Future Grad Students

• My Graduate School: How to Make the Least of a Volunteer Research Position
  "Helping a professor with his or her research will seriously undermine your prospects of getting into grad school if you don’t do it properly!"
• My Graduate School: Understanding How the Applicant Selection Process Works
  "Without knowing how the selection process works, it is easy to make mistakes without realizing that you are doing so."
• Slate.com: Is a Science Ph.D. a Waste of Time?
  "After seven years in graduate school, I'm left wondering if the time and effort was worth it. What do scientists do these days, anyways?"

Grad Student Life

• Chronicle of Higher Education: Working Hours for Graduate Students
  "One thing any academic recognizes is the fact that there is always more work to be done. There’s always another article to read, another experiment to run, another set of data to code, or another archive to consult."
• Globe and Mail: Graduate Students Need Preparation for Life Outside University
  "Graduate education is key to developing the next generation of knowledge-leaders who have the research skills and critical thinking required to understand and solve complex problems."
• Inside Higher Education: The Problem of Student Gifts
  "They are rare, but when gifts from students arrive we should hear tiny alarm bells going off. They are never given anonymously, and they seldom arrive after the grades are in at the end of the semester, a situation that would present no problem."

Writing and Research

• College & Research Libraries News: Digital Humanities: Where to Start
  "DH can be understood as the place where traditional humanities research methodologies and media/digital technologies intersect."
• Chronicle of Higher Education: The Dissertation Defense: We're Doing Something Right
  "I never had a dissertation defense. My department had abolished them sometime before I arrived as a graduate student, and I considered myself lucky compared with friends at other universities who had to endure what I imagined as a painful ordeal."
• The Victorian Librarian: Here beginneth AcWriMo
  "Today is the first day of Academic Writing Month. I began by adding my details to the Spreadsheet of Academic Writing Accountability, where I’ll need to record my progress every day of the month."
  

After Graduation

• Research Whisperer: PostdocTraining: the why, what and how
  "I adored my early years in academia after finishing my PhD in 1999. I was steeped in research, running projects, managing relationships with industry sponsors, setting up my own lab, competing for funding and establishing international research collaborations. At the same time, I received next-to-no training in how to actually do any of these things, which were well beyond the skills I had learned during my PhD."
• Chronicle of Higher Education: Going Rogue
  "In my cover letter, I've literally called myself a "rogue scholar." I've admitted that I am not the sort of academic that the institution traditionally gives money to, and I've explained why they should take me anyway. Two months later I will be shocked but pleased to receive an acceptance letter."
• Nature Jobs: How to make the most of transferable skills
  "Some transferrable skills may be obvious – scientists are especially good at problem solving and analysis, for instance. But there are other skills, often known as ‘soft skills’, which form part of your work or home life activities that might not come to mind immediately, but could be usefully applied in a different role or context"
• Chronicle of Higher Education: What Doors Does a Ph.D. in History Open?
  "I recently went to dinner with six friends to talk careers. We all have Ph.D.'s in the humanities, but only one of us is working as a tenured professor."