Not That Kind of Doctor - Selecting a Graduate Program
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11/28/2022
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In this episode of "Not That Kind of Doctor," Nick and Guy discuss the complexities of choosing a graduate school, especially for first-generation students or those applying from abroad. They explore how to navigate the application process, the importance of funding, and the impact of these decisions on your personal and professional life.
đź“Ś Key Takeaways:
Graduate School Choices: The challenges of selecting the right program, especially when you're unfamiliar with the higher education landscape.
Funding Considerations: Why securing financial support is crucial and how it can shape your graduate school experience.
Life and Family Impact: How the decision to attend graduate school affects not just you but your entire family, and the importance of making it a collective choice.
Visiting Schools: The value of visiting potential programs, talking to current students, and understanding the culture before committing.
Flexibility in Goals: The importance of being open to change as your interests and career goals evolve during graduate school.
Whether you’re considering graduate school or helping someone make this decision, this episode provides practical insights to guide you through the process.
#GraduateSchool #FirstGenStudent #HigherEducation #NotThatKindOfDoctor #AcademicJourney #phdprograms #Eddprograms #highereducation
Have you gone through the process of choosing a graduate school? Share your experiences in the comments below! Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more episodes exploring the academic journey!
Selecting a Graduate Program - Not That Kind of Doctor with Nick Husbye and Guy Trainin
www.youtube.com/@tltenotthatkindofdoctor
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- [00:00:00.213](upbeat music)
- [00:00:09.330]Nothing.
- [00:00:10.163]You know what I'm seeing?
- [00:00:11.040]I'm seeing the trees in four hours on the train in Finland.
- [00:00:15.240]Just the trees and the tress. Oh, while the rest of us
- [00:00:17.400]were working. And the trees.
- [00:00:19.259]I was working.
- [00:00:20.593]I was grading on the train.
- [00:00:22.162]Yeah?
- [00:00:23.233]I was.
- [00:00:24.480]Mostly. In Finland?
- [00:00:25.740]In Finland, as we all should be.
- [00:00:29.940]Helsinki was delightful.
- [00:00:32.790]Helsinki is always delightful.
- [00:00:33.960]Maybe you should have gone to grad school there.
- [00:00:36.390]No.
- [00:00:38.160]Actually.
- [00:00:39.570]Well, actually, now that you mention it,
- [00:00:41.610]maybe I should have.
- [00:00:43.530]Now you tell me.
- [00:00:44.727]But I mean, look, choosing a graduate school.
- [00:00:47.460]Is important.
- [00:00:48.720]And also very tricky.
- [00:00:50.940]Like particularly, Yes, it is.
- [00:00:51.990]If you have no one else in your family
- [00:00:54.780]or you have no relationships with anyone who's ever done it,
- [00:00:59.310]so if you're like a first gen, which I was, you were not,
- [00:01:03.900]but if you're like a first gen person
- [00:01:05.550]trying to figure out where to go to graduate school,
- [00:01:07.650]why to go to graduate school, how to do it,
- [00:01:10.590]like all of that is a massive mess to figure out.
- [00:01:17.220]And I think that,
- [00:01:18.780]my parents have gone to graduate school,
- [00:01:21.150]but very early on, they were both veterinarians.
- [00:01:24.780]But the world of graduate school have changed so much
- [00:01:27.780]that I was actually, I mean, we've never talked about it,
- [00:01:30.420]but beyond that, we were never,
- [00:01:32.820]there was no parallel between what happens in middle school
- [00:01:37.440]and how graduate school works in a different country
- [00:01:40.590]to my experience trying to go to graduate school
- [00:01:45.180]in the United States.
- [00:01:46.200]And that was the only place I really applied
- [00:01:49.260]was in the United States.
- [00:01:50.790]And they couldn't help me in any way, shape, or form,
- [00:01:53.460]because they went through a totally different process.
- [00:01:56.130]So yeah, there are many weird things
- [00:01:58.470]about applying for graduate school.
- [00:02:01.110]Totally.
- [00:02:02.040]And so I think today, in today's podcast,
- [00:02:04.350]we're gonna be talking about the ins and outs
- [00:02:07.710]of thinking about what program you wanna apply to,
- [00:02:11.220]which schools, how do you find them?
- [00:02:12.750]Like what should you be thinking about
- [00:02:14.880]as you're considering taking on
- [00:02:18.660]this massive kind of life change,
- [00:02:24.060]particularly if you're thinking about going full-time,
- [00:02:27.510]those kinds of things.
- [00:02:28.343]And even if you're not, it's going to shape
- [00:02:30.810]even if you become what we call "stayers",
- [00:02:33.270]so you stay put, you're still working,
- [00:02:35.820]and you're going to graduate school,
- [00:02:37.470]even then, your life changes quite significantly
- [00:02:39.990]because you spend a lot of your afternoons,
- [00:02:42.540]a good portion of your summer, potentially,
- [00:02:45.240]going to school, which affects if you have a family,
- [00:02:47.670]family life, if you just have a social life,
- [00:02:49.560]your social life, it changes everything
- [00:02:51.510]that happens in the rest of your life,
- [00:02:53.940]even if your work life stays the same.
- [00:02:56.130]So that's really a big decision.
- [00:02:59.280]And what I'm asking you is if you're doing,
- [00:03:03.540]if you're watching this podcast
- [00:03:05.263]and you are already in graduate school,
- [00:03:08.340]give it to your friends who are not yet in graduate school,
- [00:03:10.590]because you think about graduate school for quite a while
- [00:03:14.400]before you pull the trigger and before you make a decision.
