The Good Kind of Audit

There is no supervision in the practicum setting of the students in the [redacted] program. Every week, the students have to sign a form to turn into the board, although they did not receive the supervision they have signed off for. Questions are not being answered when they voice their concerns about this. Some people feel this program should be audited because the lack of supervision is only one concern of this program. —Anonymous

I’m so sorry to hear you’re having to deal with this in your program. While students cannot directly request an audit, you should know that the Graduate School conducts Academic Program Reviews for all departments on a rotating schedule. Without calling out your specific department, it looks like this is your year! Program reviews provide several opportunities for student feedback, including speaking to the review committee during the site visit and also sending written feedback.

Ask the Grad School Guide is an advice column for all y’all graduate and professional students. Real questions from real students, answered by real people. If the guide doesn’t know the answer, the guide will seek out experts all across campus to address the issue. (Please note: The guide 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 →

Online Courses

The last thing you want to do is take more classes, but maybe there’s a gap in your knowledge or skill base you want to fill without paying more tuition. The UW offers free online courses, based on popular classes offered by UW degree and certificate programs.

Write Well

I am coming back to the regular stream of school after 35 years. I would like to improve my writing skill to the level of my cohorts. —Anonymous

Congratulations! And welcome back to school. Students returning to school after a significant amount of time have unique challenges. The most relevant resource for you would be the Odegaard Writing and Research Center. In Odegaard Library, they offer one-to-one tutoring sessions on any piece of writing.

You can make an appointment or drop in. See their website for details and hours. In Allen Library, they also offer Drop-in Consultations for Graduate Students. Sessions are exclusively drop-in and are specifically targeted for graduate students working on long-term projects. See details and hours. They also offer a variety of other programs that might suit your needs. There are also writing centers across campuses and many departments host their own. Here’s a list of resources on the Seattle campus. Bothell has a Writing and Communication Center and Tacoma’s Teaching and Learning Center offers writing consultations. Good luck! Ask the Grad School Guide is an advice column for all y’all graduate and professional students.

Real questions from real students, answered by real people. If the guide doesn’t know the answer, the guide will seek out experts all across campus to address the issue. (Please note: The guide 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 →

Moving Past Barriers to Writing

Many of you are thinking about research questions, arguments, and citations for your final seminar papers. Some of you are close to beginning work on your thesis or dissertation. This may also be the first time you are engaging with graduate-level writing, if you are an incoming or first-generation graduate student. Fortunately, there are a number of campus-based and online resources that offer tips and tools to help you progress and complete these writing projects.

For example, the following insights were gathered from a National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD) workshop held at the Seattle campus recently. Facilitator Chadwick Allen emphasized that you must first recognize the kinds of barrier(s) you are experiencing before knowing how to address them:

Technical. Technical barriers–like constant e-mail and social media checking, watching Netflix during your designated writing time, or doing work at a noisy café–are activities you can manage or learn to avoid all together in order to get research and writing done. Close your e-mail program or internet browser. Set up an electronic block to the internet on a timer. Find a quiet place to work. Most importantly, set aside small chunks of time (30 minute writing blocks) to help you move a project forward at a quicker pace. The satisfaction of making progress will propel and motivate you. When you block time in your schedule to do your writing, it is important to honor that commitment to yourself, just like you’d honor an appointment with your faculty advisor or dissertation chair.

External. These are life events that are completely beyond your control such as experiencing illness, difficulty in finding childcare if you are a parent, or coping with the loss of a loved one. In these circumstances, reach out to your professor or advisor and let them know what’s going on (only share what feels comfortable to you). You can often negotiate for a revised timeline or deadline if needed. If you can be up front about your challenges, faculty are willing to work with you as you cope with these stressors and changes. Sport ID has been designed to serve all sports and all centres. It’s quick to set up, and easy to implement buy fake id The easy way to track, chronicle, and relive every game you attend.

