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Advice Topic: Writing

Graduating soon, and what next?

“I am a fifth-year doctoral student and will be graduating soon. I’m at the point in my graduate education where I am thinking about possible careers. What are some simple steps I can take to start my career planning?” –Anonymous

Lucky you, grad student, you get two answers to your question! One is from Catherine Basl, career counselor with Career & Internship Services. Catherine manages the center’s programming for graduate students. Another is from the Core Programs team, who support personal and professional development of grad students at the UW. You know what they say, two heads are better than one!

Catherine Basl, career counselor, Career & Internship Services:

Leverage your research skills for career planning! Aim for a mix of independent reading about options and connecting with professionals in coffee chats or at events.

A few ideas for getting started:

  • Talk to one alum of your graduate program who works outside of academia in an area of possible interest. Graduate Program Advisers could be a good resource for finding alumni.
  • Attend an event on campus (Core Programs and the Career & Internship Center host many) that is focused on employer connections or exploring options.
  • Reflect on your time here at UW. Consider all of the roles you have held as a graduate student (TA, research assistant, mentor, tutor, lab manager, writer, coder, etc.). Looking at each role, what were the tasks and activities you enjoyed most? Least? See if patterns emerge across roles. For an example of this activity, see pages 8-10 in the Career Guide.
  • Paula Di Rita Wishart’s article on Career Callings also provides some great activities for reflecting on your graduate school experience and next steps.
  • LinkedIn’s Alumni tool shows you where actual UW alumni work and you can sort by location, employer, and field of study to see possible career paths.

Some notes:

  • Looking at job postings when you aren’t sure what you want to do can be overwhelming. Job boards become much more navigable when you have established criteria for what you want in a position. The same goes for large career fairs.
  • Gather multiple data points. That means talking to more than one person, reading about career options on more than one website, and testing out the information you hear.
  • Realize career planning is like all research projects—sometimes things fall into place quickly and sometimes you encounter roadblocks along the way. If you feel stuck or would like someone to brainstorm with, consider booking an appointment with a career counselor and checking in with mentors.

A few more resources for exploring:

Core Programs Team:

Dear UW Grad Student,

Thank you for reaching out! This is a great question, and one we hear frequently from graduate students who are further along in their degree programs and thinking through different career paths. Whether you are thinking about working in industry, non-profits, government, or academia, there are several resources that can help you do intentional career planning (many of which we’ve learned through collaborations with partners at the Career & Internship Center).

First step: do some self-assessment work. Where are you with your skills, strengths, interests, passions? Then, use a planning tool like an Individual Development Plan (link) to start to map out possible goals and steps you can take toward them in the next few months. You can also utilize this helpful career planning guide from the Career & Internship Center that provides several clear, proactive steps you can take towards finding that job you’re passionate about.

To explore and open your possibilities, do LinkedIn searches for professionals with jobs you’re interested in learning more about and set up informational interviews to hear more about their unique career trajectories.

Explore different career options within academia and/or job sectors outside of academia with the amazing resources on the Career Center website.

We totally get that you are 100% focused on your dissertation work and graduation – it’s a lot! And, we know that setting aside 1-2 hours per week (starting right now) to explore, research, draft, attend something that helps you refine your career search will really help you identify career options and opportunities for your next steps. It’s worth it – give it a try!

Sincerely,

Core Programs Team
#UWGradSuccess
 

Being Intentional and Productive This Summer

Summer is the perfect time to make room for activities and experiences that will help you be—and feel—prepared for the coming academic year! The pace can feel slower during this time of the year, and there’s a little more wiggle room to be intentional about visualizing and achieving your intellectual, professional, and interpersonal goals. Maybe you’re starting from scratch (or already have some initial goals) and just need a plan of action. Maybe you need some structured time and support to work on a writing project? Or maybe you’re interested in career development activities?

No matter where you’re at, below are some initial strategies that can help you create intentional space for productivity this summer!

Create a plan to meet your goals

As graduate students—and as whole people with complex lives—we know that completing your graduate degree is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to meeting your goals. And we know it takes time to reflect on the skills you already possess—and the academic, professional, and interpersonal competencies you’d like to develop in the future.  Creating an Individual Development Plan (IDP) can help you map out realistic, achievable goals for your time in graduate school and beyond. Use your IDP as a roadmap for meeting with mentors and advisors. What’s great about an IDP is that you can adapt and revise as you see fit!

