Category: AlwaysAScientist

Being an Involved Grad Student

A.K.A How to being involved AND score free meals

I’m a fairly involved graduate student. Rachel is as well. The benefits are numerous, but some of the top reasons we like to be involved include contributing to our respective departments and universities, building our C.V., access to amazing workshops/events/etc, in addition to always knowing where the free food on campus is located! Below are some of our top ways for you to get involved within your own programs!


Check Your Emails

Inbox Success! Now to stay on top of it!

I cannot believe the amount of people in my department who don’t keep up with their inbox! It’s not so scary to peek in and give them all a read. Then also, don’t be afraid to delete them! Granted, I’m on the far other end of this spectrum, constantly checking, deleting, and sending emails to the other students in my department. Zero email inbox is my happy place. Trust me though, there are plenty of opportunities waiting for you to read about in your inbox! I get emails about social events, workshop opportunities, conferences, class announcements, etc.
Free Food Score: 2 out of 5 Pizzas.

Join your GSA (or START one)

The level of involvement will surely vary between departments, but I’ve found that even my department’s small (and frankly, underutilized) Graduate Student Association is full of potential! When I arrived at PSU our GSA was just called SAC and it was a loosely defined organization with just a string of presidents who took responsibility for organizing a social event every so often. No one really knew what SAC stood for. I think Student Advisory Committee, but it was neither quite a committee nor advisitory. Luckily, we voted at our last meeting to officially change it to Statistics Graduate Student Association! In my short time being involved (since last fall) I’ve served as webmaster and made a bad ass website for us, organized weekly grad student workshops that now have Panera catering, organized a successful laser tag outing, AND been promoted to vice president. I’m looking forward to running for president next year. If your department doesn’t have a group already, ask around and check into the procedures for creating a campus group! It’s a mostly painless process and usually once recognized, you’ll be able to apply for funding.
Free Food Score: 5 out of 5 Pizzas

Check out College/University Level GSA Groups

Often the lifestyle of a grad student dictates that you spend the majority of your time on campus in a very few number of locations, interacting with only a limited number of colleagues. If you’re anything like me then you probably love to nerd about about your chosen field of study and you enjoy hanging out with others who share that passion! It can be hard to meet graduate students in other fields, but once you do it can open a whole new social aspect of your grad student life! Check to see if your school has graduate associations at the college or university level and check out their calendar for events that will draw in students from all across campus. Penn State’s GPSA hosts a plethora of amazing social events, workshops, coffee hours, talks, etc all year long, including a giant end-of-the-year field day for grad students. These organizations are also key for staying informed and involved with grad student rights and issues. Health care is a key issue for everyone insured through their university and there a lots of changes still taking place through the Affordable Care Act. Make sure that your voice is heard!
Free Food Score: 4 out of 5 Pizzas

Note the intimidating countdown until
the hardest test of my life. Blarg.

Be an Officer

The current student associations don’t have quite what you like going on? Be that change you want to see! Get involved. Get elected. Join committees and plan some events to your liking! You can also choose your level of involvement. Remember, everyone else is also a graduate student so they’ll be more than understanding if school, research, life gets more involved. I especially enjoy my role as webmaster where I’ve been able to create web pages through PSU’s partnership with WordPress. It’s much simpler than I anticipated and such a great tool to have learned.
Free Pizza Score: 3 out of 5 Pizzas

Twitter!

Academia is quickly taking over Twitter. I love using it to keep up with current events and issues in science, as well as living vicariously through Anna Kendrick. Even if you don’t want to keep up tweeting from an account, you can still use one to cultivate lists of accounts to follow. I keep a list of accounts that provide relevant Penn State and statistics news so that I can have them on our SGSA website in a convenient Twitter widget. My hope is that even the students and faculty in Stats that don’t tweet (a LOT of them) still have easy access to the information. It’s a great place to hear about research, events, funding opportunities, jobs, free food, and sports.
Free Food Score: 1 out of 5 Pizzas 

Offer to Show Prospective Students Around

You were a young student applying for grad school not so long ago. You remember how nerve-racking the whole process is! Volunteering to take a prospective student out to lunch is a win-win situation. You get to tell them your honest feelings about the program and possibly your advisor (Check out last week’s post for more on this!) so they are fully informed and you both get lunch, usually paid for by your department. My department is having our recruitment day next friday and I can’t believe it’s already been a year since I was in their position. That visit and the emails I exchanged with two students really sold me on choosing Penn State and Statistics for my PhD program. I’m so happy to be here and to have the opportunity to help guide potential new graduate students towards a similar decision!
Free Food Score: 5 out of 5 Pizzas

If there’s anything we’ve missed or if you’d like to share your own experiences let us know! 

