenty minutes here.

4. Now turn directly to the conclusion and read that. The conclusion will reinforce the thesis and have some more quotable material. In your notes write down 1-2 direct quotes suitable for using in a review or literature review, should you later be assigned to write such a beast.
Ten to fifteen minutes.

5. Turn to the table of contents and think about what each chapter likely contains. You may be done--in many cases in grad school the facts in any particular book will already be familiar to you, what is novel is the interpretation. And you should already have that from the intro and conclusion. Five minutes.

6. (Optional) Skim 1-2 of what seem to be the key chapters. Look for something clever the author has done with her or his evidence, memorable phrases, glaring weaknesses--stuff you can mention and sound thoughtful yourself when it is your turn to talk in the seminar room. Ten minutes, max.

7. Put the notes and photocopied review in a file folder and squirrel it away. These folders will serve as fodder for future assignments, reviews of similar books, lectures, grant applications, etc.

8. Miller time. Meet some friends and tell them the interesting things you just learned (driving it deeper it your memory).

The above works better with some books than others, but will generally do the trick. Another good technique to have is paragraph surfing. Read the first sentence in each paragraph--and nothing else. After a few disconcerting minutes, it become surprisingly easy to make sense out of a book this way, and it is fast.

[fiona]

Whatever your gender, read Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia by Emily Toth. Invaluable advice about politics, dealing with roadblocks, and the like.

Also read "Ms. Mentor"'s column on the Chronicle site, including her current column about being a newbie.

http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/archives/columns/ms._mentor/

[monkfish]

It has been said above but is worth underlining: do have fun! A PhD is not worth it if you think of it as a career investment (it isn't). By fun I am not just thinking of boozing it up--though that seems to be an inevitable part of graduate school--but actually enjoy what you are reading/writing. Sure, you cannot enjoy every single bit of it, but if you are going to survive 5-8 years of graduate school, you do need to enjoy yourself.

Other advice: be unfailingly polite (though not to the point of seeming distant), friendly, and caring of the staff (admin assistants and the like). They can often make or break your graduate career and can help you navigate the rough waters of graduate school when needed!

Make friends outside your program. Graduate school is often balkanizing, but, if you can (depends on the structure of programs), try to take a class outside your field and befriend people with close-enough interests but fresh perspectives. They often make great readers for your dissertation drafts--close enough to get the general picture of what you are trying to do, but not involved in the esoterica of other fields and will call you out when you are getting obtuse.

And I would second the "taking care of yourself" part. If you can afford it money-wise, join a gym or use the school facilities three or four times a week. You don't have to be Mr. Universe, but I found that going to the gym for just under an hour a few times of week did wonders for my energy level.

Finally, I know there is an ongoing discussion of the vices and virtues of EndNote here, but I would consider investing in it or a similar program to keep track of your reading notes from the get go.

[trentsands]

Absolutely brilliant, larryc.  Though the process may be a bit different for, say, "reading" a novel, this should get one through the vast majority of scholarly books, at least until a person needs those incricate kernels.

Do you really read a book in an hour?

Indeed I do--though to parapharase a great American, it depends on what the definition of "read" is.  Here's how you do it:

1. Create a clean space--a table, the book, paper and a writing utensil, and nothing else.

2. Read two academic reviews of the book you photocopied beforehand. Don't skip this step, these will tell you the book's perceived strengths and weakness. Allow five minutes for this.

3. Read the introduction, carefully. A good intro will give you the book's thesis, clues on the methods and sources, and thumbnail synopses of each chapter. Work quickly but take good notes (with a bibliographic citation at the top of the page.) Allow twenty minutes here.

4. Now turn directly to the conclusion and read that. The conclusion will reinforce the thesis and have some more quotable material. In your notes write down 1-2 direct quotes suitable for using in a review or literature review, should you later be assigned to write such a beast.
Ten to fifteen minutes.

5. Turn to the table of contents and think about what each chapter likely contains. You may be done--in many cases in grad school the facts in any particular book will already be familiar to you, what is novel is the interpretation. And you should already have that from the intro and conclusion. Five minutes.

6. (Optional) Skim 1-2 of what seem to be the key chapters. Look for something clever the author has done with her or his evidence, memorable phrases, glaring weaknesses--stuff you can mention and sound thoughtful yourself when it is your turn to talk in the seminar room. Ten minutes, max.

7. Put the notes and photocopied review in a file folder and squirrel it away. These folders will serve as fodder for future assignments, reviews of similar books, lectures, grant applications, etc.

8. Miller time. Meet some friends and tell them the interesting things you just learned (driving it deeper it your memory).

The above works better with some books than others, but will generally do the trick. Another good technique to have is paragraph surfing. Read the first sentence in each paragraph--and nothing else. After a few disconcerting minutes, it become surprisingly easy to make sense out of a book this way, and it is fast.

[bibliologos]

Do you really read a book in an hour?

Indeed I do--though to parapharase a great American, it depends on what the definition of "read" is. 

A process very similar to this is what got me through my comps -- although I spent two or three hours per book.  The books I thought I would need for my diss I did read through.  Think about it:  150-book reading list times 3 hrs per book = 450 hours.  About 10 weeks work if you do nothing else.  But my brain tends to cramp up after a couple of hours, so I would "read" one book a day, and then work on other things (like my teaching that I was also doing).  So I was "reading" about 5 books/week.  That's basically the academic year for the comps.

Now I do tend to spend about an hour on a book unless I find (as I'm working through it) that it's going to be an important work for my own research.

You can "read" an article or essay in about 5-10 minutes using this method as well.

[sheepdog_working]

Larryc's advice is excellent.  That's exactly how I read a monograph, except I usually spend a full hour on the intro, and then an hour on everything else.  I think his idea about telling friends about the book is especially smart.