- [00:03:17.340]And so there are people who start thinking
- [00:03:20.010]about graduate school, and that's a great time
- [00:03:21.870]to start really doing the hard work of sorting,
- [00:03:25.650]talking to people, thinking about what your options are
- [00:03:29.730]and where your heart lies and what you can afford,
- [00:03:32.580]because I think that's a big chunk of making decisions.
- [00:03:35.940]So you were still in Israel
- [00:03:39.870]when you were preparing to apply for grad school.
- [00:03:43.950]Can you talk to me a little bit about what that's like?
- [00:03:45.900]Because I already lived here.
- [00:03:50.880]So I think there are a few layers to that.
- [00:03:54.360]One is, for me, graduate school in the United States,
- [00:03:59.340]school in the United States was a big black box.
- [00:04:02.040]I really did not understand it in any way, shape, or form.
- [00:04:04.530]Like in an airplane?
- [00:04:05.363]Like a big black box in an airplane?
- [00:04:06.960]Kinda.
- [00:04:07.890]Hopefully, you don't find it after the crash, but-
- [00:04:10.080]That's where I was going and I was a little confused.
- [00:04:12.090]But you don't know what's going on.
- [00:04:14.550]You don't understand it.
- [00:04:15.990]So one of the first thing that I did not understand,
- [00:04:18.510]it was explained to me actually
- [00:04:19.860]after I came to the United States.
- [00:04:21.600]And that was that applying
- [00:04:24.330]for a master's program was not a good move.
- [00:04:27.240]So I applied for master's program,
- [00:04:30.240]and that made it so almost nobody offered me money.
- [00:04:34.410]And money is, if you're coming full-time,
- [00:04:37.770]you gotta make sure there's some money coming somewhere.
- [00:04:40.320]And when you're an American citizens,
- [00:04:42.960]it's much easier because you can take a loan.
- [00:04:45.390]There's no such thing as a school loan.
- [00:04:47.130]For example, in Israel, there's no such thing.
- [00:04:48.990]So for me, taking a loan was not even an option.
- [00:04:52.020]And definitely, if you're coming from another country,
- [00:04:54.210]nobody's gonna give you a loan
- [00:04:56.160]if you don't have a credit history.
- [00:04:57.930]And actually, you won't be allowed
- [00:04:59.640]into the country without showing you have resources.
- [00:05:02.070]That's part of the immigration process.
- [00:05:03.930]So there are lots of things you don't actually know.
- [00:05:08.490]And one of the things nobody told me,
- [00:05:10.260]even though I went to the American Embassy
- [00:05:12.240]and I consulted and I took the tests
- [00:05:14.070]and I got all the materials at that point
- [00:05:16.410]from the GRE and all of that, nobody says
- [00:05:19.770]most universities will give money
- [00:05:21.570]to talented doctoral students,
- [00:05:25.890]but very rarely to master students.
- [00:05:28.530]And so that's something that's important to know.
- [00:05:30.300]And you have to think about
- [00:05:32.370]either I'm going to get a master's,
- [00:05:34.800]my master's somewhere else
- [00:05:36.450]and do it in a way that's meaningful.
- [00:05:39.990]Or I come and I try to get into a program
- [00:05:42.540]that takes me straight to a PhD.
- [00:05:46.170]In my case, to a PhD via a master's.
- [00:05:49.470]But it is clear almost from the get-go
- [00:05:51.810]that there's going to be a PhD program,
- [00:05:53.880]because we know we have very limited resources as faculty.
- [00:05:57.810]And when we invest in a student,
- [00:05:59.310]we invest in students that are gonna be the longest with us.
- [00:06:02.580]And that can help us by teaching in our program,
- [00:06:06.780]by helping us do research.
- [00:06:08.490]And that's usually doctoral students.
- [00:06:10.980]So that was the first thing nobody told me.
- [00:06:15.930]The next thing that I really didn't think about,
- [00:06:18.960]and now as a grown up, I'm thinking to myself,
- [00:06:21.090]I had two little kids and I wasn't thinking
- [00:06:23.287]about cost. Great.
- [00:06:25.260]So I would love to know a little bit more about,
- [00:06:27.240]like that's the technical- Yes.
- [00:06:30.690]Applications, test scores, yada, yada.
- [00:06:32.850]I would love to know more about like the,
- [00:06:35.010]'cause you were married.
- [00:06:37.170]Yeah.
- [00:06:38.003]And had children
- [00:06:38.836]at that point, yes? Yes.
- [00:06:39.669]Do I remember that correctly?
- [00:06:40.560]Yes, I had two kids.
- [00:06:41.790]How did you figure all of that out?
- [00:06:43.980]Because like I was single at that point.
- [00:06:48.090]Newly. Yeah. (laughs)
- [00:06:50.910]And was like, "I'm gonna move wherever I want."
- [00:06:53.250]Yes. So how did that work
- [00:06:54.450]for you?
- [00:06:55.650]Well, there were-
- [00:06:56.760]How did you figure out
- [00:06:57.593]where to apply? A couple of pieces.
- [00:06:58.920]So there were a couple of pieces that went into that.
- [00:07:01.830]First of all, and I say that to all of the students
- [00:07:05.070]or potential students I talked to,
- [00:07:06.660]it's really a family decision,
- [00:07:08.340]especially if you are gonna move.
- [00:07:09.720]But even if you're not gonna move,
- [00:07:10.950]because it has financial implication,
- [00:07:12.720]it has free time implications.
- [00:07:14.610]You've got to talk to your significant other.
