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Beyond Checking Boxes

I’ll openly admit it: I am guilty of being a box checker. I’ve often looked at my degree progress as a series of boxes that need to be checked in order to get me from where I am to where I want to be. That’s not an entirely bad thing, as when you’re working toward a goal you certainly need to chart your course. Sometimes, however, looking at your graduate program as a series of boxes to be checked can keep you from experiencing the rich peripheral benefits of the experience. I’ve been guilty of the “just get it done” attitude, and sometimes, especially when a class is particularly challenging, the pursuit of “getting it done” can seem like the guiding light that allows you to endure the semester. But graduate school is more than just a series of boxes to be checked. The skills you learn in graduate school should be akin to the kind of critical thinking that will help you solve problems in your organization and contribute to addressing issues in the world that affect us all. The skills you learn in graduate school are purposely designed to make you think outside the box and beyond your comfort zone. If you just check the boxes, you’re going through your program with blinders on.

I’ve really been thinking about this lately. I pride myself on being very organized. I review my spreadsheet multiple times a semester to plan the upcoming semesters’ courses and track my progress. I’m constantly forecasting how much time things will take and what they will cost. Not a bad habit — but I want to go beyond checking boxes. Call it my new year’s resolution if you will, but I’m starting to think about graduate school as my sandbox. Remember being a kid and playing in the sand? For children, sand play serves as a place to learn skills for life! These skills include things like problem solving, social skills and language. As graduate students, we are in a sandbox of sorts. We can try things here, be creative and learn about how to develop collaboration and communication skills. It’s a place to learn while we grow before we complete our degrees and step out into the next phase of our professional lives. Your time spent as a student is a time to take advantage of all the learning opportunities that you can. I get it — many of us are on serious time constraints due to family or work obligations. But to only check the boxes may mean you are ultimately cheating yourself out of some rich experiences that you can solely get in the sandbox.

I’m pretty busy grad student myself, but here are some ways that I intend to go beyond checking boxes this year.

Work and plan ahead. Plan, plan, plan. At the beginning of the year for the past couple of years, I’ve invested in a large wall calendar that allows me to see all 12 upcoming months. This way, I have a pretty good idea of what’s coming at me. I can make long- and short-term plans. Then, I keep one central e-calendar so that I don’t overbook myself. Additionally, when a new semester starts, I use Trello with a week-by-week snapshot so that I can know at any time (thanks to the app) when something is due. Once you’re organized, start looking at upcoming conferences and things you would like or need to do. If you’re looking ahead, you can make time to work in activities that enrich your time in grad school.

Look (harder) for opportunities to be engaged. If you’re a grad student who, like me, is balancing work, family and school, you’ve got plenty of excuses and valid reasons to miss out on those “extra” things like brown bag lunches, research discussions and guest speakers. I’ve made the excuse more times than I’d like to admit that I’m too busy or I’m not on campus that day. Quit selling yourself your own bull. Look harder. I’ve recently discovered that many presentations from notable guest speakers to my college are offered via web platforms like Zoom. This works because I don’t need to be on campus to experience the content. Sometimes talks and webinars are recorded, so I’ve started listening to them on my commute. I’ve discovered some fantastic stuff lately just by looking for the opportunity, not the excuse.

Open your mouth. A baby bird in the nest gets fed when it opens its mouth. You, my friend, are like that little bird. You need to be fed all of the great stuff you can while you’re in the nest. Nourish your grad student self with opportunities. How? Open your mouth and ask. Don’t be afraid. I recently expressed my frustration and confusion about finding publication opportunities. Suddenly, just by opening my mouth about it, I found several opportunities that I had not even considered. If you need something, ask for it! Talking to people — your mentor, your adviser, your professional network — is a great way to get help. I think that you’ll find an incredible network of people in your field and in your profession who want to give back. Many of them have experienced exactly what you’re going through, and they can help you obtain what you need.