Make progress on your writing

Whether you are working on a thesis, dissertation, or an article for publication, set achievable and concrete writing goals for yourself this summer. In past Core Programs newsletters, we encouraged you to start out by setting aside 15-minute blocks of time to write each day. Then try working your way up to 30-minute chunks of time. You’ll eventually see that you’re making progress. Reach out to peers (they can be peers outside of your graduate program too) to schedule skype and/or in-person writing support group meetings. You can receive and share constructive feedback on writing projects and hold each other accountable to getting tasks done. Finally, here are great tips on how to move past feeling stuck in a writing rut from Dr. Kerry Anne Rockquemore, President of the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity.

Get involved in professional development activities

There are many ways to brush up on your professional development this summer.

  1. Update your CV or resume with skills and professional experiences you have gained from 2016–2017.
  2. Identify conferences you’d like to present your work at for the coming year and mark those proposal and registration deadlines on your calendar.
  3. Set up informational interviews to network with professionals currently working in fields or companies you’re interested in working for. 4) Volunteer in your local community to gain skills and to give back.
  4. Contact your UW career center (Bothell career center, Tacoma career center, Seattle career center) for guidance with your internship or job search.
  5. Check out just a few of our Core Programs newsletter links below on professional development:

Research funding opportunities

Whether you are seeking travel funds to participate in an academic or professional conference or grants to fund your research, start by learning about the breadth of possible funding opportunities available to you. Because application deadlines and eligibility requirements vary widely—and can sneak up on you when you’re busy during the academic year—it’s always a good idea to plan in advance.

Funding Information Resources

We hope you find these strategies useful, and please let us know of tips that worked for you!

Writing in Graduate School: Making Sense of Feedback

Core Programs welcomes guest writers to our newsletters – UW students, staff, and faculty.  Since it is the time of year where many of you are working hard on your writing, we invited Dr. Karen Rosenberg, UW alum and director of the UW Bothell Writing and Communication Center, to share some guidance with you.  

Getting feedback on our writing is a key part of graduate school (and, for many of us, life well beyond).  Sometimes that feedback is exactly what we need: it stretches our thinking; it confirms that the path we’re bushwhacking is gorgeous and useful; and it sharpens our tools as we continue the journey.  When we get this feedback, we know how to course correct and how to forge our way ahead.  Thank your professors and study what works about their feedback – hopefully we can use our intellect and spirit to support others down the line.

Sometimes the feedback on our writing isn’t great, but it isn’t terrible either.  It doesn’t rock our world with its insights, but we’ve been muddling along all right for a while now and the feedback serves as a green light to keep going.

But sometimes–whether intentional or not–the feedback hurts. It takes the wind out of our sails. It makes us doubt ourselves.  In one form or another, this has happened to many of us who have gone through graduate school (that is, jumped through all of the hoops we have jumped through to be in our current predicament of getting painful feedback on our writing).  So we might as well talk about it.

First, remember that we are getting feedback on one piece of writing, not on us as writers (and certainly not as whole, beautiful, complex people).  This sounds so utterly obvious, yet it bears a reminder every now and again.  We are not our writing.

Second, in the UW Bothell Writing and Communication Center where I work, we repeat the mantra: writing is never done, it’s just due.  So once we have tended to the sting of the fraught feedback, we can see if we can scavenge any useful bits from it, bits that enable us to revise our work…literally to see it again.

Before we get there, it helps to tend to the sting.  I don’t know what it feels like for you (and often I haven’t known what is has felt like for me, because when I was in graduate school I sought to distance myself from my feelings in a misguided effort to become more ‘academic’).  But during my 8 years directing the Writing and Communication Center, I’ve spent time thinking about what helps and hurts in responding to others’ writing.  Here are some tips to tend to the sting and then use the feedback to move forward:

  1. Read all of the feedback.
  2. Identify what you’re feeling. Shame? Anger? Despair? Nothing?  You don’t have to do anything with these feelings except acknowledge them and, if you can, sit with them.  Over time, this can help us receive the feedback in a less personal way.
  3. Step away for a while. Get some distance.
  4. Find your people. Seek out friends, family, and colleagues who can help you get in touch with your voice, your gifts, and your most vital reasons for being in grad school.
  5. Use your resources.  Schedule a writing tutor appointment at the Bothell, Tacoma, or Seattle campus.  And check out these online writing resources curated by the UWB Writing and Communication Center, UWT Teaching and Learning Center, and UWS Odegaard Writing and Research Center.
  6. Return to the feedback.  What’s useful about it?  What productive questions does it open up? Make a list of questions to discuss with your professor.
  7. Reject feedback that questions your right to be in academia.  For example, Latinx student Tiffany Martinez writes about a professor who circled the word “hence” on her paper with the comment “this is not your word.”  She rejects the feedback, describes the sting, and doesn’t let it derail her from academic path.
  8. Talk to your professor and make sure you have a clear sense of your next steps – ones that feels authentic to your voice and your goals for being in graduate school.


Many thanks and gratitude to Dr. Karen Rosenberg for writing this edition of the Core Programs graduate student newsletter. 

Making the Most of Seasonal Transitions

Greetings! How has your summer been? If it’s been like ours, there’s been some hard work, some good play, and continual reminders of why we do student affairs work in the Graduate School. Every time we have the privilege of talking with graduate students, we are in awe of your tenacity and creativity.

Some of you may be winding up summer quarter, some may be deep in research mode, others may just be getting started.  We at Core Programs just wanted to check-in and offer a few thoughts for making the remaining month before fall quarter work for you. What do you need most right now?  Is it a real break? Some play time? Some focused effort towards work? Some reflection about what’s ahead for the year?  Although the fall quarter is a little more than a month away, we thought we’d share some helpful tips to help you feel more prepared and ready to hit the ground running.

Set goals.  Make a list of goals that will address your interpersonal, wellness, intellectual, and professional needs.  Break your goals down into manageable tasks.  Deadlines can be self-imposed, but realistic.  Deadlines can also be external depending on whether you are applying for research funding, preparing for your qualifying exams, applying for a job, or ensuring that you block out time for self-care and relaxation.  Remain open to your goals and deadlines shifting, depending on your circumstances.  An individual development plan (IDP) can help you think through, and map out, your goals.

Write.  Maybe you’d like to start writing your thesis, plan to work on another dissertation chapter, or interested in revising that seminar paper so it’s publishable.  Get in the habit of doing structured, timed writing.  Set a goal to write for 30 minutes a day, or every other day, using a timer.  Choose a work space that will enhance your productivity.  For some, it’s the quiet of the library.  For others, it’s a bustling café.  Turn off your web browser and phone (unless you need your phone because of family or work-related responsibilities).  Also, it’s helpful to reach out to peers and have a writing partner or two.  Rely on one another to keep each other accountable to your work.  Here are more general writing resources.

Grow your networks.  Get an early start on your career development and network with professionals in academic, non-profit, private, or governmental sectors.  Your chances of finding, or getting, the job you want increase when you develop and sustain connections with industry professionals.  One strategy is to join LinkedIn (check out this tutorial, if you haven’t joined).  Use its search engine to look up individuals by job title or industry.  Peruse profiles to get a sense of how individuals describe their work, tasks and responsibilities, previous work experience, and the verbiage of their field.  Message individuals whose careers, companies, or industries pique your interest and set up an informational interview.

Find some space to release, reflect, or rejuvenate. While summer is busy for many of us, it also does offer more spaciousness as email inboxes are lighter and the sun is shining high.  Take some time for yourself – alone or with friends – to do something that is solely for you. Set yourself up for fall quarter by “filling your tank” with energy you can draw on as the months ahead get ever more full.  Perhaps start some refreshing habits that could keep you going into the fall.

We hope you find these tips useful as you prepare for the coming year.  As we get closer to the start of the fall quarter, we’ll be announcing an assortment of tri-campus welcome events, career-related programming, and more!  So stay tuned to this newsletter.

And let us know what you are up to!  #UWGradSuccess on Twitter or Instagram, or check out our Core Programs Facebook page.

