For the Bothell Crowd

A round-up of Bothell-based discounts for graduate students.

Managing Conflict: Strategies for Approaching Difficult Conversations

At an event in April 2016, sponsored by Hutch United and the Association for Women in Science, Emma Williams, Associate Ombud at UW, shared effective strategies for managing conflict.

First, we know that being a postdoc is highly stressful. You have many deadlines, demands, funding uncertainties and questions about your future. Research shows that people who make decisions from a stressed mental state tend to have a narrower perspective about their options. On the other hand, approaching a problem from a positive mindset – one of gratitude, generosity, and grace – can improve creative problem-solving and open up previously unseen options. In light of this, we offer a few tips the next time you experience even a minor conflict:

Take a deep breath and a break. While it is important to address conflicts soon, before they fester, it is also critical to calm down before responding. Taking a little time, even 24 hours, will often give you perspective and allow you to explore options for responding.
Prepare, prepare, prepare. Ask yourself: what would you like to see happen? And, how can you make that most likely?
Consider the ‘who, what, when, where, and why’.
- Who: Is there someone who can help you have a better discussion? Bringing in another person – perhaps from your research group or from your mentoring team – can both offer support or another perspective on the conversation.
- What: What should this conversation be about? If it is a seemingly small thing – or series of small things – in the research group, what does this pattern of behavior really signal to you? What’s really the overall concern?
- When/where: When and where are the best place to have a productive conversation? Find a neutral territory and a time when you can both focus.
- Why: What are your goals for the conversation? What are the results or outcomes you want to see?
Practice. Ask a peer or another trusted colleague to have a mock discussion with you. Practice the tough questions or responding to difficult scenarios, and practice remaining calm, respectful, and clear about your goals.
Step away when you need to. If the conversation does go sideways, take a break. Acknowledge the conversation isn’t productive now and you’ll come back to it. You can name a time/day when you want to pick it up again so it doesn’t linger further. You can also send an email follow up to clarify your goals for the conversation, and be descriptive about what is making it difficult to have this conversation (e.g. “the conversation broke down when…”), and then ask for what you need (e.g. “it would help me if…”).

While you are in it, here are a few additional strategies that can help the conversation go well.

Save your reactions. Try not to respond in the moment from an emotional place. Take time to digest what they are saying, and stick to your plan.
Consider their perspective. Ask curious questions rather than defending, such as: “Can you tell me more about that?” You may get more data, more insight into their ultimate goals. Perhaps you can also find some alignment with your own goals.
Educate, don’t escalate. It can help to be descriptive about the impact of their behavior on you or on the research group. Get them to see what is going on, and guide them to come to their own conclusions about what might need to happen.

If you need help thinking through a response to a difficult situation, you can also make an appointment with the Ombud Office to help you clarify your goals and work through a productive approach. You can reach the Ombud Office at 206.543.6028 or ombuds@uw.edu.

Originally posted on May 5, 2016.

School of Music Performances

The UW School of Music offers discounted student tickets to almost all performances, and many performances and events are completely FREE.

To Do: Get a New To Do Manager

What’s the best to-do app/manager for grad students? —Lists Aren’t Cutting It

Well, to start, some of the better-known ones are Any.do, Doit.im, Remember the Milk, Todoist, Toodledo and Wunderlist. Keep, Trello and Workflowy are also popular, though they’re not exclusively to-do managers. And some people swear by a text file or just paper. But the best recommendations would probably come from fellow grad students! If you have a suggestion, please leave it in the comments!

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 →

Waterfront Activities Center

This is boat weather! UW students can rent kayaks and canoes from the Waterfront Activities Center for much cheaper than general public rates.

By Veterans, For Veterans

Graduate student and veteran Lindsay Zike wanted to help others make the transition from soldier to student. The Office of Student Veteran Life, recently established with her help, is doing just that.

Passive Wifi

Grist.org recognizes that graduate students are “behind almost all scientific and technological advances.” In this case, Vamsi Talla and Bryce Kellogg in particular.