- [00:07:17.160]You've got to think about where your kids are.
- [00:07:19.890]Luckily or unluckily, my kids were very young.
- [00:07:23.700]They were two and four when we moved.
- [00:07:25.830]And at that age, while they need a lot of care,
- [00:07:29.460]all of the care comes from you,
- [00:07:30.870]or most of the care comes from you.
- [00:07:32.790]So you can say, "Hey, we're packing up and we're going."
- [00:07:35.460]And they barely have language to ask
- [00:07:37.560]where are we going and why.
- [00:07:39.420]And so in a way- We're just moving.
- [00:07:41.490]Yeah. We're just going.
- [00:07:43.740]And four years later, I moved them to Nebraska to a job.
- [00:07:48.270]And that was a completely different process.
- [00:07:50.490]So as they grew up, the decision-making changes,
- [00:07:53.640]and I know a lot of people who have said,
- [00:07:56.047]"I want to start a doctoral program,
- [00:07:57.930]but my kids are finishing high school.
- [00:08:00.990]I wanna be there until they finish and start college.
- [00:08:03.360]And that's my trigger point to start the program."
- [00:08:05.760]So there's an ebb and flow in kids' lives
- [00:08:09.660]and family lives where it makes sense.
- [00:08:12.750]And it was early enough, and both Sarah and I,
- [00:08:15.510]I think really knew that this was the right time
- [00:08:21.660]to start a new career and to really take that bold step
- [00:08:25.350]and kind of uproot ourselves and go.
- [00:08:28.620]The other piece of this, at least for me,
- [00:08:30.660]was my work life was really, really busy.
- [00:08:34.380]It still is, but- Can say.
- [00:08:35.970]It was, yeah. How has that changed?
- [00:08:38.070]It was really, really busy.
- [00:08:39.330]So I could not fathom being that busy
- [00:08:42.840]and trying to go to graduate school in Israel.
- [00:08:45.420]It was very clear to me.
- [00:08:46.770]I have tried once, and it was very clear to me
- [00:08:49.680]that as long as I have all of my connections
- [00:08:52.050]and commitments, it's always gonna come last.
- [00:08:54.990]And this is one of the problems
- [00:08:56.400]that I see always with stayers.
- [00:08:59.340]You have a work life and that is important,
- [00:09:02.100]because that's what pays the bills
- [00:09:03.690]and that's what makes sure your family is doing fine.
- [00:09:06.720]And you have your social connections and your family.
- [00:09:10.110]And so school tends to be the thing
- [00:09:12.060]you push and you do last.
- [00:09:13.980]And there are certain things you can do late at night,
- [00:09:16.800]but there are certain things in graduate school
- [00:09:18.930]you cannot do late at night.
- [00:09:20.520]Read long philosophical chapters about epistemology
- [00:09:24.870]do not happen between 11:00 PM and 2:00 AM.
- [00:09:28.560]Many other things can happen.
- [00:09:30.540]That's not gonna happen.
- [00:09:31.920]At least not well.
- [00:09:33.060]So the decision for me to move was based on that.
- [00:09:37.290]If I want to be serious about graduate school
- [00:09:39.990]and go and do it and finish it
- [00:09:42.060]and go to wherever my next step in my career is going to be,
- [00:09:45.090]and it was not clear to me
- [00:09:46.500]that it was going to be a faculty,
- [00:09:48.750]but it was clear to me that it opens new doors.
- [00:09:53.190]I had to uproot myself and go
- [00:09:55.350]and focus on that thing I'm doing.
- [00:09:57.990]And so that was part of the decision.
- [00:10:00.000]What did I do?
- [00:10:00.833]We went, and at that time,
- [00:10:04.200]we had the big books that we had at the embassy
- [00:10:07.470]that were chained to the desk, like medieval texts.
- [00:10:12.060]It was literally in a special room.
- [00:10:13.710]You think about those old telephone books.
- [00:10:15.390]Yes, exactly. Who would steal
- [00:10:17.040]the telephone book?
- [00:10:18.330]Someone might actually steal that, though.
- [00:10:19.650]Yeah, somebody might. Probably.
- [00:10:20.940]And they had all the graduate programs,
- [00:10:22.800]and we did a lot of work.
- [00:10:24.030]Beginning of the internet,
- [00:10:25.050]you can already search programs online and find some names.
- [00:10:28.650]And I had a very specific field which I ended up not doing,
- [00:10:32.220]which was adolescents and adults with learning disabilities.
- [00:10:35.910]So I had four programs that were very high on my list,
- [00:10:39.720]and I applied to all four of them.
- [00:10:42.030]I got accepted by all four of them.
- [00:10:44.010]But one in Northwestern gave me a partial fellowship,
- [00:10:51.600]and one at UCR gave me a full fellowship.
- [00:10:55.440]And that was the easiest thing.
- [00:10:57.600]It was an easy decision.
- [00:10:58.740]UCR, California Riverside, right?
- [00:11:00.300]Yeah, yeah.
- [00:11:01.133]And they simply, they gambled on me
- [00:11:04.080]staying beyond my masters, which has happened.
- [00:11:07.140]And so they were willing to put the money.
- [00:11:12.420]And for me with two kids, it was not a hard decision
- [00:11:15.990]to see, okay, these places, I'm gonna be in debt.
- [00:11:19.680]I don't know how I'm gonna pay for that.
- [00:11:21.150]This place is paying.
- [00:11:22.170]Now it's very little money,
- [00:11:26.040]but they're covering tuition,
- [00:11:27.690]and I'm not paying international student tuition.