I’ve decided that I’m not going to go through my program just checking boxes. As difficult as things may be at times, as grad students we should embrace the experience of being a student and take every opportunity to develop ourselves as scholars, professionals and leaders. Step inside the sandbox and play around.

Five Tips for Editing Your College Paper

It doesn’t matter if you’re a freshman in college or you’re in graduate school working on your dissertation, you’re going to find yourself writing many papers when you’re a student. The quality of those papers can greatly impact your college experience, so it’s important to get them right.

This includes choosing the right topic and using persuasive writing techniques, but it also means editing your paper. You don’t want to spend all that time writing your paper only to end up with information that isn’t effective because the punctuation is distracting!

Before you turn in that paper, follow these editing tips to make your paper the very best it can be.

 

Have Someone Else Look Over Your Paper

One of the best things you can do is have someone else look over your paper. It’s true that it can be a bit scary to have someone else read through what you wrote, but they are likely to catch more errors than you.

Because you wrote the paper, you already know what you’re trying to say. It’s easy to gloss over errors simply because you’re predicting what’s coming next. Someone reading your paper for the first time won’t make those same mistakes.

Someone else in your class can read through your paper, but you can also visit your college’s writing center where a TA may be able to read through your paper and provide you with tips.

Professional editing services are also an option. Because these services cost money, they’re best for dissertations and academic articles.

 

Don’t Write and Proofread in the Same Day

It isn’t uncommon for college students to stay up all night the evening before a paper is due writing it. Although it’s always better to turn something in than nothing at all, it really is better to save your proofreading for another day.

There are a lot of grammar and punctuation rules. It’s easy to miss many of them when you’re tired and your eyes are strained right after writing. Not to mention, you literally just wrote your paper, so it’s easy to skim through it when you should be reading it in more detail.

Finish your paper one day and reread through it the next. For even more proofreading power, read through it at least twice.

Use a Spell Checker and a Grammar Checker

It’s a no-brainer to use the spell checker when editing your paper, but don’t rely on the spell checker alone. There is a lot it doesn’t catch.

You should also look into grammar checkers. They can pick up a lot of the errors that spell checkers leave behind.

Some of the best grammar checkers include:

  • Grammarly is one of the most popular.
  • Scribens is often recommended for students.
  • Ginger has an effective free version.
  • After the Deadline is an open source grammar checker.

Just don’t rely solely on the grammar checker either. It can catch many more errors than a traditional spell checker alone, but it will still miss mistakes that you have to catch by reading through your paper.

Read the Paper Aloud

If you’ve read through your paper once or twice, your eyes may be glossing over as you comb over the same pattern of words again and again. If you’re finding that you’re not really paying attention like you should, try reading your paper aloud.

It takes longer to read aloud than it does to read silently in your head. It will automatically slow you down so you can focus on what you’re editing. It’s also much easier to tell if a sentence just doesn’t sound right when you read it aloud.

Read One Sentence at a Time

There are a lot of benefits of reading fast, but being able to read a thousand words a minute is not an effective skill when it comes to proofreading your paper.

Reading the paper aloud can help you slow down, but so can reading and focusing on each sentence one at a time. Otherwise, you may realize you’re treating each phrase as a bridge to the next sentence, which means you’re going to miss errors.

To prevent your mind from wandering down the page, use a piece of paper to cover up each line of your paper as you read it. That way, you can focus on each individual word and find errors.

Handing your paper over in class can be stressful, but it’s a lot less stressful if you take the time to make sure you turn in a great paper with these proofreading tips!

Graduate School Papers and You

Graduate study is all about writing, as the thesis or dissertation is the ticket to graduation. However, lots of writing occurs well before the thesis and dissertation are begun. Most graduate courses require students to write term papers. Many beginning graduate students are accustomed to writing papers and approach them in ways similar to undergraduate papers. As students advance and near the end of their coursework, they often look ahead towards the next task (such as preparing for comprehensive exams) and may begin to resent writing papers, feeling that they have already proven themselves as competent students. Both of these approaches are misguided. Papers are your opportunity to advance your own scholarly work and receive guidance to enhance your competence.