Psychological. Sometimes feelings related to imposter syndrome or perfectionism prevent us from doing our best work. Know that you are not alone in this, and there are tips for moving through feelings of inadequacy that can be found here or here. Try this out: During your 30-minute blocks, allow yourself to write in a truly unorganized manner. Don’t worry about grammar or sentence structure, just let your thoughts flow. The goal is to get words out on the screen or on paper. More often than not, you’ll have several ideas with which you can work with and build from. You may also find yourself stuck in doing online literature searches because you feel you don’t know enough about your topic. Bets are you do know plenty and have enough literature to at least begin organizing ideas for your paper. Once you’ve drafted an outline, you’ll start seeing gaps that need to be filled. Revisit doing the literature search after you’ve identified those gaps.

Additional Writing Tips and Resources

Schedule a consultation with a UW writing tutor: Bothell, Tacoma, Seattle
Why write alone, when you can work with peers for extra support and hold each other accountable? Check out this Writing Group Starter Kit from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Writing tips and guides from the Odegaard Writing & Research Center (UW Seattle)
10 Top Writing Tips and the Psychology Behind Them
If you want to get signed up for “Monday Motivator” messages to promote your productivity and writing, and to get invited to future community webinar events, students, postdocs, and faculty can sign up with the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity of which the University of Washington has an institutional membership.

Building Your Roadmap Through Graduate School

The Graduate Student Equity & Excellence (GSEE) program invited Core Programs to facilitate a Power Hour event called Building Your Roadmap Through Graduate School. We knew the students were the ones who really had the insight here, and we worked with several outstanding GSEE graduate students including Priya Patel, Osa Igbinosun, Greg Diggs and Juan Gallegos, to plan and facilitate the discussion. So many great insights were shared during the panel and small group discussions that we wanted to share out some of the insights with our broader UW grad student community.

Here are just a few:

Define success on your terms. It may not feel like it at times, but you can influence your pathway through graduate school. Periodically check in with yourself by asking the following questions: First, how are your research interests, courses, labs, or professional work meaningful to you? We know you won’t like every course, theory, lab work, or practicum—but overall, how is being in your grad program meeting your needs? Second—and this is related to the first point—are you setting personal, academic and career goals that are realistic and achievable? An individual development plan can help you keep track of your goals. Finally, how can you utilize feedback from faculty, peers and professional colleagues to enhance or strengthen your knowledge and skills? When people in your field give you feedback with constructive value, take it as a compliment that they have faith in you to grow in your work and career.

Be proactive and reach out for support. Taking the initiative to build relationships in graduate school is crucial to your success. Yes people are busy in and outside of academia, but more often than not they will make time to connect with you if you are consistent, proactive and prepared to meet with them. Which people do you need to connect with to get the support you need to thrive in grad school? Who do you need to network with outside campus to achieve your career goals, and how will you find them? What meeting agenda items and questions do you need to have ready to schedule that meeting via e-mail or phone? For example, the UW College of Education offers an excellent resource (revise and adapt as needed) that will help you prepare for your faculty advisor meetings.

Remain open to possibilities. Many of you already have a specific research and career focus upon starting graduate school at the UW. This is excellent, because you have a vision of what you want to achieve for yourself. At the same time, any of the following scenarios can happen: you read a text that a sparks a different trajectory for your thesis or dissertation, a conversation with someone inside or outside of the university inspires you to think about diverse career paths, or maybe after a few meetings with your advisor you realize you’re not a match. Any or all of these can be anxiety provoking (totally normal, btw) and be viewed as opportunities for you to think expansively about your educational, professional and interpersonal goals. What lessons can you learn from those situations about your interests, strengths and passions? Are you allowing yourself to be curious to explore different goals? What steps would you need to take to accomplish those goals? Remaining open to possibilities can help you see goal setting as a process rather than an end result.