- [00:11:30.420]And on top of that, they're helping with the housing,
- [00:11:33.510]and eventually with kids,
- [00:11:35.640]because it was California also helped with childcare.
- [00:11:38.670]So there was an envelope around us.
- [00:11:41.361]And that's one of the things I say to anybody
- [00:11:45.060]who wants to go full-time is you've got to find
- [00:11:47.580]a program that's willing to support you.
- [00:11:49.680]If not, I don't think it's worth it.
- [00:11:51.570]I don't think you can survive.
- [00:11:53.250]You're gonna get into a lot of debt.
- [00:11:55.110]And the problem, and the thing we know about debt,
- [00:11:57.510]I would argue, is it constrains your decision-making after,
- [00:12:01.800]because now, you're thinking about,
- [00:12:03.967]"Okay, I have all of this debt I need to pay.
- [00:12:06.240]I don't have the freedom to choose between jobs.
- [00:12:09.090]I gotta take what's out there."
- [00:12:10.470]So I think it has an impact.
- [00:12:12.690]And so if you are going into a program
- [00:12:16.170]and definitely going full-time,
- [00:12:17.880]I would argue that one of the things
- [00:12:19.320]you want is a fellowship.
- [00:12:21.900]Well, 'cause you have to be able to pay
- [00:12:25.380]for what's happening,
- [00:12:26.580]particularly if you are not a stayer, right?
- [00:12:30.930]Yeah. You need to have things,
- [00:12:33.600]like you also just need to have things to do.
- [00:12:35.970]Yeah. Right?
- [00:12:36.803]Particularly if you've up and moved
- [00:12:38.190]somewhere new where you don't have social connections,
- [00:12:41.010]you need some kind of like specific job or task
- [00:12:43.920]to not make yourself crazy.
- [00:12:45.360]Or was that just me?
- [00:12:46.980]No, I think you do, because suddenly,
- [00:12:48.600]you have a lot of free time.
- [00:12:49.830]If all you're doing is going to three
- [00:12:51.170]or four classes a week,
- [00:12:53.970]that's a lot of free time. Which is a lot.
- [00:12:55.407]It is a lot. Three to four classes
- [00:12:57.240]is a lot, like it's a lot of reading.
- [00:12:58.770]But in the beginning, particularly for me as a teacher,
- [00:13:02.940]I just kept thinking like, "Oh, my gosh,
- [00:13:05.670]I used to have like all of this detritus of my time
- [00:13:08.940]with my first graders throughout the day,
- [00:13:10.800]and now I'm just reading.
- [00:13:13.200]And there wasn't as much like tangible
- [00:13:16.020]visible signs of the work that I was doing.
- [00:13:18.630]And more than that, I would argue also
- [00:13:21.030]from the way you think about
- [00:13:22.530]how you construct a graduate program,
- [00:13:25.050]one of the things you want to have
- [00:13:26.580]is lots of experiences inside that program
- [00:13:28.980]doing research and teaching and all of that,
- [00:13:31.410]because if you, at any time point,
- [00:13:33.660]decide that that's your future,
- [00:13:35.550]you want to show that you have that experience.
- [00:13:37.560]And also, you want to enter those jobs
- [00:13:39.870]knowing what they're like,
- [00:13:41.520]being able to observe them as a graduate student,
- [00:13:43.680]observe professors doing their work,
- [00:13:45.840]but also participating in the work.
- [00:13:47.610]So when you decide, yes, I want to do that,
- [00:13:50.190]you actually know what you're signing up for.
- [00:13:52.590]And not just like, "Oh, it sounds interesting."
- [00:13:55.410]We do some research, we teach some, we do some service.
- [00:13:58.680]And not knowing what it is,
- [00:14:01.560]you don't actually know what you're committing to.
- [00:14:03.690]And also, it's hard to prove that you can do the job.
- [00:14:06.540]So you definitely want that fellowship
- [00:14:09.150]and some kind of a way to connect to the institution.
- [00:14:15.840]And my question to you is,
- [00:14:19.380]how did you make the decision
- [00:14:20.820]not having to think about family in that whole?
- [00:14:23.610]Because for us, it was over a very long period of time.
- [00:14:26.610]So we had to think about it for over a year.
- [00:14:28.290]At that time, everybody required the GRE.
- [00:14:30.420]I took the GRE.
- [00:14:31.440]I'm a good test taker.
- [00:14:32.400]So it was a delightful experience.
- [00:14:36.252]But I took the GRE.
- [00:14:37.680]But then, applying and moving through
- [00:14:39.960]all of those phases and deciding as a family
- [00:14:42.180]and all of that, that's a long time.
- [00:14:43.950]That's over a year of planning
- [00:14:46.140]and maneuvering and all of that.
- [00:14:48.480]How did you do it?
- [00:14:49.860]So you'll be surprised,
- [00:14:51.720]because there was not a spreadsheet involved.
- [00:14:53.430]Oh, wow.
- [00:14:54.810]The one time- There was not a table.
- [00:14:56.490]The one time, the one time, no.
- [00:14:59.610]As I kind of alluded to before,
- [00:15:01.080]it was, for lack of a better word,
- [00:15:05.040]I was responding to the chaos that was my life at that time.
- [00:15:09.180]Like things had rapidly changed.
- [00:15:12.210]My mom had passed away, relationship had ended.
- [00:15:15.780]Like all of this stuff had happened.
- [00:15:18.750]And like I wasn't seeking out graduate school as therapy,
- [00:15:22.800]'cause one, graduate school is not therapy.
- [00:15:26.100]Get a therapist, it's cheaper.