Crow About It

Graduate students Loma Pendergraft and Kaeli Swift‘s research on crows with John Marzluff is the feature story in Audubon.

Crushed

How do you cope with a breakup of a long term relationship while job searching, moving and taking care of your family? It seems impossible. I feel crushed. I’ve used up my free counseling services due to a family crises earlier in my graduate experience. I don’t know what to do or where to go. My whole world is altered right before I was supposed to go out into the world determined for new experiences and greatness. I thought that I would have them to share that with me. But now it’s over. I’m lost. —I once was a bot

My heart goes out to you. The only responsible thing I can do is refer you to professional counseling. I do have a kernel of good news for you, though. You are still eligible for free counseling through the UW Counseling Center. There seems to be a lot of misinformation out there about counseling sessions for students. A representative from the Counseling Center confirmed that there used to be a cap on sessions in the past, but that is no longer the case. So you can absolutely go back and receive help for your current situation. Best best best of luck to you!

Gratuitous to Grade Grammar?

I’m a TA for a graduate-level course, and many of the students are not native English speakers. I am grading assignments with significant grammatical errors: incorrect tenses, wrong plurals, missing articles, etc. I’m struggling with the tension between not unfairly penalizing students, since English isn’t their first language, but also holding them to a high standard for academic writing, given that they are getting a graduate degree. How have other TAs or instructors handled this? —Grammar Nerd

(This week’s answer is courtesy of Katie Malcolm, Instructional Consultant, Center for Teaching and Learning.)

Thank you for asking—this is a question we hear often in the Center for Teaching and Learning. Although we recommend that TAs check with their supervisors to see if their departments have specific policies about this, the TAs we have worked with over the years and our own teaching experiences have given us some helpful perspectives. When thinking about how to fairly assess my own international and multilingual students’ writing, I ask myself two questions: 1) What are my goals for the assignment? What do I need to prioritize? and 2) How can I communicate these goals to my students in ways that will help them succeed?

1. First, I think about what is important to prioritize for my students in each assignment, given my realistic learning outcomes for a 10-week course. What is the primary goal I want students to achieve through each writing assignment?

In my own assignments, my first priority is for students to develop and sustain a logical argument in conversation with relevant research. If students’ errors leave me unable to understand their argument, I can’t assess it meaningfully, and—whether English is their first, second, or fifth language—I will ask them to edit and revise the assignment in order to receive credit.

Because my primary goal is not for students to write as though English were their first language, if incorrect verb tenses or missing articles do not detract from my ability to understand a student’s point, I tend to overlook or “read through” them, or point out a couple of occurrences in the margins and then make a note of these patterns in my end comments. (Showing students the patterns of their errors helps them learn how to avoid these kinds of errors in the future). Just as students need time and practice to develop fluency in their pronunciation and speaking, they also need time to develop fluency in academic, discipline-specific English writing.

2. Once I have articulated my expectations for students’ writing, I clearly communicate these expectations to students in several ways:

At the same time that I introduce an assignment, I share the assignment grading criteria, usually in the form of a rubric. When writing style is an important aspect of the assignment (as it often is), I make sure that it is part of the grading criteria and weighted appropriately.

I assign multiple drafts so that students know that I do not want them to start a paper the night before it’s due (often a major culprit of unedited papers). I’ll ask students to bring an early draft to class for peer review, or to bring a draft to my office hours, and/or to visit the Odegaard Writing and Resource Center (OWRC) to get feedback on their writing early in the process.
I share writing resources with my students, including information about OWRC, which has drop-in hours for graduate student writers in the Allen Library. There are also a number of great online resources on proofreading that may be helpful to students, such as the Purdue OWL’s “Finding common errors” page and their pages dedicated to multilingual writers. UNC also has some helpful editing resources.

Again, thanks for asking this great question — if you would like to talk more about this or other aspects of your teaching, please don’t hesitate to contact us at thectl@uw.edu.