When the mentee becomes the mentor

As a grad student, you may have the opportunity to mentor an undergraduate student, or even a beginning grad student. But how do you make the most of this opportunity?

As a mentor, you are in a position to provide intellectual, professional and social guidance to your mentee. If you are working with an undergraduate in a research setting, giving your mentee a full picture of your research project is a good place to start. This helps set an overarching goal and get the undergrad excited about your project. You should also be sure to set clear expectations and make the steps of the research process explicit to help your mentee stay on track.

Foster professional development opportunities for your mentee by encouraging them to speak at lab meetings or professional conferences. You may benefit from this in an unexpected way: by hearing a fresh perspective on your work.

As a graduate student, you also provide undergrads with valuable insights into what it’s like to be a graduate student. Be prepared to field a lot of questions about preparing for graduate school, picking a research topic, or applying for funding. Also, you will have the opportunity to model resiliency in responding to setbacks in the research process — or in finding funding, taking exams, practicums, and the like. It may not be glamorous, but it’s still a vital lesson.

Mentoring can be time-consuming, but the benefits are also far-reaching. In reflecting on their own experiences as mentors, PhD students have detailed how they strengthened their communication skills and even fought imposter syndrome by becoming a mentor.

If you are working on building your relationship with your own mentor, check out these UW Graduate School resources.

Graduate students, do you have experiences or questions about mentoring others that you want to share? Comment below, or email us!

Ask the Grad School Guru is an advice column for all y’all graduate and professional students. Real questions from real students, answered by real people. If the guru doesn’t know the answer, the guru will seek out experts all across campus to address the issue. (Please note: The guru is not a medical doctor, therapist, lawyer or academic advisor, and all advice offered here is for informational purposes only.) Submit a question for the column →

Slowing Down, Being Present

As the spring quarter begins, we know that many of you will be experiencing anxiety over fulfilling requirements for your very first —or final — year in your grad program, planning your career trajectory beyond the UW, or managing your time to balance work, family, and graduate school. As the weeks go by, the work will seem to just pile up. This is real.

The good thing is, you can approach being a graduate student from a totally different perspective — by being intentional and mindful. We invite you to take a deep breath (really, a full breath in and out), create some space for yourself to slow down, and check out some possible strategies for being mindful that you can consider incorporating into your schedule.

Resist busyness. There’s an unspoken culture in graduate school that perpetuates the idea that over-productivity is a good thing: that performing and talking about how busy we are is key to being successful in a graduate program. Stanford Career Coach Dr. Chris Golde offers a different perspective and states, “Graduate students report more than can be done.” She recommends slowing down “to make peace with [our] limitations,” and says “there will always be those around you — students and faculty — who accomplish far more than you do. Hold yourself to a standard of what is realistic for you.”

Set achievable goals. It can be tempting during this time of the year to be overly ambitious about your goals, and setting an unrealistic standard for yourself can actually lead to you not achieving what’s most important to you — whether you are in career planning mode, completing your capstone, thesis or dissertation, or working on or off campus. Again, we invite you to slow down. We know that when we were in graduate school, goal setting wasn’t something that we suddenly knew how to do. Take some time to map out and visualize your goals. And finally, we encourage you to reward yourself for each task you complete towards your end goals.

Be mindful. Mindfulness can simply be defined as taking time to observe your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations from moment to moment, without judgment. Why would this be beneficial to practice while you are in graduate school? Research has shown that over time, mindfulness can help us be more compassionate to ourselves and people in our communities, help us be less reactive and more calm in the face of conflict, and help us increase our focus to what truly matters in our lives.

We hope these strategies are helpful to you as you as you navigate the new quarter!

Your mental health and well-being matter to us,

Core Programs Team
#UWGradSuccess

Are you ready for an academic career?

We know from reviewing national data that most entering postdocs believe they want a career in academia. And yet, a few years later, this career path becomes much less desirable. What happens? After seeing up close what your faculty go through — grant seeking, publication struggles, promotion demands, and other daily elements of the academic enterprise — the academic path may no longer be so attractive (we understand!). We also know you hear plenty of stories about how competitive it is “out there.” These concerns are real. And, we know that all of you can be a successful academic, if that is the path you truly want to pursue. We have several programs that can help support you in making an informed decision, or in gaining the skills you need to be the strongest candidate for an academic career.

