Grad School: Part 12 – Post-G Circus

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adventures, creativity, food and fitness, grad school experience, job hunting, post master's, Post-Grad, post-graduation, projects, thesis

Art exhibit at the Troy Community Center in Troy, MI (2018): These two guys are by John Whyte from Athens High School.

Hello, folks! Hope you’re having a great Saturday. Mine has been eventful. In fact, the past five weeks have been all GO-GO-GO! I keep thinking, “Oh, things are finally slowing down a little bit next week,” and then the forces of the universe laugh and laugh and laugh.

Oh yeah, I’m Greg basically and Stevie is everyone else passing through my life. That’s how it feels like, ha ha.

Was going to blog about how my life has turned into a circus since graduation. The fact that I'm postponing it to tomorrow because of all the things I had to do today really makes the point, right? Haha #postgrad #masters #jobhunting

— Anna Josefin Palm (@authorajpalm) June 2, 2018

Well, at this point I’m done with grad school, the thesis is turned in and I’m looking for jobs, which involves fine-tuning resumes and my portfolio, filling out applications, meeting folks for informational interviews, preparing for and attending job interviews, et cetera, et cetera. It’s crazy how much you have to do these days to land a job.

That’s just ONE thing keeping me busy. Among other, it’s helping my dad with the new property in West Virginia (all woods, no buildings). I have been there only once, but there’s been a lot of picking up equipment, packing and planning.

I got a few creative writing projects of my own that I’m trying to get off the ground. Now that the thesis is finished, I also want to find a nice publisher to get it into stores all over the country and websites like Amazon. Being invited to The Ellen DeGeneres Show would be nice, too.

You know, my life being a circus is really my own fault because I have so many interests and keep myself busy with whatever I concoct during my spare time.

Maybe that’s why the forces of the universe are laughing.

Grad School: Part 11 – Scholars to Follow on IG, Friends to Make

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@jennamariejepp, @phd.diaries, @phd_comics, @rebecca_koerner, @scholarculture, @theprofessorlife, advice, Grad School, grad school experience, inspiration, instagram, motivation, networking, phdchat on twitter, role-models, scholars to follow on instagram, social media

Having people to look up to (your own superheroes) can help keeping you move forward toward your goals.

Before I get into the list, I want to be real for a moment:

Following the “right” people on social media isn’t going to make or break your grad school career. However, if you’re visual person like me who gets motivated and inspired by images, it might help. And hell, you might make some great contacts online.

Making friends with your cohorts is so important, because higher education demands a lot from you: your time, your energy, your sanity, a liver, couple of kidneys, etc. But sometimes, there might not be time to hang out with them or to get together for a group study. Sometimes it’s past midnight and you still haven’t finished your homework for the next day and you’re losing hope. Sometimes it’s just nice knowing you’re not alone.

And when I suggest that you follow these people, I encourage you to actually talk to them. I encourage you to share your own stories on IG or Twitter, whichever your preference. Maybe someone who is in the same boat will reach out. By the way, if you’re talking about your grad school experience on Twitter, one way to make it easy for people to find your tweet is adding the hashtag #phdchat. I felt a little like a cheat whenever I added that, because I was in a master’s program, but #masterschat is apparently too long or not as trending.

One last thing, I would recommend following your university on social media, that includes the library, the gym (however it’s referred to, Oakland University’s gym is called the Recreation Center or Rec Center), the university main hub, the campus police, various clubs; there are usually options. You never know if you might come across handy information.

Here are my IG suggestions! I have one of their latest posts as examples. These are in no particular order.

Not a student. I know, dude. How can you not feel excited about academia when the professor is so hyped, though! I recommend following your favorite professors if they’re on social media.

View this post on Instagram

Never forget where you’ve been. Never lose sight of where you’re going. #inspirationalquotes #motivationalquotes #nevergiveup #keepgoing #loveyourself #transformation #journey #inspire #womenempowerment #gradschool #selfesteem #latenightthoughts #photography #selfie #coach

A post shared by ⚡️⚡️⚡️ (@_coachjenna_) on Apr 5, 2018 at 8:20pm PDT

Her focus revolves mostly around fitness, but she shares her journey in grad school as well. Plus, as I’ve said earlier, exercising is a life-saver once you rise higher in academics.

Recent graduate (like me!) and who better to ask about grad school than the people who have reached the end of the tunnel.

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#ScholarSunday – “Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart” – Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear⠀ ⠀ Something that has brought me a lot of joy lately is being creative. Letting my mind wander. And following these bits of excitement and fascination. Sometime they don’t last long and sometimes they build off the next. It’s fun and exciting. And brings me life.⠀ ⠀ I’ve been trying to bring this creativity to strategically think about Scholar Culture and combine it with my research and advocacy work.⠀ ⠀ I have some exciting things in the works. Not sure where it’s really going but stay tuned ✨⠀ ⠀ What is your creative outlet? ⠀ ⠀ PS – I love the book quoted above, HIGHLY recommend. ⠀

A post shared by Scholar Culture | PhD Student (@scholarculture) on May 27, 2018 at 6:23pm PDT

Such a professional blog! This woman is an insightful, fun positive force. Her content always brighten my day.

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I'm holding 5 plates ✋ for 5 different experiments 👩‍🔬, but how many will be successful🤔? _____________________ Let's talk about trial and error ❌. Edit: let's talk about a LOT of trials 🔄 and a TON of errors 😂. _____________________ Out of these 5 plates, 1-2 of them will be 'successful' ✔️, while the rest will probably give me results that generate more questions 💭 than they answer. _____________________ What I'm saying is: on a good day, the success rate of an experiment is about 1 in 5🤓. _____________________ Science isn't always glamorous 🤩. News 📰 headliners say "Scientists made a super exciting discovery this week!", but behind those headlines are a lot of failed experiments 😂🧐. _____________________ Failed experiments aren't failed endeavours, however. No matter how the experiment turns out, we always learn something 💡🎓 (even if we didn't learn exactly what we expected 😉)

A post shared by PhD Diaries 📓 (@phd.diaries) on Apr 5, 2018 at 5:23pm PDT

For the scientist in you! I’m just loving how women in STEAM are sharing their stories online nowadays. It’s awesome for girls and other women who are dreaming of becoming engineers or something and they get to see that it’s perfectly normal. Not to mention fucking cool!

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How's School? *Hey, join our book project: phdcomics.com/kickstarter (link in my profile)

A post shared by PHD Comics (@phd_comics) on May 27, 2018 at 11:39am PDT

Everyone needs a laugh.

Grad School: Part 10.5 – Just Kidding

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advice, Grad School, grad school experience, job hunt, post-graduation, research, scholars on instagram, thesis

Alright, I’m still talking about grad school. This will be a short post simply informing you what’s to come. I’ve had more time to think about this crazy experience and I realized that there are more things I gotta say before I move on from this series.

• The list of fellow scholars that I follow on IG will arrive soon.
• The thesis process and the fact that there’s more than research that goes into it.
• How grad life eventually led me to fitness. 
• The daunting job hunt that follows graduation.

I plan to knock the posts out within a month. Then I’m not sure what I’m going to do on this blog, besides talking about superheroes and books. Hope you’ll enjoy ’em. Happy Friday!