Best,

Kelly, Jaye, Ziyan
Core Programs Team
UW Graduate School

Writing Productivity: Tips for Making the Most of Your Summer

From everything we read about writing productivity, protecting a 30-minute writing practice – daily – is what helps build momentum and make progress.  It can also help to remember why you are writing and publishing – there can be a variety of reasons.  What’s yours? My faculty advisor had encouraged me to think about contributing to the peer reviewed literature as joining a conversation. Thinking about writing as participating in key gatherings in the field helped motivate me, more so than simply thinking, “I have to publish so I get a job or get promoted,” though of course that is real too!  Think for yourself: What impact do you want for your work? What goal do you want to reach?

Here’s a blog post that can give you some tips for getting started with that writing practice and making the most of the next 6-8 weeks of summer.  It starts with “forgive yourself” for what you have or haven’t yet been able to do with your summer weeks until now.

The Academic Coaching and Writing site has summarized author Robert Boice’s work on Procrastination and Blocking. Boice is a psychologist and has studied junior faculty on their productivity (or lack thereof) and has developed a framework for the kinds of barriers you can encounter (or create for yourself) and strategies for overcoming them.  His work is aimed at junior faculty – so you know these challenges of getting major writing projects done in the midst of a busy life don’t magically disappear once you get that first faculty position.  It is lifelong learning – I know I love finding these resources for you because I continue to need them and rely on them myself.

Any of this sounds familiar? Boice describes procrastination as “opting for short-term relief through acts that are easy and immediately rewarding, while generally avoiding the thought (and the anxiety) of doing more difficult, delayable, important things” (p. xix). Blocking is “getting stuck at a difficult transition point . . . usually because of paralyzing anxiety and uncertainty, often because the task will be evaluated publicly or because the taskmaster is distasteful” (p. xix).

He goes on to give a number of strategies for overcoming, such as:

  • engage in free writing;
  • find an appropriate location, free from interruptions;
  • schedule writing time every day, not to exceed 90 minutes at a time, with regular breaks and a definite stopping point;
  • stick to a schedule with a system of contingency management, a reward contingent on meeting the day’s goals;
  • turn self-defeating statements into positive statements to reduce anxiety; and
  • learn to use feedback productively.

Find any of this useful? Check out the links for more.  And happy writing! We are writing with you.

Additional Resources:

Originally posted on August 4, 2016.

Navigating Authorship Conflicts

There are clear guidelines outlining what “counts” as authorship. While all disciplines have their own nuances in culture, the International Committee of Journal Medical Editors (ICJME) provides a reasonable set of authorship criteria:

  • Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  • Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  • Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  • Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Note the “and” in those statements. Other contributions can warrant acknowledgments but not rise to the level of authorship. So much can be at stake with authorship – it is our currency in academia and how we establish our contributions in many sectors. The NIH Collaboration Guide recommends negotiating authorship well in advance of writing, and documenting decisions (e.g. who will be first author, who will be a contributing author) in email at least.

However, we know that things may not always go as planned. People move, experiments don’t work out, reviewers ask for additional work, projects stall out, contributions shift.

When these challenges arise, we heard suggestions from a panel of senior faculty and Chuck Sloane and Emma Williams from the UW Office of the Ombuds. These tips include:

  • Speak up. If something feels unfair or not right, get curious. Call a meeting with your PI (or whomever is making the authorship decisions) and ask about what change or decision has occurred. Seek to understand first.
  • If you have a different understanding of fair contributions in a given paper, request a meeting with all the relevant people involved. Using the authorship guidelines or your prior publication agreement as a starting point, ask about changes that have occurred and propose an alternative solution. Justify your position by referencing guidelines, journal practices, potential negative outcomes (if you think there are some) of certain choices. It can help to have an open conversation with everyone regarding what’s at stake with a given publication and authorship choice.
  • Prepare for these conversations by seeking a safe conversation partner first. You can talk through your position with a trusted peer or senior colleague (or the Ombuds or UW Office of Postdoctoral Affairs) first. It will help you let out some frustration and gain a calmer perspective before you approach your co-authors. This preparation can also help you map out the best approach to the discussion, including time, place, who is involved, and what rationale makes the most sense for your position.

Recommended Resource: Who’s on first? Nature (2012)

 

Originally posted on July 7, 2016.

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.

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 →

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. 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

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.