Assess Your Readiness: What do you need to be ready to go “on the market”? It depends. The team at University of California developed a simple tool to help you self-assess whether you have the elements that hiring committees are looking for, whether it is at an R1 institution, a primarily teaching-focused institution, or a position with a mix of research and teaching. The Academic Career Readiness Assessment is a free PDF that provides milestones to work toward.

Seek Diverse Role Models: Who is successful with diverse funding portfolios? Who is managing the kind of work-life balance you would need? Who is a great mentor and effective research group leader? Who believes in you? You need more examples of how to be a faculty member than just who you might be exposed to in your immediate research group. Talk to junior faculty in your field and ask how they have navigated their transition to independence.

Learn What You Need: One great place to learn more about what you might need to be competitive on the academic job market is the Future Faculty Fellows program, which is sponsored by the UW School of Medicine and is open to all UW postdocs. The 2018 two-day program will happen June 11–12. Need more teaching experience? Apply to be a fellow in the Science Teaching Experience for Postdocs (STEP) program next year (applications due September) or ask around where you might be a guest lecturer. You can also ask to shadow a faculty member you admire.

Ready to Go? Seek Internal Reviewers: Tailoring the cover letter is so important for each position, as is getting feedback on all elements of the faculty package. Unsure what to include? In addition to the resources provided by the Future Faculty Fellows program, check out the numerous guides for each element at the UW Career & Internship Center. Ask for a friendly but critical review from your mentoring team, as well as a handful of near-peers. The more eyes you get on your application, the more you can fine-tune it and make sure you stand out from the crowd.

As always, feel free to check in with us in the Office of Postdoc Affairs, or make an appointment with our faculty advisor. We are here to help you strategize and would welcome the opportunity to advise you on your next career steps.

Find tax help as a grad student

This Guru post has been updated from a previous inquiry. Happy filing!

Filing taxes seems more complicated than it should be, and there seems to be no help from the university, despite the fact that many graduate students have very similar tax situations. What’s the best way to file to maximize our return (where do we put student fees and union dues and all of the other things that we can claim to reduce our tax liability)? Are there good tax help resources available? —Anonymous

Why are taxes so complicated? Albert Einstein once said, “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.” Anyway, yes, the UW does provide tax help! Student Fiscal Services is holding student tax workshops specifically for graduate students Friday, March 23, 1:30—2:30 p.m. and Thursday, April 5, 1:30–2:30 p.m. Additional workshops are offered for U.S. Residents and Non-U.S. Residents. All workshops are held at UW Seattle, Odegaard 220.

Also, the Seattle Public Library offers one-on-one tax help at various branches. United Way offers free help at a few additional sites, including at the UW, where they’ve partnered with your peers in the MS Tax Program. No appointment necessary: drop by Mackenzie Hall Room 132 on Mondays and Wednesdays, 4—7 p.m., and Fridays noon–3 p.m. The Guru has used this service, and can attest that it’s very helpful. (You must have made less than $66,000 in 2017 to be eligible for their free help. Probably not a problem for grad students?) Good luck!

“Taxation with representation ain’t so hot either.” —Gerald Barzan, humorist

What to do if you experience sexual harassment or assault

This article was written in consultation with Valery Richardson, interim Title IX coordinator, Compliance Services.

We hope that you will never face sexual harassment or assault here on campus, but we understand the reality that you may. This week, the Guru will walk you through the steps you can take, and resources that are available to you at the UW, if you are a victim of sexual misconduct.

Sexual harassment — including sexual violence or sexual assault — is prohibited by Title IX. The best source for UW information can be found on two websites: the Sexual Assault Resources website and the Title IX website.

For email or phone support, SafeCampus is staffed 24–7 and is a good place to start if you have personally experienced harassment or assault or receive information that someone else experienced harassment or assault. SafeCampus can provide immediate safety planning, provide important information about your rights and resources, and connect you with a confidential advocate who can help you consider all of your options and how to make a plan for your situation.

For victims of sexual assault, SafeCampus loosely breaks down your options into steps — which you could choose to initiate in any order that makes sense to you.

Anyone who has experienced harassment, assault, or another form of sexual misconduct is encouraged to contact an advocate. Advocates will confidentially provide support, information and resources. An advocate will allow you to share your experience in as much or as little detail as you would like, discuss your options for medical and mental health care, and help you make a plan for your safety and for reducing the impact of this experience at the UW. Meeting with an advocate does not trigger an investigation by the UW or the police.

