{"id":697,"date":"2020-03-11T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2020-03-11T17:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/?p=697"},"modified":"2019-08-27T11:20:02","modified_gmt":"2019-08-27T16:20:02","slug":"get-your-graduate-student-groove-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/2020\/03\/11\/get-your-graduate-student-groove-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Get Your Graduate Student Groove Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spring Break is over and gone. There\u2019s a pile of papers to grade. Article revisions are due to your advisor next week, and a fellowship application is due to the college the week after that. You\u2019ve got ten students who want to meet with you this week to talk about what they can do to improve their grades, and your inbox is overwhelmingly full.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re facing any or all of these things, you\u2019re not alone. The\u00a0doldrums<\/a>\u00a0of the semester or the\u00a0spring slump<\/a>\u00a0are very common, especially when the weather is grey and summer break seems eons away. Fortunately, there are a few things that you can do to help reenergize and refocus your graduate work if you find yourself becalmed at mid-semester.<\/p>\n

Research<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. (Re)Read to Inspire<\/strong>: While reading really great pieces of scholarship in your field can be a great way to re-energize your research and scholarly work, I\u2019ve also found it really helpful to read up on productivity research and strategies (Cal Newport\u2019s\u00a0Deep Work<\/a><\/em>\u00a0and Helen Sword\u2019s\u00a0Air & Light & Time & Space<\/a><\/em>\u00a0are two of my favorites). While it may seem counterintuitive to take time away from my work to read about effectively spending my time, I\u2019ve found that reminding myself that other people face similar struggles and that there are effective strategies for tackling them helps to reenergize me, even if it\u2019s just a chapter or two on my morning bus ride.<\/li>\n
  2. Write to Inspire<\/strong>: In the midst of all the obligations that you\u2019re currently juggling, it can be easy to lose sight of forest for the trees (especially when the trees seem to be falling on you). If it feels like you\u2019re digging your way through piles of work that do nothing to inspire you, stop and take 15-20 minutes to just write about why you\u2019re in grad school. What inspired you to come to grad school? What are you ultimately going to do with your degree? Taking a few minutes out of your day to refocus on the\u00a0big picture<\/a>\u00a0of your graduate education can do wonders for your motivation and really help you to feel like the work that you\u2019re doing is valuable.<\/li>\n
  3. Get a Second Opinion<\/strong>: With everything piling up around you, it\u2019s all too easy to find yourself mired in writing or research problems that seem insurmountable. If you feel like you\u2019re grinding your way through problem after problem, throw yourself a life preserver and find an outside pair of eyes to examine an issue for you. This could involve meeting with a research librarian, visiting the writing center, or chatting with your advisor or another graduate student. Often, getting an outside perspective can clear up seemingly major issues fairly quickly. Just last week, I had a 15-minute meeting with a professor in another department who suggested a different strategy for developing a taxonomy that I had been grappling with for weeks.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Teaching<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Get Active<\/strong>: If it feels like your students are dragging,\u00a0implementing<\/a>\u00a0a few\u00a0active learning activities<\/a>\u00a0can be a great way to recapture their attention and help renew their focus. These do not need to be elaborate or time consuming \u2013 often implementing even\u00a0simple activities<\/a>\u00a0(the jigsaw is easy to plan for) can really change the tone and energy level of a classroom. Bonus: these activities tend to be a lot of fun to teach as well.<\/li>\n
    2. \u200b\u200bCheck In<\/strong>: It\u2019s hard to gauge how students are feeling about the class and how best to help them unless you ask them. I like to send out a\u00a0mid-semester evaluation<\/a>\u00a0that asks questions about what students feel is working in class and what we, as a class, can do to help make the class work better during the second half of the semester. Some of the questions are my own and some come from my department\u2019s end-of-semester teaching evaluation survey. However you structure it, getting and responding to feedback from your students \u00a0shows that you care about their learning and \u00a0gives you the chance to incorporate their suggestions into the class. Their feedback will also likely help to improve your course evaluations.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Professional Development<\/strong><\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Look Forward<\/strong>: When grad school gets stressful, it can be helpful to think about your long term goals. While the current job market for academics doesn\u2019t necessarily lend itself to tranquil day dreams, doing a little career prep work can be a great way to help connect all the things you\u2019re currently doing with your bigger career goals. I find the websites\u00a0Imagine PhD<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Versatile PhD<\/a>\u00a0to be really useful for this. Together they offer great resources, clear, concrete action steps, and success stories about real people who found real jobs. Spending fifteen or twenty minutes on one or both of these sites once a week can help to reassure you that you\u2019re on the right and that there\u2019s a bigger goal behind the seminar paper or lab reports that you\u2019re working on.<\/li>\n
      2. Celebrate with your CV<\/strong>: If you haven\u2019t updated your\u00a0CV<\/a>\u00a0(or your\u00a0teaching portfolio<\/a>) in a while (or even if you have), setting aside half an hour once or twice a week can be a great way to boost your sense of accomplishment. Since it\u2019s fairly rare for academics to leave the office with a tangible product, it can be easy to lose sight of all the things that you\u2019re actually accomplishing. Taking time to update your CV not only reminds you of all of the things that you\u2019ve accomplished since the last time that you looked it, it also contributes to something far more permanent than the slew of emails you have to send.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Do you have any strategies for recharging your batteries at mid-semester?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Spring Break is over and gone. There\u2019s a pile of papers to grade. Article revisions are due to your advisor next week, and a fellowship application is due to the college the week after that. You\u2019ve got ten students who want to meet with you this week to talk about what they can do to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,14,9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-697","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-advice","8":"category-general-post","9":"category-life-of-a-grad-student"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/08\/pasted-image-0.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":699,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions\/699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/graduate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}