- [00:15:30.090]But I had been grappling with who my mother was
- [00:15:34.410]and who she would never be,
- [00:15:36.360]and like who I was and who I was trying to become.
- [00:15:41.100]So I decided I was gonna go get my PhD.
- [00:15:45.960]I had been working on my masters at Michigan State.
- [00:15:49.290]Actually didn't finish my master's at Michigan State
- [00:15:51.300]because they didn't offer the capstone
- [00:15:52.830]when they said they were gonna offer the capstone.
- [00:15:54.900]And so, that's a thing.
- [00:15:59.130]And so I started asking around,
- [00:16:00.750]like where should I be applying?
- [00:16:03.960]Like what should I be doing?
- [00:16:05.130]Here's what I'm interested in.
- [00:16:07.260]And really leveraged the professors
- [00:16:11.010]who were really important in my development
- [00:16:14.250]and actually ended up at Indiana,
- [00:16:15.960]because Elizabeth Heilman was like,
- [00:16:18.337]"Hey, that was my program.
- [00:16:19.950]I feel like you'd be a good fit."
- [00:16:22.410]So it was this kind of like slap dash.
- [00:16:25.710]There wasn't as much, looking back on it,
- [00:16:27.810]there was not as much thought in it,
- [00:16:30.120]particularly given like who I am now as an academic
- [00:16:34.680]and who I am now as a teacher educator.
- [00:16:36.450]I probably would've made some different choices.
- [00:16:39.330]But part of it, one, was holy cow, I was young.
- [00:16:43.770]Like I don't know that I had my adult brain yet.
- [00:16:46.644](laughs) Okay.
- [00:16:48.390]And was not thinking about things
- [00:16:51.480]in the way that I do now.
- [00:16:55.500]But I think one of the things that I did
- [00:16:57.750]that was really good
- [00:16:58.830]was I went and actually visited schools.
- [00:17:00.930]I went and like talked with faculty.
- [00:17:04.050]I talked with grad students.
- [00:17:06.690]And that really gave me a feeling
- [00:17:09.120]of kind of what that space was about.
- [00:17:12.690]And I made sure there were like formal and informal spaces.
- [00:17:17.430]And the minute a grad student starts crying,
- [00:17:19.620]that's not where I'm going.
- [00:17:20.880]Yeah.
- [00:17:22.512]I don't need to cry.
- [00:17:24.780]Like I don't need this to be more difficult than it is
- [00:17:28.500]in order to get a name of an institution
- [00:17:32.520]on my degree program.
- [00:17:33.353]And so if you do have access,
- [00:17:35.250]your advice would still be
- [00:17:36.690]talk to the people you know. Oh, yeah.
- [00:17:37.947]And talk to people in general.
- [00:17:40.020]Talk to people you know.
- [00:17:41.880]Think about like what you're interested in
- [00:17:46.290]at that point in time, knowing that it might change.
- [00:17:48.210]Like in anticipation for this,
- [00:17:50.340]I was going back and looking through
- [00:17:51.720]all of my like application materials,
- [00:17:53.250]and I was like, "Is that who I was?"
- [00:17:56.130]Is that what work I thought I was going to be doing
- [00:18:00.390]at this age?"
- [00:18:01.620]Like what?
- [00:18:02.850]'Cause it totally does not match up
- [00:18:05.100]with like what I actually do now.
- [00:18:07.800]And I think that's fine, right?
- [00:18:10.440]It's just growth, it happens. Yeah, yeah.
- [00:18:13.950]I also think part of it was like the branding, right?
- [00:18:18.761]When you're working on your application materials,
- [00:18:20.910]like you need to figure out what your branding is.
- [00:18:24.090]And that was also very apparent.
- [00:18:26.400]Like I had a very,
- [00:18:28.020]that first research experience as an undergrad
- [00:18:30.030]working in the marketing department
- [00:18:31.260]at the Broad Business School,
- [00:18:34.260]that totally has played out.
- [00:18:37.740]Yeah. Right?
- [00:18:38.670]Like selling myself as, "I am this kind of student.
- [00:18:41.700]I wanna study these kind of things,
- [00:18:42.533]and I wanna make these kind of solutions."
- [00:18:45.060]And like really selling myself to that program.
- [00:18:49.560]But that's not what I do now.
- [00:18:50.580]I mean, I still do good work.
- [00:18:51.810]I do good work.
- [00:18:52.643]Yeah.
- [00:18:54.300]That actually is probably better after you have some growth.
- [00:18:59.040]And just to plug into that branding when you apply,
- [00:19:03.570]and we're gonna talk it another time
- [00:19:05.700]about the application process and what you wanna do,
- [00:19:08.250]but one of the things I always advise people
- [00:19:10.050]is talk about what you're interested in,
- [00:19:11.940]but don't close yourself in a box,
- [00:19:13.590]because we all know we've gone through this.
- [00:19:15.600]We all know you changed throughout,
- [00:19:17.220]even throughout the process.
- [00:19:19.140]The reason I'm right now in reading, among other things,
- [00:19:24.450]and in literacy and in technology
- [00:19:26.220]is the experiences I had in graduate school,
- [00:19:28.830]not before graduate school.
- [00:19:30.210]So the things I've said, I've explored.
- [00:19:32.940]And actually, my dissertation was about that.
- [00:19:34.890]But I have made a lot of very good decisions about,
- [00:19:39.150]I would say they're good decisions.
- [00:19:40.650]I'm not sure everybody else would agree,
- [00:19:42.450]but a lot of really good decisions about
- [00:19:44.700]the things I want to do influenced
- [00:19:47.340]by the people I worked with and the ideas I was exposed to.