Take Advantage of Term Papers

How do you take advantage of papers? Be thoughtful. Choose your topic carefully. Each paper you write should do double duty — complete a course requirement and further your own development. Your paper topic should meet the course requirements, but it should also relate to your own scholarly interests. Review an area of literature related to your interests. Or you might examine a topic that you are interested in but unsure whether it is complex enough to study for your dissertation. Writing a term paper about the topic will help you determine if the topic is broad and deep enough to fulfill a large project and will also help you determine if it will sustain your interest. Term papers offer a place for you to test ideas but also to make progress on your current research interests.

Double Duty

Each assignment you write should do double duty: help you advance your own scholarly agenda and get feedback from a faculty member. Papers are opportunities to get feedback about your ideas and writing style. Faculty can help you improve your writing and help you learn how to think like a scholar. Take advantage of this opportunity and don’t simply seek to finish.

That said, take care in how you plan and construct your papers. Attend to ethical guidelines of writing. Writing the same paper over and over or submitting the same paper for more than one assignment is unethical and will get you into a great deal of trouble. Instead, the ethical approach is to use each paper as an opportunity to fill in a gap in your knowledge.

Consider a student in developmental psychology who is interested in adolescents who engage in risky behaviors such as drinking and drug use. While enrolled in a course in neuroscience, the student might examine how brain development influences risky behavior. In a course on cognitive development, the student might examine the role of cognition in risky behavior. A personality course might push the student to look at personality characteristics that influence risk behavior. In this way, the student advances his or her scholarly knowledge while completing course requirements. The student, therefore, should be examining multiple aspects of his or her general research topic. Will this work for you? At least some of the time. It will be better in some courses than others, but, regardless, it is worth a try.

Expectancy Amid Uncertainty

My life was full of expectation. After hitting “send” on my written comprehensive exams, my focus had begun shifting to grand plans for my dissertation. And four days after that submission, my boyfriend got down on one knee and we quickly started anticipating planning a wedding and the rest of our lives together. It’s strange now to look back on how certain everything felt then, only two months ago.

As graduate students, periods of uncertainty clearly are not limited to global pandemics. We face waiting and questioning as a regular part of our lives: awaiting program acceptances and funding decisions, sweating out peer-review periods on our manuscripts, conducting time-consuming research studies with no guarantee of positive results and entering a job market that may never lead to our dream position. The current impacts of COVID-19 layer on additional financial worries, research and teaching disruptions, and potential delays of program achievements. Whatever the reason may be, we are often tasked with balancing our expectations with our uncertainties.

I am a planner at heart. I love the feeling of making a to-do list and systematically checking things off until the goal is met. But the world isn’t always so predictable. Sometimes my plans don’t pan out, and my meticulous blueprint for life unfortunately cannot prevent the unexpected. If my previous experiences with rejections, job loss and failure had not already made that abundantly clear at an individual level, our collective experience with this pandemic is certainly driving the point home today. I anticipate that these feelings are familiar to many of my achievement-oriented, hyperorganized graduate student counterparts.

When uncertainty takes the form of waiting, it can be tempting to sit still and not make progress. We can fall victim to waiting passively for things to go back to “normal,” or for someone else to make a decision. But in these times, I try to remind myself that the world hasn’t stopped. It may have changed, but it hasn’t stopped. The old advice to “do what you can, with what you have, where you are” rings so true in these moments. In the current climate, we are all impacted in disparate ways, so what you can do or what you have is probably different than me or your colleagues. Pause to take inventory of where you are and what you’re working with and decide how you can continue to move forward, at whatever pace and in whatever direction is feasible. I have found that monotasking, focusing exclusively on only one thing for a period of time, helps me feel most productive amid the chaos of the world. If you are specifically struggling with being on the job market during COVID-19, this webinar offers practical action steps to keep moving forward. It might require shifting your focus or reframing your goals, but building resilience is key to coming out of a waiting period better on the other side.

