I’ve written to you all about how to keep a well-respected and sophisticated social media site, but now I want to discuss the things that you want to avoid. This post is about what not to do in social media sites, including topics that you shouldn’t discuss and things that you shouldn’t put on your site. According to Alison Doyle, there are many do’s and don’ts in social media. We…

Have you ever worked for something for so long just to have it stripped away from you in the end? Sometimes, it takes failure for students to get a wake up call or even inspiration for another idea. Andrew David Thaler has a pretty amazing story about how he bounced back from failing in graduate school. Read his article,…

If you are already in graduate school or are thinking about graduate school, you have probably experienced an overwhelming feeling of “Uh-oh, can I do this?” or “How am I supposed to balance everything I have going on?” Fear not, current and future students. I will introduce you to a whole new world of balancing acts. A few balancing issues that grad students have are family, money, and time.

Now that you know the basics of how to research, communicate with, and assemble your dissertation committee, your next job is to maintain this relationship until you earn that long-awaited diploma. The type of relationship that you should really strive for with your dissertation chair is one of mentorship. As three authors describe in Mentoring…

After reading this fourth post in my 5-part series about communication with your dissertation committee, you’ll not only be able take their comments constructively instead of personally, but you’ll also be able to understand what their job entails when it comes to advising your dissertation process. Communicating with your dissertation committee on a regular basis is a huge component of your dissertation writing process, as I’ve posted in the past,…

After writing about how to choose your dissertation committee members, I thought it would be a good idea to let you know what you should expect from your committee members. This third post will be about how your committee members will involve themselves in your dissertation process and how you should interact with them. I’ll give you a hint: they probably won’t need to be as involved as you’re thinking.