- [00:19:50.130]And there's no way for you to predict
- [00:19:51.930]early on what's that going to be.
- [00:19:53.760]But that does have something to do
- [00:19:55.350]with the place you choose.
- [00:19:56.820]Right.
- [00:19:58.170]And one of the things that was really influential
- [00:20:01.080]in picking the institution that I chose
- [00:20:03.450]was I felt like there was latitude to change.
- [00:20:06.420]Yeah. There was latitude
- [00:20:07.710]for sometimes maybe perhaps a bit too much.
- [00:20:10.950]Actually, now that I think about it.
- [00:20:12.810]But I really liked the fact that I had kind of control
- [00:20:18.180]over what I studied, and my advisor and my committee,
- [00:20:23.550]they were never, like, "Oh, you need to study this
- [00:20:25.620]because this is what I study,"
- [00:20:27.540]which is a model, right? Yeah.
- [00:20:28.920]Like that's a model. It is.
- [00:20:30.315]Some people do it that way.
- [00:20:32.370]And so, oops.
- [00:20:34.650]I really appreciated having some options
- [00:20:37.050]around that flexibility
- [00:20:39.480]and to be able to grow in interesting ways.
- [00:20:43.260]And so another conflict or a way of thinking about it
- [00:20:48.060]that I think is really important as you start exploring
- [00:20:51.810]is thinking about what do you want to be,
- [00:20:53.730]especially if you're a mover,
- [00:20:55.860]because the famous schools,
- [00:20:57.540]like when you look at their rankings,
- [00:20:59.160]they're the top 10 graduate education schools
- [00:21:02.040]and that kind of thing.
- [00:21:03.450]And you really have to think about the benefits
- [00:21:06.270]of being a big fish in a small pond
- [00:21:09.540]or a small fish in a big pond kind of situation.
- [00:21:15.060]And I think about Malcolm Gladwell
- [00:21:16.650]who talked about this a little bit in "David and Goliath,"
- [00:21:19.200]and I've seen a lot of people
- [00:21:21.930]that actually thrived, for example, here at UNL.
- [00:21:24.960]And I would argue we are a fairly small pond.
- [00:21:27.510]We are not Michigan State or Harvard
- [00:21:31.770]or one of those big schools
- [00:21:33.450]where that's the first name everybody thinks about.
- [00:21:36.240]But because of that, we've had students
- [00:21:38.970]that have had really successful graduate experiences
- [00:21:42.540]with kind of top-notch experiences being on projects
- [00:21:46.830]and teaching and having lots of opportunities,
- [00:21:49.500]because there aren't another 30
- [00:21:52.710]with their skillset right around them.
- [00:21:55.020]They're the one student who has an engineering background
- [00:21:58.470]or the one student who has a language background,
- [00:22:01.770]where in combination with something else.
- [00:22:04.920]Or with technology, for example.
- [00:22:06.810]And so, or one of very few,
- [00:22:08.670]so they get to interact a lot with everybody.
- [00:22:12.330]They get to participate on any exciting project
- [00:22:14.910]that is out there, and actually,
- [00:22:16.020]they can choose what they're participating in.
- [00:22:18.360]Whereas when you go to a big school,
- [00:22:20.280]sometimes, you are the last one added
- [00:22:24.570]in a list of 25 student, 25 doctoral students,
- [00:22:27.630]which is a huge number to me in this very specific program.
- [00:22:31.260]And that means you just have less opportunities.
- [00:22:33.210]You're competing, and you're sharing all the time.
- [00:22:38.250]And that has advantages,
- [00:22:39.450]but it has some disadvantages as well.
- [00:22:41.490]So for me, for example, when we looked at the schools,
- [00:22:47.370]there weren't actually any of the big top 10 schools,
- [00:22:50.910]because my area was niched enough to not have that expertise
- [00:22:54.150]at the Harvard or something like that.
- [00:22:59.280]And as a result, I ended up with four institutions
- [00:23:02.730]that I applied for, and some of it was money, right?
- [00:23:05.190]And even then, we were paying, I don't know,
- [00:23:07.777]$70 or maybe more to apply for school,
- [00:23:10.950]which now isn't that bad.
- [00:23:12.330]But $70 25 years ago was quite a bit of money.
- [00:23:15.840]Definitely, if you're earning
- [00:23:16.860]in Israeli shekels and not in dollars,
- [00:23:19.650]and you have to get a special,
- [00:23:22.320]any international student knows this.
- [00:23:24.750]You gotta go to special banks and get special checks.
- [00:23:27.450]I mean, today, it's easier because we all have credit cards
- [00:23:31.230]and they're international and you can Venmo
- [00:23:32.817]and you can do 1,000 other things
- [00:23:35.580]that may work or may not work.
- [00:23:37.590]But different countries have different controls
- [00:23:39.600]over foreign exchange, and it gets really complicated
- [00:23:43.680]really fast for an international student.
- [00:23:46.470]And so selecting a few schools with a high probability,
- [00:23:50.490]not just of getting in,
- [00:23:51.600]but actually these are places you wanna go back to.
- [00:23:54.360]When we had the conversation
- [00:23:55.470]about where do we apply for work, it's kind of the same.
- [00:23:59.370]You really want to have places that, if they say yes,
- [00:24:02.700]you're gonna seriously consider them, and not just say,
- [00:24:05.437]"Oh, I was applying just for fun."
- [00:24:07.260]It's really not worth it.