In working to stay present in the current moment, we also must grapple with the uncertainty of what’s still to come. It can seem like there is no future to look forward to when it is so unclear what that future may look like. But looking ahead has always been important for my mental and emotional well-being, even when I have to do it in an adjusted way. With the long-range outlook of restrictions on gathering and travel so up in the air, I don’t know exactly how my wedding will look months from now. What I can look forward to, though, is being married and building a life together with my husband-to-be. Likewise, some of my dissertation plans may not pan out exactly as I had envisioned them (and not necessarily for pandemic-related reasons), but my committee and I are confident I will finish and earn my degree. Many of us are certainly grieving previously held expectations, but there’s value in remaining hopeful for the celebrations ahead. Whatever the milestone may be for you, I encourage you to keep looking forward to your goal while working to accept that some of the steps along the way may be different than you had planned.

Maintaining positive expectancy while simultaneously accepting uncertainty is no small feat. In both the ordinary challenges of graduate school and the current realities of the world, I don’t know exactly what you can do, or where you are, or what you have. But I hope somehow, in the way that’s right for you, you can keep moving forward and keep looking ahead to brighter tomorrows.

In These Stressful Times, Make Sure You’re Protecting Yourself

College can be a stressful experience at the best of times. After all, the steps you take in these pivotal steps will echo throughout your life, influencing your job and career prospects in the years to come. Not to mention the pressure of living on a modest budget, balancing part time work with your studies and managing your relationships with your partner, friends and family. As we prepare to face an international pandemic, the likes of which have not been seen in living memory, however, our stress levels may rise exponentially. While a stress response is perfectly natural, it can also make us more vulnerable. And we’re not just talking about coronavirus, either. There’s a reason why so many call stress the “silent killer”.

In this post we’ll look at why stress is particularly dangerous at this time and how you can protect your health.

 

How stress can make you more vulnerable to infections

Stress can seriously compromise immune function in a number of ways. The stress hormone cortisol can lower the number of lymphocytes your body produces and thus render your immune system less effective. When we’re stressed we also produce fewer white blood cells making our bodies less able to fight off harmful antigens.

As well as increasing our risk of everything from weight gain to cancer, chronic stress can make us more vulnerable to the international pandemic. As well as self-isolating, college students should take the following measures to reduce stress…

Meditate for 5 minutes every day

All the stresses and strains of day to day life can quickly add up and make us more susceptible to the health effects of chronic stress. Especially when we’re so utterly connected to the rest of the world via our smartphones. Mindfulness meditation, however, allows us to take a step back and slow down the pace of life. Just spend 5 minutes a day focusing on nothing but your breathing. It’s a great way to relax a reeling mind and reduce your body’s stress levels and all the inflammatory responses that come with long term stress.

 

Admit when you need help

Many of us self-medicate with alcohol and illicit substances when stressed. And while this is understandable, there’s a very fine line between recreational use and addiction. Addiction can exacerbate stress not to mention alienating you from your studies, your tutors and your part-time employers. Addiction In The Workplace is a serious issue for employers and employees alike. If you are worried that addiction may be an issue for you, it’s vital to get the support that you need and deserve.

Take the time to prepare nutritious meals

Students are famous for their reliance on high calorie, low nutrient takeout foods, fast food and convenience foods. However, all that sugar, sodium and salt can actually exacerbate stress levels, increase blood pressure and further compromise your immune function. Only fresh fruits and veggies contain the vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals that are needed to keep your immune system firing on all cylinders and keep you in good general health.

Take care of yourself in these uncertain and potentially scary times!

From Adulting Back to Studenting

I started “adulting” at age 21. I had taken a fairly standard route: graduate high school, attend a 4-year university, earn a bachelor’s degree, get a teaching position. I settled into a life with my own apartment, a full-time job, and a monthly paycheck. I taught in the public school system for six years before returning to graduate school full-time at the ripe old age of 27.