If you have been sexually assaulted, seeking medical care can help to treat or prevent illness and injury. It’s also important for preserving evidence. You may also seek a disability accommodation if you are experiencing the impacts of a medical condition.

You have the right to report sexual misconduct to the University, to the police, to both or not at all. If you choose to report an instance of sexual harassment, sexual assault or sexual violence to the UW, the University will conduct a prompt, fair and impartial investigation to determine whether a University policy or code — such as the Student Conduct Code or Executive Order No. 31 — has been violated.

If you choose to file a police report, you have the right to have a support person or advocate with you. You may choose to file a report without pursuing an investigation or prosecution. For more information about criminal and civil proceedings that can result from a sexual assault report, please see the Sexual Assault Resources website.

If a friend has experienced sexual misconduct, there are ways you can provide support. Remember to be a good listener, avoid passing judgment, and provide your friend with options and resources for healing, emotional processing, and for learning the steps to file a complaint.

If you wish to take action to reduce sexual violence on campus, you can learn about bystander awareness and join a group of Peer Health Educators through SafeCampus.

Strategies for Communicating with Faculty

For the past three years, Core Programs has hosted a communication skills workshop with the goal of sharing effective strategies international graduate students can use when communicating with faculty. Below are a just a few of these communication best practices. These tips are useful not only for international graduate students but also all graduate students across the University of Washington.

Be proactive. Faculty panelists at our workshops have stated that despite their busy schedules, they truly appreciate hearing from their graduate students who need guidance or mentoring. As such, it’s important to take initiative if you need to connect with a faculty member. Whether you need feedback on a project or paper, are in the process of searching for a thesis or dissertation advisor, or are seeking letters of recommendation for an internship or job, taking steps to communicate your needs to faculty in advance are steps towards success in graduate school.

Email etiquette. Just like with every mode of communication, there are general guidelines for writing that very first (or fortieth) email to faculty. Some of these tips may seem like common sense to some, but it’s always helpful to remember that all of us start at the beginning, no matter the task. First, have a clear subject line like “Request to Schedule Meeting to Discuss My Research Progress.” Include a professional greeting, and keep your message short and to the point. If you want to convey updates about your work, include an attachment (or ask what the faculty you are contacting prefers) rather than including long updates in the message body. Finally, include a closing statement that thanks the faculty for their time, followed by a closing phrase and your signature. Then proofread your email (with a peer or co-worker if needed) at least one time before sending.

When you are in doubt, clarify. Making a point to clarify what you are discussing in meetings with your faculty advisor is important to being successful in graduate school, whether or not you are an international graduate student. For example, you can use the repeat or rephrase strategy by saying, “I’d like to make sure that I heard you correctly…” If you’re still unclear, you could ask, “Do you mind clarifying what you mean by…?” Finally, it’s always a good idea to take meeting notes and email them to your advisor soon after the meeting, “This is what we discussed… Here is how we are moving forward…” Emailing your notes allows you and your professor to document your meetings and progress.

Letters of Recommendation. Asking for letters of recommendation from faculty can be intimidating, and it’s something that just takes practice. Whether you are seeking a letter of recommendation for an internship, job, or fellowship application, try out these tips. In the body of your email, include a very brief description of the job or fellowship you are applying for. Mention aspects of the job description or fellowship that are relevant to you. Include a bulleted list of the skills or experiences that make you a strong applicant. Make sure to include the deadline for the faculty’s letter of recommendation, the submission link or mailing address, and thank them for their time and efforts. Finally, attach the most recent, updated copy of your resume or CV, proofread your email, and send!

We hope you find these tips useful, and let us know what has worked for you!

Best Regards,

Core Programs Team
#UWGradSuccess

Many thanks to Ziyan Bai, graduate staff assistant for Core Programs and PhD Candidate in Education for doing an outstanding job of organizing these workshops. We also extend gratitude to the following faculty who have offered their time and insights as panelists and guests at these workshops over the past three years (in no particular order): Liz Sanders (Education), Sara Goering (Philosophy), Mari Ostendorf (Electrical Engineering), Wendy Thomas (Bioengineering), Xiasong Li (Chemistry), Kelly Edwards (Bioethics), Gino Aisenberg (Social Work), Gojko Lalic (Chemistry), and John Sahr (Electrical Engineering).

Postdocs, you are more skilled than you know!

