Graduate life

Graduate study is all about choice. Be it majors, disciplines, delivery or institution, the world is your oyster as a grad student. As I’m uneasy making even the most miniscule decisions, this can be somewhat alarming. One option that I’ve been wrestling with lately is my preferred study mode, be it intensive or regular mode. With advantages and disadvantages to both, I’m still sitting on the fence. What better forum to push me onto a side than the Grad Life Blog?!?

Greetings from the USA! I made it here safely and have been settling in to my new lab. I could tell you about all of the cool new lab toys that I now have to play with, or the interesting research that I will be doing here to finish off my PhD, but first things first... My apartment that I will call home for the next 8 months or so.

After more than 24 hours in transit, I dragged my slightly hallucinating self to my new apartment building. One small incident with my keys (which, it transpired, were not actually my keys) later, I crashed my way into the flat, dropped my two very heavy bags (a total of 300g under maximum weight, yessssss!), and found... a small mountain of flat- pack furniture and packaged dinnerware/bedding etc stuck all over with labels like “Gosa Vadd Schlewovski”.

I’ve had moments during my graduate study when I’ve questioned my decision to return to Uni. Those moments generally come at 3.49am on the morning of an assessment as I stare blankly at rambling paragraphs that refuse to make sense despite several rewordings. It’s at these times, in between infomercials, that the importance of good time management resonates in my mind. Time management is a fundamental skill for graduate students, and is often the difference being questioning your return to studying and having an enjoyable and valuable time in your graduate course.

I’m technologically challenged. Whilst I’d like to think that I’m proficient at plugging in printers, printing to PDF and programming the clock, I often use the wrong cord, forget to change print settings and resort to updating daylight savings manually. Despite these limits, the single best thing I’ve done for my study is to buy a personal computer.

As I wait for an editor I haven’t worked with before to yay or nay my copy, I thought I’d take this time in between commissions to write my blog and have a rant. I know it’s been a while between posts, but things have been crazy here. My saying that the stress would be less following coursework was a lie, vicious lie … I find myself remaining in this constant state of stress, hovering somewhere over certain oh-my-gosh-so-much-stressness. And then there's the worst ailment for writers’ headache, editing the copy of a writer who can’t write.

In time-honoured fashion, I bring you the final instalment of my list of top-10 time wasters. Now when you start your postgraduate program, you’ll have a head start over all of those other poor students who are also starting out and have no clue about how to really procrastinate properly. No, no, don’t thank me...

So what happened last semester with the Master of Management Crew??