How I Finished - intro

My journey through graduate school was a long one. Filled with many ups and downs and many diversions. Some by design, some by circumstance. I finished in late 2021 and I am very glad I stuck with it. By the time I finished I realized that I had created a virtuous cycle consisting of the things I did in the posts below.

In 2020 I discovered the r/PhD, r/DissertationSupport, and the r/GradSchool subreddits. It was phenomenal to see what other graduate students were working on and going through and be able to offer some advice. I gathered some of the advice I shared in my posts and expanded upon them. I’ve also shared some of this advice with other graduate students in person and these blog posts are my way of collecting this information in one spot and making it more available. Another reason I am sharing this advice is because some of the collected wisdom on “how to do graduate school” did not work for me. I found some of it unhelpful and counterproductive.

I know every grad student’s journey through graduate school is deeply personal and unique. Some of this advice might be helpful and some of it might not be. Take it with a grain of salt or ignore it completely. If any of it is helpful, fantastic. If not, well, thank you for reading.

There is nothing discipline or topic specific in the following sections. I used quantitative methods and processed a great deal of data in my dissertion and so some of the advice is geared to that, however. In general, I tried to keep it discipline agnostic. In addition, the advice in these sections is on what you can control. There is nothing in these posts about working with the graduate school or my advisor or types of classes to take.

My list originally featured eight or so things I did that helped me finished. But like most projects, it grew larger. As I wrote I realized there were more things I did to help me finish. The list grew to include more than 20 items! I organized the items into four categories and each category is a seperate post. Certainly, there is some overlap between each piece of advice. I have no doubt that I will add additional items as I reflect upon these items in the next few months. I could see a Part 5 on things I know that would have helped.