Part 3 – And Now for Something Completely Different


How We Came to be Here – A Story in Three Parts This week STS will be sharing stories of coming to careers in STEM fields.  We hope we can offer three different perspectives on finding your career path, navigating higher education, and deciding how and when your journey needs to change.  We’d love to hear any and all of your stories about finding your calling or your struggles/victories if you’re still trying to figure it out right now.  Please share!  It’s important for all of us (especially those in high school and undergrad) to know that there is no single, best way to approach this crazy adventure.  For Part 1, which is Rachel’s story, click here. For Part 2, which is Chelsea’s story, click here.
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Proof that I am six years old. But that’s, Junior Ranger Six-Year-Old to you. 

I have some impressive posts to follow! I am very lucky to have two wildly inspirational best friends that are both doing such amazing things with their lives. I suppose it’s time for my story. Unlike Rachel and Chelsea, after graduating from WKU in 2009 I took an academic year off to reconsider my options for moving forward. I’d had lots of wonderful experiences during my undergraduate years thanks to my mentor, Dr. Albert Meier. At that point I had done research, internships, studying abroad, an honors thesis, but even with all of this involvement, I still was terribly intimidated by the prospect of graduate school. Albert often reassured me that I could go straight into a PhD program, but to me that seemed like rushing the process. During the time I was working on applications to different programs I was living at home and working at a Red Robin to save money. A lot of my friends had already been accepted and moved onto graduate programs while I still had a giant pile of uncertainty in my future. This was a pretty bleak time for me.

For a while it seemed like every potential path was quickly met with disappointment. I thought I had a position lined up as a research assistant in Costa Rica for a short time, but I believe that graduate student ended up employing a friend instead. A professor that I had been talking to at UC Santa Barbara (close to where Rachel was at the time!), but again disappointment arrived as he informed me he was departing for a different university. It was getting late in the grad school search season and I was scouring the Ecolog listserv and Texas A&M Wildlife Job Board  for any PhD or MS listing that was even remotely interesting at this point. Thankfully, I came across a listing for a fully funded MS level grad program focused on algal research at a Fish and Wildlife department in New Mexico. Now the cogs were really falling into place.

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Plus, Chelsea was in New Mexico too!

Within 11 days I went from inquiring about the posting, to interviewing, to applying to NMSU, to acceptance. All of a sudden I had a plan and only a few months before moving across the country to start working on research that summer. Sure, it was intimidating going from spending most of my time in bed watching Netflix to leading a team of undergrads in designing and conducting experiments, but it sure was just what I needed to jump start my enthusiasm and motivation! I cannot say enough good things about my academic experience during my Master’s. I had a supportive advisor who taught me to be more confident and self reliant as a researcher. I found time to travel and attend conferences. I started taking more and more applied statistics courses which opened my eyes how useful such knowledge was to scientists. By the time I finished 2 ½ years later, I was emerging a much more self-assured, competent scientist.

My research and coursework left me with lots of new questions and motivation, and I was sure of wanting to return for a PhD. However, I once more went the route of gap year, this time with a much clearer vision of how to proceed. While my time in New Mexico was academically fulfilling, I was left a bit drained on a more personal and emotional level. I knew I needed to devote time to myself away from school and thanks to very supportive parents and the low cost of living in Las Cruces, I was able to travel for three months through Europe on my own during the summer of 2013. Even now I’m surprised at the extent that this trip has left such a lasting impression on me. I believe that the double dose of academic and interpersonal confidence was crucial for my next steps towards finding a PhD program.

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Some epic CouchSurfing festival Highland games in Edinburgh during my travels.

While searching for programs I was eager to incorporate my newfound interest in statistics with my established background in biology/ecology. I sent applications to Biostatistics, Biomathematics, Ecology, and Statistics programs, unsure of exactly what path I wanted to take, or even what was available. I even applied to a program at UC Davis which had the added appeal of Rachel’s lovely presence! Penn State piqued my interest when I stumbled across this site for a Center for Statistical Ecology and Environmental Statistics. Oddly enough, this center no longer exists, but I had already applied and been accepted when I found out! I was reluctant initially to accept a position in a purely statistical department, but talking to the graduate advisors, current students, and several professors during my recruitment visit that reassured me that I would have ample opportunity to incorporate an interdisciplinary approach. This was exactly what I needed to solidify my decision. Now I’m in my second semester as a statistics grad student with no regrets about my switch in fields.