Now, you might be laughing, but I quickly realized just how many of my fellow graduate students had transitioned to Master’s or even PhD programs directly after completing a Bachelor’s degree. Of course, this varies quite a bit by program. Education is much more likely to attract students with previous teaching experience. In fact, the NSF reports that only 12% of education doctorates are earned by students age 30 or less, compared to more than half in the hard science fields. Inside the walls of the School of Education, I’m much more likely to encounter others with at least a few years of work experience. But when I attend social and networking events across the whole university, I am often one of the oldest people there.

Regardless of your field, it’s a big decision to transition back to the world of “studenting” after being a working professional. You have to highlight different things when applying to graduate programs and consider the financial implications of leaving a career to pursue an additional degree. But once you’re here, in the weird little world we call graduate school, there are simultaneously some adjustments to be made and some unique ways that having experienced the “real world” can really give you a leg up.

The Hard Parts

Let’s get the tough news out of the way first…

  • You know what it’s like to earn a real paycheck. Considering the fact that many graduate student organizations are fighting for stipends that match minimum wage, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’re taking a pay cut to go back to school. When you’re used to earning a steady income, it can require some real lifestyle changes to survive on a graduate student stipend.
  • You’ve become accustomed to some degree of structure. You may have worked a 9-5 office job, been responsible for a classroom of students all day, or otherwise put in your 40-hour work weeks before returning to school. Suddenly, you are responsible for your own deadlines and decisions, and apart from the 10 hours per week you might be in class, you decide how to spend your time. You’ll likely need to master some new time management and organizational strategies to cope with this lack of structure.
  • You’ll probably feel old. But it’s ok. Just chalk it up to life experience.

The Helpful Parts

  • You’ve experienced things, not just read about them. Because of my teaching experience, I knew the real issues firsthand. I saw how policies impacted schools and students and dealt with the nuances and sticky situations that research all too often forgets. In any field, job experience provides this genuine window into the real world that no textbook description can compare to. Professional experience equates to “street smarts,” and you can use this to your advantage in both graduate school and the job market.
  • You have some savings to lean on (hopefully). With the median debt of graduate students climbing to over $57,000, it is impossible to deny the value of entering graduate school with a financial cushion. If you’re smart about your saving and spending habits while working, you shouldn’t need to rely as heavily on costly loans. There was no way that I could live entirely on the stipend provided by my assistantship, but when combined with the savings I built up over six years of employment, I have been able to avoid borrowing.
  • You’ve developed positive work habits and skills. Many of us learned how to be great students in undergrad, but the working world and graduate school require a different set of skills. In my teaching career, I built my collaborative ability with other professionals, developed leadership competencies, and solidified organizational systems that have translated into my academic workload. The pedagogical communication style that I honed as a teacher now allows me to share my research with colleagues outside of my area, a skill that can go unlearned for students who fail to venture out from their narrow field. Recognizing the unique strengths that you cultivated as a professional can be a foundational building block toward graduate school success.
  • You know yourself and your interests. If I’m going to spend years learning “more and more about less and less” to get a doctorate, I want to be sure that I’m invested in my area of expertise. After undergrad, I knew that I cared about teaching students with disabilities, but I hadn’t yet discovered the issues that I was passionate about, the issues that I directly experienced as a teacher and that I am now able to tackle as a graduate student. Having a focus early on helps you select your school, your mentors, your courses, and your research topics without wasting time (and money) figuring it out after you’ve enrolled.

Overall, I believe I’m a much better graduate student because of my years spent “adulting,” and I wouldn’t change my path if I could go back.

Getting More Done in Less Time

Would having more time really make a difference in our productivity? Most of us would say yes – more hours would mean we could get more work done. However, productivity blogger, Scott H. Young, argues that focus rather than time dictates our output. Just turning off the phone, laptop, internet or locking yourself away for hours isn’t enough to maintain your focus.

