It’s a wrap: Concluding Graduate Student Advice Month

And so here we are. Four weeks, 14 posts later. It never ceases to amaze me what we here at Sociology Lens have done here: we have created a space for graduate students to offer advice to other students. No where else is there a space specific for students to seek out advice and community, especially Sociology discipline-specific, from other students. I am ecstatic that this is now a resource that students will be able to come to for years.

Throughout this month, our editors discussed many topics from applying to PhD programs (by Roger Tyers) to the job search (by Tara Stamm), from having children (by Tara Stamm) to personal relationships (by Scarlett Brown), from blogging (by Roger Tyers) to publishing (by Megan Nanney), among many others. The wide breadth of topics shows just how much there is for graduate students to talk about, think about, and deal with on a daily basis. In fact, in just 2 days, George Byrnes piece “5 Things I Wish I had Known Before Starting my PhD Program” had nearly 6,000 hits! Even though the themed month has come to an end, I hope that we can keep these dialogues open either through our comment function, Twitter, or with future posts.

While there is always more to be said as our contexts and social circumstances, here I want to offer additional resources that have been provided to me over the years that people should feel free to use, share and distribute, and contribute to. May we continue to share our experiences, offer support and advice, and more importantly look out for not only the future of the discipline itself, but also those people within the discipline.

Resources:

Professional Development

• Academic Coaching and Writing: these folks offer coaching services for a fee, but they also have occasional free webinars that can be really helpful. Some recent titles: Academic Branding: Improving Your Visibility, Network, and Career Opportunities; Managing the Imposter Syndrome in Academia: How to Overcome Self-Doubt; and more! Sign up to receive their email newsletter to gain access: http://www.academiccoachingandwriting.org/
• Kerry Ann Roquemore’s National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity. Some resources are free; others are quite expensive but might be worth a look for later on: http://www.facultydiversity.org/

Getting Organized

• Peter Bregman’s “18 minutes” method
• The Clockwork Muse
• Various organization methods discussed in Overwhelmed, by Brigid Schulte

Sociology Specific Blogs (by Faculty)

• Tanya Golash-Boza’s Get a Life, PhD blog
• Karen Kelsky’s The Professor Is In blog
• ASA’s Student Sociologist Online Newsletter

Comedic Relief

•  Sh*t Academics Say
• XKCD
• GradHacker
• What Should We Call Grad School?

For that Darned Thesis/ Dissertation

• Finish Your Thesis
• Dissertation Diva
• Dissertation Research
• To Do Dissertation

General Graduate Student Support

• The Grad Student Way
• Gradland
• GradShare

Financing

• Broke Grad Student