AcWriMo: types of feedback
How to ask for feedback, different kinds that you can ask for, common tricky feedback styles and more! This coaching call from my community is all about how and why you might want to ask for feedback, and best practices for getting what you want! get the transcript here!
how NOT to talk to grad students right now
over the last three and a half years, i’ve learned a lot of lessons about how to talk to and support people when they’re going through really hard things. it’s been a wonderful, eye-opening, hard exercise in the fact that most people don’t know how to support someone who is going through something hard. we aren’t taught how to do it, really - empathy is tricky and slippery. brene brown talks about it here - a video that i return to and send around often because i think it really nails the ways that empathy helps, and sympathy can be distancing.
it is no secret that everyone, to some extent, is having a hard time right now. there are the daily hardships, and then there are the bigger picture implications. it’s fair to say that everyone will be able to point to concrete, immediate, and long-lasting ways that the COVID-19 situation has impacted them.
but because i’m in the business of supporting grad students, a lot of what i’m reading and thinking about is how this will impact them. there are hiring freezes around the world, classes cancelled, work moved online with little support, incredibly murky job prospects, data collection halts, research impacts - the list goes on. and a lot of my work in the last few weeks has been undoing the well-intended (i hope) but unhelpful advice and coaching grad students are getting from everyone around them.
so i’ll outline a few of the common refrains i’m seeing, explain why they’re so frustrating, and then (because i’m not a monster) end with some suggestions for how to reframe and rephrase! of course - how we talk is just one part of this equation, but it is an important part.
unhelpful comments:
at least you have your research/books/some funding left/a few nibbles from the market
this will blow over in [a year, a few years] - just keep writing!
have you tried [setting a schedule, making a writing group, using a pom timer]?
i was on hiring committees/got a job in 2008; qualified candidates will always have opportunities
it’s also really hard to write a book at home and teach at home even WITH tenure
have you considered going into [any of the common alt-ac jobs, especially in academic spaces, which are all furloughed right now}?
higher ed has always been broken, this was always going to happen in some way or another
these are all, generally, unhelpful, because they:
try and find silver linings/redirect away from real loss and grief
make false equivalencies
minimize/ignore the structural stability and power differential between faculty and grad students
generalize about all loss without respecting the individual expereince
no one is saying that it’s easy to be a faculty member with tenure right now, or that there haven’t been losses in the market before. some of the suggestions about schedules and writing groups are ones that i myself am making! it isn’t that the advice is bad, it’s that the advice can’t be the first step. when you suggest alternatives, or insist, even implicitly, that people move into the problem solving phase, you set up your support as conditional. no one owes you proof they’ve considered alternatives in order to be sad.
grad students are smart people! i can confirm that there isn’t a grad student on earth right now that isn’t at least a little bit aware that suddenly, the entire game has changed. no matter what stage of study, from early coursework to just about to cross the finish line - every grad student is grappling with the reality that a return to “normal” is on the distant horizon, if there at all. their goals for research have changed. publication plans are shifted. the job market is hard to even think about. offers are being rescinded and universities are shutting down and an already precarious, oversaturated higher education landscape is only going to become more so. sure, starting a writing group might help in the short term to keep some structure and move projects forward, but that’s not all that students need from their advisors, supervisors, and mentors right now.
things you can say that are helpful as a person who works with grad students:
how are you doing?
this really sucks
i don’t even know what to say right now
this is really hard
what would be helpful right now?
do you want to strategize or brainstorm? it’s okay if you don’t
i might not fully understand what you’re going through, but you can count on my support
what can i do to support you?
when should we next touch base?
i’m overwhelmed right now, and will be less available than normal. but you can contact me during [x time frame] or get in touch with [other person] if you need something immediately.
i’m sorry if came off as condescending or gruff before. i really don’t know what to say, and was attempting to offer support.
things you can do that are helpful as a person who works with grad students:
validate validate validate! most people want to be seen and heard when they’re hurting - it’s much more important than being able to fix something that is probably unfixable
ask if people want suggestions or advice before offering them - many people do want to brainstorm, but asking first is always a good idea! sometimes people have some processing work to do before they’re ready to move on to the next step
try not to draw equivalencies - especially for grad students who are looking at a job market that changed so suddenly and horribly. you can have had a hard time on the market while also respecting that this is not the same market.
get clear about your own boundaries and how you’re taking care of yourself! this is a really stressful time for everyone. you might not have the same bandwidth to be on email all day, quickly turn around drafts, or meet regularly. but if you communicate when you will be available, and for what, ahead of time, then your students can have a chance to plan and work around your availability, rather than wondering if you’re okay or if it’s appropriate to reach out.