Would having more time really make a difference in our productivity? Most of us would say yes – more hours would mean we could get more work done. However, productivity blogger, Scott H. Young, argues that focus rather than time dictates our output. Just turning off the phone, laptop, internet or locking yourself away for hours isn’t enough to maintain your focus. The key to staying focused is energy. Focus requires willpower, which in turn requires energy. The more energy a person has, the more willpower, and the longer one can maintain focus on a difficult task.

The solution, then, is to preserve energy, not “manage time”.  Young has several suggestions to do so:

  1. View time off as sacred.  Young suggests taking evenings and one weekend day off. You may not be able to take that much time away, but make sure that you set aside at least some time every week to do activities unrelated to your work and guard that time carefully.
  2. Never sacrifice sleep! If you skimp one hour a night to study, you need two additional hours of sleep to make up for it.
  3. Constrain your working hours.  Work in smaller, intense chunks of time rather than working nonstop all day.

In addition to maintaining energy, we also need to give ourselves the best chance to stay focused by eliminating time-wasting distractions.  Switching between tasks too frequently (constantly checking Facebook, Twitter, texts, and email are the usual culprits) destroys our workflow. Productivity experts admonish us to think about only one thing at a time, but we often have trouble with that. If you find distracting thoughts intruding on your work time, take a minute to write them down to get them off your mind, and if they’re important, schedule time to think about or act on them later. There are also a number of apps that will boost your willpower and therefore help you reserve energy for more important tasks:

  • Self-Control: An open-source app for Macs to help you avoid distracting websites while you work for a set period of time.  This works well with the Pomodoro Technique.
  • Focus Writer: Provides a distraction-free writing environment that is Mac, Windows, and Linux compatible.
  • Anti-Social: This Mac app turns off social media sites and requires a reboot to return to turn it off. There is a free trial available and a registered version for $15.
  • StayFocused: This Google Chrome extension limits the time you can spend on websites you typically find distracting.  You can choose which sites and even specific in-page content and media to limit.
  • Time Out: Another Mac app that reminds you to take breaks periodically – stretch, rest your eyes, switch tasks – and is also customizable.

How to Embrace the Frugal Life How to Embrace the Frugal Life

Frugality is an unavoidable companion throughout graduate school due to our limited incomes. For those of us who are not naturally frugal (like me), it might be quite an unpleasant companion initially, one you constantly struggle with and attempt to escape. This post details six strategies to help us change our attitude toward frugality and instead welcome and embrace it. You should use these strategies to eliminate pain and discomfort from your practice of frugality.

1) Find your bigger “why.”

Sacrifice, by definition, is not fun. The key to embracing frugality rather than tolerating it is in identifying your motivation for practicing it. What life values is your frugality helping you fulfill? What are you able to do with the money that you free up through practicing frugality?

Personally, I wanted to handle my money responsibly. Being responsible is very important to me (eldest child much?), and when I started grad school that translated into living within my means, being financially independent from my parents, and starting to save for retirement. I learned to practice frugality in each of my budget categories, and it was satisfying because I believed that in doing so I was becoming more responsible. Money that I no longer spend on my everyday living expenses could be put into savings.

A couple years into grad school, I realized that traveling to see family and friends had also become very important to me. Finding a new way to be frugal in my monthly budget meant that more money was freed up to be added to my travel savings account. Making a sacrifice like canceling cable or ceasing eating out for convenience was made easier because I knew that the money would directly be put toward travel.

2) Widen your exposure to frugal strategies.

Not every frugal strategy you come across is going to work for your life; you can’t expect to happen upon a new frugal idea once every few months and implement 100 percent of them to fantastic success in your budget. Instead, you should expose yourself to lots of suggestions, knowing that you might only pick up on and start practicing a small fraction of them. In fact, you might even reject a frugal tip the first time you hear it, but cycle back around to trying it out a few months or years later when something in your circumstances or disposition has changed.