I hope everyone has enjoyed our series on our respective paths to where we are now. Navigating life, school, and careers can be rough and we want you to know that lots of people struggle with finding a path. If you would like to share your own experiences, or even guest post for us, let us know! Until next time, check out these pictures of my besties and me at Mount St Helen’s.

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Hindsight and Foresight

My Cohort Chums getting their learn on.

I finished my first semester of my PhD program last month after a long, very long, oh-so-long semester. For context, my previous educational career was in the biological sciences, but when applying to grad school (round two) I made the decision to pursue a degree in Statistics. This semester has held a lot of firsts, frustrations, and failures, but now that the dust has settled, I can look back on it with a clear view (hindsight is 20/20!). I want to take this time to reflect so that I can hopefully emerge with a more confident approach to my future semesters.


I was a little reluctant at first to reflect too much on my semester. It’s easy to be pessimistic when the stress is taking over your emotions. For a while I was getting really down on myself because for the first time in my life I wasn’t one of the students at the top. Or even in the middle. Even during my Master’s there was a pretty even playing field and it wasn’t difficult to get all A’s. Penn State is a whole other level of educational adventures. No, I’m not going to be the top student in my cohort. But, my undergraduate mentor, Albert Meier, was always fond of telling his students to take credit for their work at least three times. I am the one that has ventured so far outside of my comfort zone that I can barely see my precious old zone full of security and science. I am the one that improved over 60 points from one of my midterm exams to the final. I am the one who organized homework sessions and study sessions and grad student development workshops. It’s so important to not let yourself ignore your own achievements, especially during tougher times.

Rachel and I being almost as cute
 as Garcia during a Skype Chat.

 My weekly accountability partnership meetings with Rachel work wonders for my productivity and confidence. I love sharing the ups and downs of my week with Rachel (and her sister, Sara) and have a great, positive support group to send me into the next week freshly motivated. This motivation and focus is really what ultimately helped me to get a lot of the aforementioned accomplishments done amidst the struggles of classes.These meetings began to get more sparse once my exams started up and Rachel’s quals neared, but we agreed that sometimes it’s necessary to put things on the backburner for a while if you need to focus. No reason to feel guilty or stressed if you have to cancel or postpone on someone. You know best how much you can handle on your plate, and if you need to take a few things off, don’t let it get you down. I also found that when I was getting overwhelmed, it was helpful to just ask around for help! My cohort chums were vital when I was getting bogged down with homework. It’s easy to think that you’re the only one struggling, but a quick chat confirmed that there were several of us that wanted some extra help and we still work together to work/talk through our homeworks (which is encouraged by our professors as long as we all write it up separately).

Looking towards the future is always my favorite part. Well needed breaks from school are usually just what I need to get re-motivated for the path ahead. I’m heading into part two of what very well may be the single most difficult year of schoolings of my entire life and I want to have my head on right. My department’s PhD program had undergone some recent changes that went into effect with my class, so everyone is a bit frazzled, but also very open to making changes. I like that my experiences (however tough) and feedback are very much valued within the department. My main goal for this semester is to be vocal with my questions. I’m usually the one in the front row with my hand raised in classes, but I’ve been letting myself get more and more intimidated by professors and classes so I stopped asking as many questions. But no more! My new classes and professors have been very enjoyable and I can already tell I’m feeling more comfortable and confident.

There’s lots of events and programs that I want to be more involved with in the future. However, I do need to be mindful of my time and try not to spread myself too thin. A quick talk with your advisor/supervisor can help you settle on a plan of action. I talked with my academic advisor and we agreed that I’ll hold off on starting any research projects until this summer, after hopefully PASSING all three sections of my quals. I really want to focus long term on increasing my leadership roles within the department and university, but I will have to keep that to a minimum for now. It’s really frustrating to have to hold off on a lot of these tasks and goals that I feel personally better suited to, but mastering the foundation of the content is my number one priority!

To Recap:

  • Give yourself credit when it’s due!
  • Figure out the best way to keep yourself motivated and focused.
  • Don’t be afraid to say no or not now to opportunities.
  • Communicate with your cohort/fellow graduate students.
  • Eye on the prize.
  • Don’t be afraid to speak up and ask questions!
  • Communicate your plan with your advisor/supervisor.
Best to luck to everyone on their new semester!