Graduate

Panel: Shaping Your Graduate Career
Participants: Dr. Domino Perez, Greg Foran, Jonathan Lamb, Stephanie Odom-Robertson

Tips for Shaping Your Graduate Career
•    Imagine what kind of post-graduate career you want and then take the necessary graduate school steps to get there. Start by talking to your advisors, cohorts, more advanced graduate students, etc. to figure out how you can make goals specific to you and take actions that will lead to those goals.
•    Think of the work you do in your classes as professionalization work, tying your assignments to publications and presentations whenever possible.
•    Read the Job Information Lists and think about how to fit yourself into the job descriptions that interested you.
•    Be sure to make your CV reflect your accomplishments and interests; figure out how to translate your qualifications into activities/accomplishments that will show up “on paper.”
•    Think early about the “synergy” of your graduate career and how to connect seemingly isolated experiences to your larger projects and goals

Tips for Conferences
•    Be selective about conference attendance, so that each conference you attend furthers your academic goals (and your CV) rather than taking time away from your work.
•    Be ambitious about applying for conferences (i.e. MLA), but remember that highly selective conferences often have very limited space for graduate student presenters, so don’t be discouraged, and do submit to regional and local conferences as a “first step” and to build connections with scholars in your field.
•    Practice reading your paper aloud before a conference, so you can give a polished presentation as well as a good paper.
•    Think about your self-presentation during your panel and the Q&A session. Be professional, polite, and prepared—you never know who you are going to impress.
•    Realize that not everyone in your audience will be interested in asking questions that are helpful to you, and practice deflecting off-topic or hostile questions back to the questioner.
•    Avoid sitting down at social events at conferences; though you may have a group of friends in attendance, this is a time for professionalization rather than socialization.
•    Get out of your comfort zone and network at conferences. Be available for your professors to introduce you to their colleagues, and be on the lookout for opportunities that could arise out of connections you make at conferences.

Tips for Department Service
•    Develop yourself as a colleague as well as a scholar by participating in committee work, organizing seminars and roundtables, and attending job talks and meetings; these activities may not always be reflected in your CV, but they often show up in your rec letters. Being on a hiring committee is an especially useful experience.
•    Consider getting a graduate research assistantship early in your career. This can help you build relationships with potential advisors and get to know the academic publication process. You can ask professors if they or anyone they know needs a research assistant.
•    Beware of doing too much service, and develop your skills in saying “no,” so you can prioritize the activities that will fit in best with your own goals and plans.
•    Work on maintaining a collegial atmosphere with graduate students as well as professors in your department; these are professional relationships you will want to be able to draw on as you advance in the field.