What we wish was made explicit to us early on in grad school

***A Note on Authorship:  Larisa Reznik compiled the first 12, in conversation with Denis Hirschfeldt and Jay Stull.  Others have been adding their wisdom (with names added to reflect their contributions) and hopefully the list will continue to grow.  Please feel free to get in touch with suggestions of things to add.

1) Learn to work with other students, whether it's exam prep, writing groups, etc. Although all our work in the humanities is deeply collaborative, it's not always as visible and obvious as in the physical sciences, where people actually write joint papers, etc.

2) For some of us, schooling educates us out of some homes and, if we are lucky, into new ones. Many people won't get it, especially if you come from a background where you were supposed to be the "smart kid" who "made it," meaning you cashed in your intelligence for financial stability your family, friends, and community never had. So, find a community and a support system early on. That may be your cohort or, if your cohort is really competitive and you don't feel you can be vulnerable with them, seek out people elsewhere. But find your people early on and be clear that finding your support system IS part of doing your job as a grad student, not some extra thing only those who can't tough it out do!

3) Apply to lots of things, all the time—summer programs, language stipends, conference travel, etc., and take rejection as a sign that you're actively engaged in the process of applying. If you're not getting rejections, you're probably not applying to enough stuff. Places have little and big pots of money, so seek them out. Ask advisors for help with this.

It is their job!

3A) Repeat the previous sentence often. You are not imposing on people. It is their job to advocate for you, help you pursue various opportunities, and help you succeed. They cannot help you if they don't know what you need! Even if you think it’s so obvious that you need help with X, it may not be obvious to them.  Some of them need to be nudged a few times because there’s a lot going on.

4) Be prepared to suck at stuff. You probably have had a lot of positive feedback about your intellectual abilities and coming into grad school, you may find that the thing that made you you, the thing that, elsewhere, gave you positive reinforcement suddenly becomes the thing that makes you want to cry. But, it's important to realize that everyone sucks at some aspect of grad school, even if you don't see it. And there are certain things that you actually can't learn to do without first sucking. Teaching, for example, is one of those where you have to show up every day and suck and know that you suck and eventually you suck less and less and maybe one day you even get to be an awesome teacher. But you can't side-step sucking. So, think of sucking as giving you diagnostic information, not subjection to a ritual of humiliation. You are actually in grad school to learn stuff you don't know, not confirm that you already know stuff and are good at stuff.

5) [Related to 4] Learning is a developmental process. This sounds so, so obvious but it's one thing to say it; it is quite a different thing to believe it. So, many people understand that you can't just put on a pair of sneakers and run a marathon. They also understand that if you want to write, say, a computer program, you need a complex technical vocabulary. But those same people think they are complete idiots because they can't understand a word of Derrida in their intro class.

 6) Do not feel that you have to take responsibility for every piece of feedback everyone ever gives you. Listen to critical feedback carefully but ultimately you make decisions about where you have to “do you” and where you need to make some serious revisions. Not metabolizing any feedback leads to bad work. Metabolizing ALL the feedback means you end up having no voice and saying nothing.

7) You are not a good judge of your own work and abilities at certain points for various reasons, most importantly because you have no idea going in what kind of a thinker you will have turned out to be, how good your thesis will be, or how you'll learn to bring things together. Keeping that in mind, make sure you know how to step out of an evaluative paradigm. The kinds of things you think are markers of success in grad school usually just aren't, in the big picture. So, that really smart kid in your class who seems to know all the Derrida, you have no idea whether he'll actually turn out to have something to say to the profession and neither does he or his advisors at this point. So, stop comparing yourself with others, stop trying to assess your fitness for this work in these bizarre places (like who said what in a seminar). There's just not enough information there to give you a sense of whether this work is the right fit and whether you will, one day, be good at this.

8) Find friends who are not academics and spend time with other people not only because if you don't your social skills will completely atrophy and when you have to go on the job market you have no idea how to talk to actual, live humans but also because it's important to balance the narcissism of grad school with constant reminders that you have obligations to other people, who love you and need you and have all sorts of difficult things going on in their lives (aging parents, sick children, difficult relationships, etc.) that have nothing to do with “planet-you” and the little university and book fortress you've built around yourself. There are lots of people who just don't care that you need to finish this conference paper because something else is, in fact, more important. For some people this is built in by virtue of having kids while in grad school.  But even if you don’t have children (in grad school or ever), you still have families of one sort or another (extended, queer, non-bio, etc.).  Figuring out early on that you still have real responsibilities to others and you have to show up helps create better time management skills because you realize early on that part of your time is, in fact, already committed to other people, you HAVE TO get this done in the next 45 minutes or NEVER.