As a starting point, check out the video series I’m running on my Facebook page, Personal Finance for PhDs, this October. Every day I’m posting a new video that explains a frugal strategy and how I used it during graduate school. If you want to skip all the videos, you can go straight to this page to sign up to download a list of more than 40 frugal tips with links to further resources on each of them.

3) Keep a lid on your large, fixed expenses.

When students start practicing frugality, they usually first turn to areas such as their food spending (a variable expense). However, the most effective and least onerous area of your budget in which to practice frugality is your large, fixed expenses. When you make a frugal choice in your large, fixed expenses, you lock in a rate that works well for your overall budget, meaning that there is less need to frugalize your remaining variable expenses, which require more willpower.

Your large, fixed expenses will almost certainly include your rent/mortgage and car payment (if you have one), but might also include your insurance premiums, certain utilities, childcare, etc. Finding and moving to an inexpensive home or shopping for and buying an inexpensive car is not easy, but it is a one-time decision that will pay off every single month in perpetuity.

4) Focus on habit creation in one area at a time.

The next best thing after reducing a fixed expense is to create a habit that reduces a variable expense. It’s very taxing to continually have to force yourself to practice frugality in a certain area, but once the practice becomes a habit, you do it effortlessly. So when you try out a new frugal tip, give it some time – a few weeks, perhaps – before deciding whether you’ll stick with it or not. The practice should become easier and easier as the habit becomes ingrained. Over time, you’ll also figure out how to best fit the frugal tip into your life; this might not be obvious the first time or two you try it, so don’t give up too quickly.

It’s not a great idea to try to frugalize every area of your spending simultaneously. It will take a lot of effort to remember all the new frugal strategies you have in play, and it will be exhausting and possibly time-consuming to take on so much at once. Instead, focus on creating one new frugal habit at a time before moving on to the next one.

5) Experiment.

I think we’re sometimes reluctant to try a new frugal strategy because we can’t imagine practicing it indefinitely. But you don’t have to make a binding commitment to every frugal tip you try out.

I like to think of trying out a new frugal tip as a 30-day experiment. If you have been tracking your spending, you know how much you spent in the relevant budget category before implementing the tip (your control). Then, commit to practicing the strategy for just 30 days, noting how much less money you spend and how onerous (or not) you found the strategy. At the end of the month, evaluate whether the cost savings were worth the effort expended to decide whether to continue with the strategy.

6) Talk openly with your peers about frugality.

I recommend that you talk with your peers about money, specifically about your frugal aspirations.

First, this reveals to your peers that you are money-conscious and not likely to be a big spender. Frankly, this will probably come as a relief to most of your peers who are on just as tight a budget as you are. It helps to set the expectation in your social circle that entertainment and socializing will be accomplished without a large price tag.

Second, your classmates are going to be your best source of frugal tips, even better than the frugal wizards you can find online. This is because they have intimate knowledge of your university, your city, and your salary range. I recently facilitated my new workshop, Hack Your Budget, for the first time, and I was pleasantly surprised at the large number of frugal tips the participants shared with one another that were specific to their university and city – down to at what time and in what building a not-overtly-advertised pop-up discounted produce market operated. There was no way that an outsider like me could have generated that volume of frugal suggestions that were perfectly suited for that audience; it had to be crowd-sourced from a group of graduate students.

The core purpose of frugality is to minimize your monetary expenditures in areas that matter less to you so that you can redirect your money toward areas that matter more. Therefore, the areas of your spending that you try to frugalize (and how you use your money instead) is unique to you. It takes time and effort to develop that frugal fingerprint, but the end result should not feel difficult or uncomfortable.

What To Do While You’re Waiting for Your Grad School

So, you’ve requested your recommendations and your transcripts, taken your entrance exams, written your essays, and sent in your application forms. What do you do now?

Don’t be caught short!

Probably the most important thing is to double-check everything. You should call all of the schools to which you applied and verify that all pieces of your application have arrived successfully and are being reviewed. While this may seem overly cautious, too often an application is delayed because one piece or another was never sent. For example, a professor may have forgotten to send along a recommendation or transcripts may have arrived at the wrong place.