- [00:24:09.600]Right, and that's, like the only school I actually got,
- [00:24:13.200]I got denied admission to. Yeah.
- [00:24:16.140]Was also the only school that asked
- [00:24:17.520]for the other schools I was applying to,
- [00:24:18.780]which I think that was a mistake.
- [00:24:20.070]Should not have done that.
- [00:24:21.420]Yeah. But I wanted to be a stayer.
- [00:24:24.660]I wanted to stay in my classroom.
- [00:24:27.030]I wanted to continue working.
- [00:24:27.990]I wasn't quite ready to leave the classroom yet.
- [00:24:31.170]But when they were like, "Nope, sorry.
- [00:24:35.370]Coming here."
- [00:24:38.310]I made the decision to leave,
- [00:24:40.740]and that worked out really well.
- [00:24:45.990]But one of the things was,
- [00:24:47.820]could I live in Bloomington, Indiana for four years
- [00:24:52.140]and then in Columbus, Indiana for another year?
- [00:24:55.050]And it turned out that I could.
- [00:24:57.270]I actually really enjoyed my time there quite a bit.
- [00:25:01.050]Great Farmer's Market.
- [00:25:02.670]Shout out, Bloomington.
- [00:25:04.320]But also like, to go back to just how important funding is,
- [00:25:08.010]like one of the things that was so important
- [00:25:09.720]about that graduate program was I was lucky enough
- [00:25:13.650]to have offers of funding
- [00:25:17.100]at every school that I was accepted to.
- [00:25:20.040]And then Indiana was the one institution that,
- [00:25:24.510]this was definitely in their program,
- [00:25:25.770]but it wasn't the full reason that I accepted
- [00:25:28.920]my position there as a grad student.
- [00:25:31.440]But they had programs that would support you
- [00:25:34.140]if you needed an additional year.
- [00:25:36.300]I needed a fifth year to finish up my dissertation,
- [00:25:41.040]and there was a program that allowed me to do that
- [00:25:44.370]and not take on additional debt.
- [00:25:48.630]Yeah.
- [00:25:49.710]And that's an important conversation to have early on
- [00:25:51.990]to understand how the funding works,
- [00:25:53.880]especially if you get the fellowship.
- [00:25:56.250]Nothing is ever fully guaranteed,
- [00:25:58.320]but most schools will say we will support you for four years
- [00:26:01.230]or something to that unless you underperform
- [00:26:03.480]in very specific ways.
- [00:26:05.280]And most schools want to support you,
- [00:26:07.620]because you become, as a graduate student,
- [00:26:09.360]you become more involved and more useful
- [00:26:11.640]and more productive as time wears on.
- [00:26:15.030]You're an investment, right? Yeah.
- [00:26:16.380]Like they're looking at you as an investment
- [00:26:18.090]who's going to help support the department
- [00:26:20.850]and really become part of the living cloth of that.
- [00:26:22.317]And I didn't understand that when I first applied.
- [00:26:25.140]Like how integrated I would become with that department.
- [00:26:29.910]Like that was a really valuable thing
- [00:26:33.360]for me having moved from,
- [00:26:35.280]having my own self-contained classroom
- [00:26:37.585]and losing that, right?
- [00:26:41.160]But yeah, it seems like
- [00:26:44.970]one of the points that I think we wanna make
- [00:26:47.220]is like money is not the only thing,
- [00:26:49.590]but it's definitely a consideration.
- [00:26:51.690]Like it's something that you need to balance
- [00:26:53.940]as you're thinking about applying to graduate school.
- [00:26:56.430]It's not just the funding or the fellowship.
- [00:27:00.420]It's also, can you live in this place
- [00:27:04.380]for the next four to five years?
- [00:27:06.720]Six years maybe? Yeah.
- [00:27:08.580]Can you be happy there?
- [00:27:11.130]Does the program set you up to do what you wanna do?
- [00:27:15.180]What's the ROI gonna be on this, right?
- [00:27:17.430]Like how is it setting you up
- [00:27:18.960]for the kinds of work that you wanna do?
- [00:27:21.960]Whether you wanna be a professor,
- [00:27:25.080]or you want to go back out into non-profit work,
- [00:27:27.600]or you wanna work for a private corporation.
- [00:27:30.900]Or you wanna go back to schools and public schools.
- [00:27:33.197]Right. And work at the district
- [00:27:35.220]or whatever the next thing is.
- [00:27:37.020]And how is it gonna set you up for that?
- [00:27:38.880]And then can you afford to live there, right?
- [00:27:42.150]Yeah.
- [00:27:42.983]And also like, is it...
- [00:27:44.460]Like you landed in California,
- [00:27:45.930]which California is lovely.
- [00:27:48.120]It depends where you are.
- [00:27:49.560]And one of the things that UCR had
- [00:27:53.310]as their package is they have family student housing
- [00:27:56.460]that was incredibly affordable.
- [00:27:57.840]I don't think I could afforded anything else outside campus.
- [00:28:00.990]Right. And so that was delightful.
- [00:28:05.040]And when there are opportunities like that,
- [00:28:06.900]you're also around other students.
- [00:28:08.280]So you get a richer experience in multiple ways.
- [00:28:11.880]In our case, we also live basically on campus.
- [00:28:14.670]So our life for four years was really
- [00:28:17.880]almost a hundred percent on campus.
- [00:28:19.440]My kids went to preschool on campus.
- [00:28:21.720]We went to school.
- [00:28:22.950]Sarah worked on campus.
- [00:28:25.260]The one time we wouldn't go,
- [00:28:27.210]we weren't on campus was when we went to IHOP.