9) Make acquaintance with a few happy, well-adjusted, American white dudes (shouldn't be that difficult at a university) and use whatever anthropological skills you have to study them. They ask for things. They ask for help, like a lot! They often don't find their own work embarrassing and cringe-worthy. They don't tend to find themselves unqualified or under-qualified for, like, most things. They always make time for physical activity and hobbies. They outsource a lot of labor to others! Don't be them but do notice the things that come with ease to them and learn from it. [The assumption here is that if you are reading this, you are not, in fact, a well-adjusted, American white dude.  Plenty of white, American men in academia struggle with all of these issues and they too can learn from the genre of personhood designated by the descriptor “well-adjusted, American white dude.”]  

10) DO NOT under any circumstances define good, valuable work as work that you, by definition, cannot do. Do and value the work that you can do!

11) Logistics, bureaucracy, and learning how academic systems work--Some of us learned the ins and outs of so-called “best practices” in the academy before coming to grad school and others did not.  For example, a lot of people don’t realize why when you apply to things that require a letter of recommendation the application system generates a request for waiving your right to see the letter.  You need to check that box because your recommender needs to know that you won’t see the letter and those reading the letter need to know that they can trust the recommender to give a fair and balanced assessment of you as a candidate, something that may not happen if everyone knows you’re also reading the letter.  Or, replying to certain emails with a confirmation that you’ve received them and the matter is settled is not that obvious but something important that is often done in the academy to conclude a particular communication process and make sure everyone is on the same page.  Or, if you need, say, color chalk to teach a class, you need to ask what resources are available to you rather than going out and buying your own chalk on the assumption that you’re not entitled to any.  These seem like small things but these small things are precisely the kind of things that some people come in knowing and others not so much.  Again, observe how others communicate via email, know your rights and what you are entitled to, and if you don’t understand some bit of paperwork, don’t ignore it.  Ask your advisor or a fellow student.  Don’t be shy [See 3A].  You need to figure out not just how things are done but the reasoning behind it because that’s what makes universities run and understanding how and why these structures work (and often don’t work) will give you the ability to navigate them more effectively and the opportunity to try to change things that you see as unfair or ineffective.

12) Communication and hierarchy--somewhere between addressing your professors as “Yo, Jane” and “Herr Professor Doktor X von Z, III” there exists a bottomless pit of ambiguity and figuring out how to balance giving people the respect they deserve with resisting the perpetuation of structural inequality built into casual communication in the academy is something many of us are trying to figure out every day.  What some people find practical and convenient, others find insulting and hurtful. With that in mind, we all need to pick our battles and figure out when a demand for a certain level of formality is a sign of respect and when it is a sign of aggression.

A) Generational differences. People have very different communication styles and norms.  This is particularly visible where generational divides and text-messaging communication converge.  If you have faculty members who write you emails in complete, perfectly-punctuated sentences and sign off with “Prof. Robert X,” DO NOT under any circumstances reply with “K.  C U tmrw, Bob.”  In your heart of hearts, you may believe that language purism is bullshit and that professors who insist that you call them by their title are part of the very hierarchical, patriarchal, racist, classist, homophobic problem you came to grad school to work against.  Some of those professors undoubtedly ARE that.  But for some of them, crafting an email to you with complete sentences says “I respect you and took time to express myself in a clear and professional demeanor”; and receiving back an email that says “K Thnx” feels like a slap in the face, like you are SO busy and important you can’t even bother to spell out “Okay.”  Again, these are generational and cultural differences about what feels and looks like respectful behavior.

With that said, in the academy, like everywhere else, there are a lot of people who are racist, sexist, and awful in all sorts of obvious and not so obvious ways.  So, sometimes, it’s not a generational thing but a racist thing or a sexist thing, which is given a moral alibi by “generational difference” talk.  If you suspect the latter is going on, then you have every right to get help, support, and redress.  These things aren’t always that clear because often racist and sexist attitudes are deployed in diffuse ways and you just know them by their effects.  If you’re not sure, ask a trusted faculty member or a mentor for advice.

B) Race and gender.  DO NOT, under any circumstances, address female faculty and faculty of color in any way other than the way they wish to be addressed.  Obviously, some people really don’t care how you address them.  But for others, when you address them as “Hey, Jane,” what you are saying is “Those deserving to be called ‘Professor’ are old, white dudes and you don’t count as one, so I won’t address you that way.”

C) This goes for communication with a variety of people—administrative staff, your TAs, etc. A lot of institutions are especially terrible at showing staff the respect they deserve.  Whether you are interacting with someone in facilities, events planning, the department coordinator, or the subject area bibliographer in the library, remember that these people are working with faculty and students, NOT for them.  Many faculty members (and grad students) forget this and often exhibit thoughtless and disrespectful behavior towards staff.  Or, they just don’t acknowledge or appreciate just how much various members of the university staff do to make every aspect of their professional life possible.  Don’t be that person!

