Deciding to pursue a higher level of education in a masters or doctorate program is not a decision taken lightly but when looking at opportunities to advance your career, a graduate program is often part of that calculus.
Whether you are still deciding if that is the path for you, or it’s something you have already signed up for, we wanted to share advice we would've appreciated people giving us before going into our graduate programs.
It’s been a little while since we were in grad school (or a long while, if we’re honest) but if we were going back, we would think about it like running a race. Here are our top tips for grad school success:
Prepare, Prepare, Prepare
Chances are you wouldn’t sign up for a half marathon without taking a few months to learn basic running technique or to figure out how running 13 miles would actually feel. That’s definitely also true of grad school. If you are studying the same thing you studied in undergrad, chances are you have a fairly good sense of the topics grad school will cover but even so, take some time to reach out to people who have gone to the same program and ask them what they would recommend you do before or during your program.
If you’re heading into a program that isn’t similar to what you did in undergrad, you’d probably also benefit from reading about other people’s experiences. There is an almost limitless reserve of literature on some popular programs – like business school or law school – that can be incredibly helpful as a starting point. You may not take all the advice that you get or implement all the strategies that you read about, but just having different frameworks for how to think about the process is itself going to be useful for you. Starting something new, especially if you’re the first of your friends or your family to do so, can feel daunting and overwhelming. Having that additional information can help calm “race day” nerves.
Pace Yourself
Since you are going in prepared, you are going to have the inclination to start at a potentially unsustainable pace. Instead, think about what a realistic, comfortable lifestyle would look like for the duration of your program. The last thing you would want on race day would be to get to mile 10 and be unable to keep running because you underestimated the effort it would take to finish. Even the shortest grad school program is around two years and, much more so than undergrad, you’ll have to find a way to fully integrate your program into your adult life.
Hopefully you’re not going to go two (or more) years without seeing friends or connecting with your classmates, so don’t start out your program with that idea in mind. It won’t be sustainable, and you’ll only come to resent the time and sacrifice. Worse still, you might start to oscillate between periods of intense work and intense rest because if you push yourself to the edge, you’re going to need to go “off pace” to get through the experience.
No one can give 100% of the effort 100% of the time. A better approach would be to take the time to figure out how much rest you need and how much work your program requires. A good, detailed schedule is going to be your friend. Take the time each week, month, and quarter to figure out what needs to get done and how you’ll do it. Check your schedule frequently and adapt as necessary.
Commit to the Process
This may sound counter to the idea that you need rest but it’s really a byproduct. Getting enough rest and being diligent about your time, will actually make committing to the process easier. When things get hard, it can be difficult to remember why you decided to run the race in the first place.
Try to remind yourself of what motivated you to sign up for this experience. Did you have a love of the subject matter that you can come back to when discouraged? Is grad school your ticket into a specific professional area of expertise? Whatever your reason, you’ll need to keep it in the back of your mind as a motivational tool. It’s easy to get distracted by the other aspects of your life. That’s especially true for longer programs because it can start to feel like grad school is just a small part of your life.
If you’re going to finish though, you’ll have to commit to the idea that the race is worthwhile and that you’re getting something real and important by doing it.
Listen to Your Body (and Mind)
We all have a sense of what our bodies need to get through any particular experience, so in addition to pacing yourself, listen to your body and what it tells you it needs. If that’s rest, make sure you are doing that. If it's a connection, seek out friends. Try to build a network of people who are pursuing higher education as well and can relate to your gripes but also of those who are far removed from your grad school experience so that being around them truly distracts you from all that it entails.
If you need additional help academically, just ask for it. It can sometimes feel like a failure to admit that you don’t understand something but there is truly no shame in reaching out for guidance. Your professors have office hours for a reason.
If you feel overwhelmed generally, reach out to your friends or a healthcare professional. Grad school can discombobulate the best of us and getting some perspective and space can sometimes make all the difference in the world.
Run Your Own Race
Looking around at all the other runners and how well they seem to be doing or how fast they seem to be going can also contribute to feeling overwhelmed by the task at hand. Run your own race. You’re with others in the process and you can’t ignore that completely but also you have your own goals and needs from the program and your best chance of achieving those goals and meeting those needs is to focus on your own individualized experience.
You’re running a different race from everyone else and that involves dealing with whatever challenges are present in your life at that time. Maybe you’re taking care of a family. Or have other interests or jobs outside of school. Those challenges don’t mean you can’t finish your program or do as well as others but they might mean that you have to dedicate time that you could be studying to other aspects of your life. Your situation is unique and that makes your experience unique.
Embrace that for what it is and try not to focus on other people or their races. That’s just another distraction that doesn’t help your performance.
Try to Enjoy the Race
Grad school is, for a lot of people, one of the most formative periods in their lives. You’ll hopefully meet lifelong friends and colleagues. It will likely be the starting point for your future career. Try as much as you can to enjoy it. It’s sometimes hard in the middle of a race to see that you’ll get to the end and that when you do, you’ll have wished that you had savored the process a bit more. Look around. The route is beautiful.
Our Wolf + Owl team came up with these tips after thinking a lot about our own grad school journey so we hope they will help you in making the most of your experience.
If you have already finished your post-secondary education and have tips or advice, we would love to hear from you. Share your knowledge in the comments!