Postdocs often reach out asking for advice regarding what to look for in a future career. You may have wondered yourself: Should I stay in academia or consider moving to an industry setting? I enjoy talking about science, should I get a job in policy, outreach, or K-12 education?

It is important during these times of uncertainty to look at all you have accomplished during your graduate and postdoc training (you should be celebrated!) and realize that worrying about your future career is completely normal. While it might not seem clear at the moment, you have developed a large number of skills that are valuable, no matter where you work next.

During the 2017 National Postdoc Association annual meeting, Peter Fiske, science communicator and CEO, shared a list of transferable skills graduate students and postdocs likely developed during their training — without even realizing it. A sampling of these skills are shared here:

Public speaking experience
Ability to support a position/viewpoint with argumentation and logic
Ability to conceive and design complex studies and projects
Ability to implement and manage all phases of complex research projects and to follow them through to completion
Ability to combine and integrate information from disparate sources
Ability to evaluate critically and to problem solve
Ability to do advocacy work
Ability to acknowledge many differing views of reality
Ability to suspend judgment and work with ambiguity
Ability to make the best use of informed hunches
And so many more!

These are all skills that are highly valued in careers both inside and outside of academia. You just need to step back and determine how they apply to your unique experiences.

Research Culture and Climate: It’s On Us

NPR Science Correspondent Richard Harris spent a week at UW in January 2018, and some of us (including postdoc leadership) were able to spend time with him. His recent book brings together much of the published literature and personal stories about the “reproducibility crisis ” in research, biosciences in particular.

We pressed him to identify possible solutions, and — as this is a multi-faceted issue — there are several. As postdocs, we are the current and next-gen researchers and is truly up to us to collectively shift research culture and practice.

We feature a few of the top issues individual researchers can take on now, and you may consider how they can play into your current or next phase of work:

Seek diverse opinions. When developing a research methodology, study design, statistical analyses, or interpreting results for publication, consult with several different people with diverse expertise, experience and backgrounds. Daily judgment calls are made in research, and as you develop your best approach and continue your own training, it can help to get a wide breadth of input.

Be a good scientific citizen. There is a broader movement toward open science with the goal of accelerating progress, minimizing waste and identifying errors to improve our collective learning and potential impact. Since negative results, null findings, or reproductions of experiments are not published in peer-review journals (though Richard Harris says journals are changing practice on this and we need to catch up), it can help to have back channels to share findings, data sets, and analytic strategy so your field can move forward and we can use less research dollars on ineffective studies. There are badges and ways of annotating your CV that can help demonstrate your citizenship.

Get beyond impact factors. The editors of top-tier publications have banded together to speak against the use of impact factors in hiring or promotion decisions, as they don’t mean what we have come to make them mean within academia. Some Schools and Colleges, Universities, and even the NIH, are evolving their criteria to look for a broader spectrum of metrics to demonstrate real impact of your work. Whether your results allowed a research group across the country to move ahead and make a breakthrough, or your publicly shared findings resulted in a policy change, there are other ways to track the reach of your work. When seeking future positions — inside or outside academia — ask about promotion criteria. What things are genuinely valued? If the department is still just counting papers or dollars, and you do not share those values, you may do well to keep looking.

UW graduate student and Lindau Nobel Laureate Fellow Blythe Adamson wrote a book review of Harris’ work and summarized his tips for young scientists:

Use valid ingredients.
Show your work.
No HARKing (Hypothesizing After the Results of the study are Known).
Don’t jump to conclusions (and discourage others from doing this with your results).
Be tough. People may try to discredit you if your hypothesis goes against their life’s work, or for any number of reasons.
Be confident in your science.
Recognize the tension between your own achievement and communal scientific advancement.

The more we talk together as a community, the more we learn, avoid reproducing outdated assumptions about what works, and begin shaping our collective futures. We encourage you to start a conversation in your research group or department, or come chat with us about any of these issues if you are looking for a way to get started! Office hours are always open.

When You’re Feeling Doubts About Graduate School

Feeling self-doubt about whether or not you belong in graduate school is actually a normal experience for many Master’s and doctoral Students. These doubts and anxieties can arise for any number of reasons. Below are just a few that we’ve heard about from your peers, and maybe they will resonate with you as well. Included are tips and strategies on how to move through these feelings.