Many thanks to Priya, Osa, Greg and Juan for their permission to adapt these insights for the Core Programs newsletter and for collaborating with us for the Power Hour event, held on October 20, 2015. Thanks also goes out to GSEE staff Vanessa Alvarez and Cynthia Morales for the initial ask to collaborate!

Good Science for Social Good

Data Science for Social Good paired data scientists with 16 UW graduate and undergraduate students to work on projects to reduce homelessness, foster community well-being and map better sidewalk routes for people with mobility challenges.

Cultivating Effective Writing Practices

We’re nearly halfway through the quarter, and we know you are all doing your best to manage and blend academic, interpersonal, and work responsibilities. We also know it can be difficult to find time for that seminar or research paper, or perhaps your capstone or thesis project. Below are some tips to get you on your way to writing. Incorporating these strategies into a regular routine takes time and practice—so be patient, be gentle with yourself, and most importantly, happy writing!

Free write. For those of us who procrastinate, most of the time it’s because we have very high standards for ourselves. We inevitably end up writing papers at the last minute. One way to work through this anxiety is to free write. Journal or type out all of your ideas and don’t worry about grammar or cohesion. Your ultimate goal is to get words on a page. Try this for 15 minutes and use a timer. More often than not, you’ll glean ideas, arguments, or even a thesis statement.

Making time & making space. What time of the day are you most productive? Set aside this time to write. Do you enjoy quiet, solitary spaces or bustling cafes? Being in the right environment is important to feeling comfortable and motivated. It’s all about recognizing both when you do your best work, and where you do your best work.

Set realistic goals. It is rare to get a full day to work on writing, and most experts suggest that these large blocks of time are not actually your most generative. Instead, break up the process into manageable pieces. You may want to carve out 15 minutes each day to write and eventually work your way up to 1–2 hour blocks. Setting up a more realistic writing schedule will allow you to feel successful along the way. By doing a little each day, you will find that the project is always percolating in your mind. You may also have some breakthroughs when you least expect it. Plus, you get to celebrate your progress along the way!

Join a writing group. Connect and coordinate a writing group with peers from your cohort, or with familiar colleagues from other graduate programs. You’ll find that even just sitting next to one another at a table can help you feel less isolated. Even if you are working on very different projects, you can hold each other accountable and cheer each other on.

Avoid distractions. This is a difficult one. We live in an age where multi-tasking is the norm, yet this can often be a distraction to writing. Switch off wifi access on your laptop and phones. Once you set aside time to write, commit to it without accessing social media or your favorite websites. Avoid searching for more references (often a great time sink). Many of you are parents, so we understand that you need your mobile phone nearby to connect with partners, caretakers, or your children.

Get support. The Odegaard Writing and Research Center (OWRC) recommends getting the support you need to complete your work. This includes scheduling a meeting with your professor to go over a draft or asking a peer who is a strong writer to help revise your work. You can also schedule tutoring appointments at your campus writing center, because they assist students at all degree levels. If your department has a writing center, we encourage you to seek out assistance and tutoring from those resources as well.

Répondez S’il Vous Plaît

Sometimes it’s really hard to get responses from professors and other professionals other than your adviser about either information you need or data they said they would provide to you. How do you politely keep contacting/bugging others for information/data, and how do you do so in a way that actually gets results? —Anonymous

This is a perennial issue. Sometimes you do really need to be persistent. It can be tricky to walk the fine line between diligence and pestering. Here’s one suggestion: don’t just ask for the information or data, offer something in return. Perhaps what you offer is to send the results of your study or your paper to the professor; or perhaps you offer to present a mini-lecture in one of their classes on your research. Also, be sure to ask if/how the professor would like to be acknowledged. It is also important to say something about a timeline: “I am hoping to incorporate the data you have offered to share for my project within the next two weeks. Does that time frame work for you?”

// Thank you to Rebecca Aanerud, Associate Dean of the Graduate School and Senior Lecturer and Associate Dean of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, this week’s guest guide! //