- [00:28:29.760]That was right off campus.
- [00:28:31.680]That's the only place we could afford,
- [00:28:33.540]give or take, for four years.
- [00:28:35.700]So that was family night.
- [00:28:37.500]That was kids eat free night.
- [00:28:39.000]At IHOP. Yes, at IHOP.
- [00:28:40.560]Nice.
- [00:28:42.450]IHOP is not paying us.
- [00:28:43.350]I think IHOP should.
- [00:28:45.060]IHOP, sponsor us.
- [00:28:46.890]Talk to us.
- [00:28:48.930]We'll gladly give you a shout out.
- [00:28:50.220]Yeah.
- [00:28:51.053]Is that pandering?
- [00:28:51.900]I might be pandering.
- [00:28:53.363]Mm, yeah. Marketing, marketing.
- [00:28:55.590]I'm marketing myself. Yes.
- [00:28:56.700]Back to, there we go.
- [00:28:57.780]Let's just kind of final words
- [00:29:01.770]as to what do you think people should think about
- [00:29:03.870]when they're starting to think about graduate school.
- [00:29:06.240]I mean, think about how do you want to live your life.
- [00:29:10.290]For four to six years, you're going to be tied
- [00:29:14.310]to this institution, you're gonna be tied to this work,
- [00:29:17.010]you're gonna be tied to that location.
- [00:29:19.020]It's not forever, necessarily,
- [00:29:22.410]unless you're like a stayer and you're like,
- [00:29:23.947]"This is where my roots are.
- [00:29:25.080]This is where I'm staying."
- [00:29:28.110]But think about what's the goal
- [00:29:31.680]and how does that program help you meet that goal.
- [00:29:35.940]And as you're working towards meeting that goal,
- [00:29:39.690]is it going to be under conditions that work for you?
- [00:29:44.550]And for me, there's the other side of this,
- [00:29:48.120]and that is you can explore, you can ask.
- [00:29:50.700]Eventually, you've gotta narrow it down to a few,
- [00:29:53.040]and you've gotta just make the decision and go for it.
- [00:29:56.010]It's always a bit.
- [00:29:57.570]It's never a hundred percent thing.
- [00:29:59.730]And if you go somewhere and it's horrible,
- [00:30:02.370]you can actually go somewhere else
- [00:30:04.530]or decide to do something else.
- [00:30:06.300]It's not a do or die.
- [00:30:08.340]So eventually, you gotta take that leap of faith and say,
- [00:30:12.727]"I've done my due diligence.
- [00:30:14.730]I've verified as much as I can.
- [00:30:16.290]Now I'm taking the leap knowing that
- [00:30:18.690]everything I'm thinking is probably only somewhat true."
- [00:30:22.500]Yeah, well, and I don't think that we've said this yet,
- [00:30:26.820]but like so much of your graduate school experience
- [00:30:29.460]is going to be you. Yeah.
- [00:30:33.810]So keeping in mind that each program,
- [00:30:36.180]each school is gonna have particular structures in place
- [00:30:38.700]to support graduate students, but portions of that
- [00:30:42.270]are how you negotiate and you navigate
- [00:30:45.450]all of those things, right?
- [00:30:47.280]So no school's gonna be a perfect fit.
- [00:30:51.060]No program's going to be
- [00:30:53.220]a perfect fit. Yeah, for sure.
- [00:30:55.080]There's gonna be, I think that the goal there
- [00:30:58.770]is to think about where is it a good enough fit
- [00:31:02.910]that's gonna set you up to do what you wanna do
- [00:31:06.000]with the least amount of unnecessary pain,
- [00:31:12.270]'cause graduate programs can be painful.
- [00:31:13.890]Yeah, and they are
- [00:31:14.850]to a second degree. Lot of writing,
- [00:31:15.840]lots of isolation. Yes, yeah.
- [00:31:17.700]Lots of reading.
- [00:31:20.250]But it doesn't have to be.
- [00:31:23.040]There's some unnecessary pain
- [00:31:24.450]that sometimes gets inflicted, I feel.
- [00:31:26.220]Yeah. And that's unfortunate.
- [00:31:28.440]I like to avoid that.
- [00:31:29.730]Yes, and so this is really all about the first steps
- [00:31:35.190]that we suggest you take on the way
- [00:31:38.310]to becoming not that kind of doctor.
- [00:31:41.880]Right.
- [00:31:43.200]Don't become that kind of doctor.
- [00:31:45.150]If you stab yourself while cutting cheese,
- [00:31:49.410]don't call us, 'cause we're not that kind of doctor.
- [00:31:52.260]And yes, I know you're not supposed to cut cheese like this.
- [00:31:54.720]It was a one time thing and of course it backfired.
- [00:31:58.200]No tendons got cut, but it happened.
- [00:32:01.590]And we're still here.
- [00:32:02.730]I'm still here.
- [00:32:03.563]And look at that, I can move it.
- [00:32:04.680]Yeah, excellent.
- [00:32:05.610]Yeah, yeah.
- [00:32:06.510]They were like, "You got lucky."
- [00:32:07.830]And I was like, "Yes, I did."
- [00:32:10.560]Thank goodness, 'cause this was-
- [00:32:11.883]That graduate degree is finally working.
- [00:32:14.160]Well, I mean, I was more sad about the lack of knitting.
- [00:32:19.170]But really, my literacy degree didn't help me at all,
- [00:32:21.780]because I'm not that kind of doctor.
- [00:32:24.090]All right.
- [00:32:25.043](upbeat music)
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