As you navigate your way through graduate school, it can be helpful to hear from those who are a bit farther down the road.
Author: Karin Admiraal
Advice from Experienced Travelers: What to Expect on the Grad School Journey
In which current and former students in master’s and doctoral programs share their graduate school challenges and surprises. Photo by Tabea Schimpf on Unsplash Grad School Is a Journey In this space, I have often used the metaphor of graduate school as a journey. Having just shared George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” with…
Take Grad School to the Next Level with Success Coaching
Most grad students need help . . . of some kind In an earlier blog, we looked at research identifying four classes of graduate students in STEM fields. One way to think about this research in a more general way is that while everyone needs help, not everyone needs the same kind of help. This…
Why Do Graduate Students Drop Out?
Research into factors that may affect graduate school persistence. When I was doing some research on motivation for an earlier blog, I came across an article called “A Latent Class Analysis Approach to the Identification of Doctoral Students at Risk of Attrition.” It’s by a group of six researchers from Columbia, Stanford, and Penn State…
Quick Tips for Grad School: How to Craft a Backwards Plan
In the last post, I wrote about the what’s and why’s of planning backwards. The next logical question, of course is, “how?” This post will answer that question. Walter, of course, has his hat on backwards to illustrate the fact that this post is about backwards planning. Five Steps to Creating a Backwards Plan Step…
Backwards Planning: The Best Way to Prepare for Complex Projects
Insights from Amazon execs, maze experts, instructional designers, and psychological researchers all demonstrate that planning backwards is the best way to move forwards. Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash In a previous post, Five Reasons Why Graduate Students Struggle to Stay Motivated, reason #4 was “we aren’t sure how to move toward our goals.” I…
Quick Tips for Grad School: Online Storage and Organization
A little thought now will save you a lot of time later. Walter says: Create a file for each class in a cloud storage system like Google Drive. Information Storage Tips from a Cactus Need some help getting organized? Success coaching can bring structure, peace, and progress to your grad school journey. Click the button…
Relieve Graduate School Stress with Four Lessons from The Well-Ordered Mind’s New Mascot
A lot of silliness and a bit of botanical wisdom. The start of the academic year can be a stressful time for graduate students. New classes, new projects, new deadlines. So today, The Well-Ordered Blog is going to take a break from graduate school productivity tips to introduce our new mascot, Walter, the Well-Ordered Cactus….
How to Build an Effective Time Management System
Find what works for you, but consider these essential components of a good time management system. The internet is full of good advice about how to manage your time. In this post, I’m going to share the components of an effective system. I’ll also share how I apply them. Just remember, no system, however shiny,…
The Most Important Grad School Skill: Time Management
What Can You Learn from First-Year College Students? Several years ago, when I was working with mostly first-year college students, I held a reception with ulterior motives. I invited all the second-semester freshmen to hang out and eat cake in exchange for their insight into what they had learned in their first semester of college….
