Collaboration and commiseration with the cohort

Ah, breakfast.

All the better for the company of my fellow students. This time it was at The Loop in Calgary’s Myrtle Loop community and double delight in the fact that it wasn’t too cold venturing out earlier than usual on a Saturday morning.

One piece of advice we heard a couple of times during our orientation week last fall was to really make the most of the relationships at grad school. It’s easier and harder than it was in undergrad: easier because it’s such a small cohort (less than 15 for this year’s PhDs and MAs together) and harder because everyone is so. dang. busy. Between reading, being a teaching/research assistant, writing papers, journal entries, articles and proposals, it’s hard to make time to meet, let alone coordinate getting together. 

But it’s so worth it. 

Conversation topics on this Saturday morning, other than food and shopping and goings-on in the city, consisted of:

• hashing it out about the professors – who’s demanding, who was unfair, who has good advice, who doesn’t, who’s helpful, who isn’t (and it was all relative and personal)
• assignment expectations
• the stages of our writing (which pretty much we were all agreed on: nowhere yet)
• the stages of our thinking about writing (lots of progress, different stages, there)
• WTF about readings and theory

No one was really (yet) at the bitching stage and it was the best Saturday morning social gathering I’d been to in a while. 

I really don’t want to sound cliche, but it was really really good to know that none of us were truly alone in this master’s degree process: we were on similar pages with similar, yet different, struggles and cares and there was a true sense of encouragement and support amongst the group. 

If anyone ever asks me for advice about going on to graduate studies after a bachelor’s degree, I’m now going to include that same advice: get to know your peers and make relationships with them. 

In the valley with the rest of the grad students

I don’t know why I haven’t written more about being a grad student. I really wish I had documented and recorded some of the experiences of the first semester, because well…. they were some powerful experiences, probably shared by the great majority of first year master’s students. 

Today, this weekend, I am suffering from the ailment suffered the most by all graduate students, if #PhDchat is any indication, whether they are at the master’s, PhD, or post-doc level. Writer’s block. Kill me now.

How hard is it to put together a one-page proposal? 

I’ve had first semester to get somewhat familiar with an area (in my case, visual culture), just a toe dip, but that should be enough to flesh out a one page document, no? 

I am stuck stuck stuck. 

Fortified by strong tea and the advice of a friend who is a doctoral student in my program, I will endeavor to do my darnedest tonight. 

This is where I spend 80% of my awake time. Good thing I like this library. They allow you to eat and drink here. Lots of printers. Scanners if you need them, even laptops on loan. And iMacs, beautiful things, if you can get on them. And lots of windows, hence LOTS of light. Did I mention I like it here? @TFDL

Study: Professors Like Social Media More Than Other Education Technology

via edudemic.com

Really?

I have not found this to be the case in my interactions with professors from 2 universities, one where I work, and one which I attend, except for the example of YouTube, which many profs use. However, I don’t consider YouTube to be a real social media platform, since you don’t have to be “social” to show videos. You can lurk, search and watch videos without having to ever comment, post or like on YouTube. (I think you don’t even need an account to engage in the second set of activities.)

However, I would love to see more social media use by the professors I know.

Survival tactics

So, December has rolled around, faster than any one of us imagined. Ridiculous us. We should have expected it. 

Three papers, one at 12 pages, the others at 20 pages. At once. Here is where I lament the sad lack of time management skills. If ever there was a time to be developing and practicing those skills, it would have been around month 2 of the program. Month 1 was still pretty tame.

Things that have been helping, a LOT, are:

1. free and convenient access to a gym where I never have to wait for use of the machines (unlike in Vancouver or Kingston!)
2. the company of good friends to go out and grab a bite, despite the fact that we have deadlines looming. Food and conversations can help, seriously. 

Here’s to the last month. 

If I’m posting again in the new year, then it will mean I’ve made it and that I’m still interested in new media. Then it will have been worth all the turmoil and panic and (almost) tears. 

See the full gallery on Posterous

Are You Reading Too Much?

I ran across and interesting quote by Albert Einstein the other day.

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
~ Albert Einstein

via productivity501.com

 

Ha, this should be posted in every grad program office and classroom.

Wide open in the field

As I was preparing for a class presentation on reception studies, I came across Professor Henry Jenkins’ web page at M.I.T. I was taken aback by his listing of academic roles at the institution:

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

1998- Director, Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

1997- Full Professor of Literature, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

1994-97 Associate Professor of Literature, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

1993-98 Director, Film and Media Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

1993-95 Acting Director, Gay and Lesbian Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

1992- Member, Steering Committee, Women’s Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

1992-94 Member, Steering Committee, Cultural Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

via web.mit.edu

 

A jack of all trades, though I am sure the second part of the saying wouldn’t apply. Just look at the disciplines in which he is listed. 

I’m noticing more and more that contemporary media/communication studies scholars are usually well-versed in a range of areas, though maybe not as broadly as Prof. Jenkins, and this helps to assuage my anxiety that I’m going to be pigeon-holed for the rest of my academic life in the topic I pick for my masters thesis. I’m finding that this is not the case for academic lifers in communication and culture.  This is a good thing.