Feeling like an imposter. Ever feel like you’re not intelligent enough to be in graduate school: like somehow your peers or department will “find out that you’re just not cut out” to be at the UW? Also known as imposter syndrome, these nagging, negative feelings and self-talk are actually quite common for most graduate students, and can make you question your talents, strengths, and resilience. Remember that you do belong in graduate school because you are passionate about your research project, enhancing your professional development, or wanting to make a positive contribution to your communities by earning a graduate degree.

Accessing resources. Your life is busy: balancing your degree requirements, a job or two, and family or community responsibilities is quite a task even when all those areas of your life are important to you. During the thick of it all, anxiety can creep up and make you feel like you aren’t capable of fulfilling your goals and commitments. It’s in those moments, that you can pause and ask yourself: Am I getting my needs met? Maybe there’s a campus or community resource you need to access to make sure you are getting what you need on an individual level, whether that be your campus recreation center, alone or quiet time with a good book or a walk, quality time with friends off campus, mental health support, or even a good meal.

Feeling exhausted. We know you’re all working hard as graduate students, and hard work can get the best of us. Given the rigors of graduate school, this can lead to feelings of exhaustion or possibly even burnout. Again, take pause. Can you ask for an extension on a project? Do you need to take an academic leave of absence? Even better, is there someone you can check in with to help you make a plan for getting much-needed rest, along with ways to move forward after your break? The length of your break is particular to you and your circumstances. Recognizing that you need some time away doesn’t mean you’re a failure, it means you are invested in your success as a whole person.

Remembering your purpose. It’s good to reflect back on why you decided to be a graduate student. Once you are in graduate school, your reasons may actually change over time, especially as you continue to explore how your degree may get you where you want to be in the future. Sometimes your interests and needs really do change, and the path you are on may no longer serve you. This is also a normal experience for many graduate students, and you can talk about it with people you trust on your mentoring team, with close friends, or you can schedule an appointment to talk with us at Core Programs. Talking it over with people you trust can help make sure that your judgment isn’t being clouded by any of the reasons we discussed above. And making an informed decision to take what you have learned thus far, and bringing it into your next phase of life, can be just what you need to do.

We hope you find these strategies useful and let us know what has worked for you!

Best Regards,

Core Programs Team
#UWGradSuccess

5 tips to boost your productivity

All of us struggle with motivation at different times, and winter can be particularly challenging. That said, it can also be a good time to hunker down and get some work done. Whether you plan to stay in academia or not, you will need written products coming out of your postdoc years to demonstrate what you have accomplished. Perhaps you are also finishing up publications from your doctoral research or laying the groundwork for a new research direction. Recently, the National Center for Faculty Diversity and Development (NCFDD)’s “Monday Motivator featured 5 tips for productivity.

Create a plan. How? Dr. Rockquemore writes: “It’s a simple process: 1) list your writing and wellness goals for the remainder of this calendar year, 2) map out all the steps that are needed to complete your goals, and 3) figure out when that work will get done.” While it may not be in your skill set yet, it is truly simple once you start. During your next work week, put “Planning” in your calendar for a 1-2 hour block and work through it. This is your work. This is a great time to revisit your Individualized Development Plan (IDP).
Write every day. We also know that your own writing is the task that will consistently get put aside for other demands (e.g. lab meeting, responding to your advisor, looking up one more article, sifting through Facebook, etc.). Research shows that if you dedicate just 30 minutes a day to writing (really writing), you will make consistent progress toward a writing goal and complete a product faster than if you hope for a half-day or protected Saturday that never does emerge.
Join a group of daily committed writers. You are not alone. We all have to write and produce. Just like a regular exercise or spiritual practice, if you are connected with others who are also committed, it helps you sustain the practice. You can meet face-to-face for your blocks of writing time or just stay connected online and check-in, which gets to the next point:
Commit to regular accountability. Tell someone your goals and plans, and schedule a check-in meeting (virtually or in-person) to see how it is going. In the short-term, this can be yourself. Apps such as Grid Diary can help you self-assess at the end of the day what 3 things you accomplished, and set personal goals for how tomorrow can be better.
Find dedicated mentors. All of this takes hard work, and sifting through the noise that comes at you on a daily basis. Find mentors—you should have a full team—who genuinely are invested in your success (see blog posts on mentoring). They can help hold you accountable, prioritize what needs to happen, strategize where products need to go, and troubleshoot when things fall through the cracks (which they will).

If you are interested in signing up for a weekly email with these Monday Motivator tips from NCFDD, or checking out other writing resources on their website, you can login with the UW membership.