Don’t let your application fall victim to such an accident. Be proactive.

Be prepared

Although interviews are not common with all graduate programs, a few may require them. If this is the case, make sure to find out what is required of you, and be prepared to impress the committee with your passion for your field, your reasons for pursuing a graduate degree, and your qualifications.

Fill out some more forms

Another productive thing you can do while waiting is to consider your finances and fill out your financial aid forms. Knowing what funds you have available and what you can afford will help you weigh the offers from various schools when they arrive.

Visit again (or for the first time)

Many people take the opportunity to visit the schools they are considering while their applications are being processed. This may provide you with the opportunity to make an impression on the faculty. If nothing else, it will provide you with the chance to consider the school again and help you prepare to make a decision when you receive the responses to your applications.

Buy a Chia pet and watch it grow

Caring for a fake pet will no doubt relax you and give you a friend to confide in while you’re stressing about the results. Just don’t desert him after you’re accepted. Chia pets need sustained love and care.

Informational interviewing: Getting your foot in the door before you need a job

As I wrote in a previous post, this past summer I was an intern at the Department of State in the Office of the Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary.  In addition to experiencing the State Department work culture I attended invaluable career development workshops.  I’ve summarized here the information I obtained on Informational Interviewing, a skill I used extensively to build my network while in DC.

We have all heard that networking is the key to getting a job, so we attend conferences, career fairs, and join relevant professional societies.  However one type of networking students may be less aware of is informational interviewing.  This is when you meet with “connected” or “knowledgeable” professionals in your career field of interest.  The purpose of these meetings is not to obtain a job offer but instead to gather information, advice, referrals, and support.  These interviews are different from a job interview in that you take the initiative in conducting the interview by asking the questions.

These meetings allow you the opportunity to gather valuable information about potential career fields, companies, schools or organizations that you may want to work for in the future.  It lets you discover and explore previously unknown areas in your field and potential job leads.  It may expose you to important issues in your field of interest and also allows you to enlarge your network of contacts, by building on referrals.

When arranging for an informational interview briefly introduce yourself and explain why you want to meet them.  Let them know what type of information you are interested in and clarify that you are not looking for a job.  If you were referred by someone else make sure to mention that person’s name.  Make sure to acknowledge the value of the other person’s time so ask for only 20-30 minutes of their time.  If you are going to initiate contact over the phone have a script ready so that you cover all these aspects without having to think about what to say.  If you prefer contact by email, you should include what you are currently doing, a brief background on yourself, your referral or connection, and what you are looking for from that person.

In preparing for the interview learn as much as you can about the organization and the individual with whom you will meet.  Make sure to prepare and write down the questions that you will ask.  Develop priorities for the interview so that you get the most important information from the contact that you can.  Some example questions are:

– How did you get into this line of work?

– What has been your career path?

– What skills do you need to be successful in the job/field/organization?

– What associations and professional membership organizations do you find most useful?

– Whom else should I talk with and may I use your name when I contact him/her?

When conducting the interview make sure to arrive on time and restate the purpose of your meeting.  Focus on getting answers to your most important questions and don’t forget to ask for advice, information and referrals.  Make sure to stick to the time frame that you asked for originally and do not offer a resume unless asked.  Thank the individual and ask if you may keep in touch, typically by connecting on LinkedIn.  Within 24 hours you should follow up with a thank you note.  You can then periodically keep in touch.

Informational interviewing can help you to make better, more informed career decisions, and be more knowledgeable about positions or organizations of interest.  It also gives you experience and self-confidence in discussing your career interests for job interviews.  This is also an invaluable way to make you visible and connected to the job market.  Additionally, potential contacts are much more likely to take time out of their busy schedule to meet and help you if you are a student.  Informational interviewing is the method by which 70% of people get their next job offer and allows you to develop your networking skills even when not looking for a job.

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