13) Cultivate relationships with early-career scholars, mid-career scholars, and senior scholars at other universities, in your field and in related fields. It is of course important to have good, supportive relationships with your supervisor, committee, etc., but the academy is really a set of intersecting nerd terraria. You want to have allies in as many nerd terraria as you can, for a whole bunch of reasons, from the practical (job searches in fields you didn't train in) to the intellectual (keeping abreast of stuff that other people are thinking). (h/t Stephanie Frank)

14) The conversation and hierarchy within your sub-field is not as all-important as it seems to be. The people hiring you will most likely _not_ be experts in your field: if they already have someone who does your thing, they won't be hiring you. So learn to talk to people in related fields, because they will decide your fate. Also, it's less stressful, and will make you a better writer. (h/t Dustin Atlas)

15) Buy an electric toothbrush (because dental is effing expensive) and save a few months of stipend money, if possible, for future rent/summers/moving/etc! (h/t Anthony Petro)

16) Never underestimate local knowledge of the department by fellow grad students. Grad students watch faculty all the time because their careers depend on understanding their whims. Pay attention when they tell you a professor is toxic or sabotages students or writes negative letters of recommendation without warning students or has a reputation for never reading a female student's work. Particularly pay attention when multiple students have had bad experiences. (h/t Liane Carlson)

17) Ask your older friends to see their application materials. There's a formula to this stuff and the best way to figure it out is reading a lot of successful models.(h/t Liane Carlson)

18) Try to publish in journals besides the main one in your sub-field, and read a lot of what are considered second and third tier journals.  In [some fields], the first-tier journals are mostly the reserve of white guys, and lots of really interesting stuff, much of it by women and non-white people, ends up in what are considered (by the white guys) less prestigious journals. But what I've learned is: so what! Well, sure I object to the racist patriarchy that casts prestige in this way, but as for how to spend my days, I want to talk with those other people, so I should be going to their lectures at conferences and reading those journals. (h/t Joy Brennan)

19) Attend business meetings at conferences. Especially of smaller sub-groups in which you have an interest. Speak up. Suggest possible future topics. If you're nervous about this, make your suggestions tentative--just asking if there is interest in x or y. Small groups are always looking for new blood. At least some of the people there will talk to you afterwards, and you will have new contacts which you can follow up with a nice-to-meet-you email. Eventually, after two or three years of attendance, they will talk to each other about you, and consider making you chair of a panel, or giving you a role on the board. That's a CV entry, and will lead to more contacts. (h/t Oona Eisenstadt)

20)  If you're a straight white able-bodied cis dude your life may still be difficult in graduate school, and it can be taxing for sure and you also need to develop practices of self-preservation, and that's real. BUT there are indeed numerous invisible-to-you structures that support and enable you, and privileges that you definitely have that your Black grad colleagues, colleagues of color, LGBTQI+ colleagues, cisfemale colleagues, folks with disabilities, etc. etc. simply do not - and often (i.e. almost always) the result is that their experiences in academic spaces are marked by various forms of violence, gatekeeping, disciplining, mansplaining, microaggressions, second-guessing, and generally inhospitable conditions, etc. that you have probably never had to think about or face in your life. Listen to them, and do what you can (use your immense privileges as a tool, fool) to support them, stand behind them, stick up for them when appropriate, send them resources, invite them to panels because they do good work (don't tokenize), speak up for them if/when welcomed, cite their work, give them credit, take on committee/grad work that supports diversity initiatives so they don't have to, give them space/stop taking up space, advocate for them, etc. etc. and do it without expectations for back-patting, overt forms of recognition, or people telling you how great of an "ally" you are. *But also* know that this work will never be complete and requires a lot of hard looks in the mirror, getting things wrong, and self-reflection. Be an accomplice and do it because (a) you can; not because anyone is asking, and because (b) everybody wins when more people are able to thrive in a community. You might just make the best friends of your life too and shed some of that weight of white guilt/shame/resentment. And when you think you've "done enough," check yourself - wash, rinse, and repeat. (h/t Matthew Houdek)

21) When your department hosts events (a lecture by a scholar from out of town, for example), go to those events. Professors put a lot of time into planning those events for the benefit of graduate students. Also, if your university is doing a search for a new faculty member, attend the finalists' job talks. You are allowed to! More than that, encouraged to. And attend dissertation defenses too, if those are open to the whole department. You'll get a good observation of what various professors' interpersonal manners in that situation.(h/t Clancy Ratliff)