fight for grad student support if you can. there are so many groups of people in the higher ed space who are looking at an uncertain and scary future - faculty are of course not immune from raise freezes, furlough days, course reductions, or layoffs. but many of the spaces wehre grad student support is debated are completely closed to those students. be an advocate for your students in departmental meetings, with your deans, with your provost. even if the answer is “there’s nothing we can do”, the fact that you advocated for them means that there’s some record of the need, and that helps.
be available after the defense, if possible. many of the soon-to-be degree holders i work with are panicked that they’ll be far from campus, degree in hand, and no access to their supports as they try and navigate whatever the market becomes next. you of course are not single-handedly responsible for supporting every one of your alums, but an email check in, video catch up, or a renewed committment to writing letters goes a long way right now.
no one person can fix this on their own. no amount of zoom meetings or reading drafts in an hour and getting them back will guarantee grad students a job, or a market when this is over. a lot of people are going to be facing hardships of their own - which is why we all have to figure out what support we can offer without draining all of our own resources. this is going to change higher ed. this is going to define an entire generation of future scholars. believe your grad students when they say that this is really hard. know that their struggles don’t invalidate yours, but they are different, as those with less power and less stability always feel the impacts of global situations more acutely. grad students aren’t a monolith - this 100% exacerbates the insecurity felt by first generation and underrepresented scholars, those with less financial security, and those who have many responsibilities outside of their work.
empathy helps. meet people where they are. ask them what they need rather than assuming you know what will help. be prepared to think about the limits to your own resources, and how you can use them efficiently and effectively to support your students. no one gets this right from the jump - we all have to apologize when we hurt when we were trying to help, and try and do better once we know better. we do the best we can.
So your advisor sucks. Now what?
One of the truthiest truths about grad student supervision is that very, very few people are explicitly trained in it. So faculty members get jobs, bring on students, and then....have no real sense of how to mentor a student other than how they themselves were mentored. So many students find themselves with a mentor that doesn't fit their needs. But once you realize that your advisor isn't what you need.......then what?
Step One. Accept that it isn't fair, and that it is a systemic issue. This is an important step because most graduate students I know working with supervisors that are not good fits internalize that on some level. They work harder to try and please an unplease-able critic. They hide their diverse career plans because they sense they won't be supported. They take advice they know doesn't fit their values or their life because it seems disrespectful or sneaky to ask for a second opinion. If your advisor only reads the work of the person in your lab who is "on deck" to graduate, that isn't a fair system - you all deserve feedback. If you worry about your funding disappearing if you reveal something about your personal life or future plans, that isn't fair - it doesn't have any real bearing on the work you're doing in the degree. These issues are pervasive, and they often have everything to do with how the supervisor understands their role, and little to do with any individual student. It isn't fair, it sucks, it actively hurts graduate students, and more than likely, you didn't do or say anything to cause the situation. (This isn't to put all the blame on individual advisors either - when you produce exponentially more PhDs than there are available tenure track jobs, it fundamentally changes the purpose of the degree, and mentorship has to change along with that, and few supervisors are trained in how to support students through a degree that looks nothing like they one they received. This is an academia-wide issue.)
Step Two. Identify what you need. So once you've accepted that your advisor isn't supporting you in all the ways you need to be supported, it is tempting to generalize: they're just a terrible advisor and there's nothing to do about it. But often, digging through to a more nuanced understanding can be really helpful. Maybe they're extremely thorough careful readers of your writing, but they don't really know how to support your career plans. Maybe they're incredibly supportive of your health and allowing you to build a flexible work schedule, but there is no real structure in place to make sure that you're on target to graduate when you want to. Dig in and figure out what areas really need support - your graduate school experience is complex, and needs to be supported in a lot of areas. The more you understand where you need the support, the easier it will be to find it.
Step Three. Empower yourself to get the help you need. It is so hard to say: this isn't working, and I need more help. But if you can get to a point where you want to do well in grad school and beyond MORE than you want to never need help, it becomes easier to ask for the support you need. Ultimately, unless your advisor is a magical unicorn, you will need additional support that they cannot give. This is especially true because only you can zoom out and see the entire picture of your life; only you know where you want to be in five or ten years, or what things are incredibly hard to achieve, or what your health and wellness is. It is hard to remember when everyone is trying to keep up a perfect image for the eventual job market, but the number one goal in graduate school is to complete the degree, not to complete the degree without needing any support from anyone ever. So if your goal is to complete the work, why not ask for the things that will make that easier? Why not build up the team of mentors, support, and resources you need to get where you want to go, in the way that makes the most sense for your life?
It would be great if academia were a system that was inclusive, where support was offered freely and a diversity of goals and experiences were anticipated and planned for. Many of us are working actively to make that happen. But until then, the biggest danger is not bad advisors. The biggest danger to graduate students is the belief that your entire fate rests in their hands. It doesn't. Working to support yourself so that you can do your best work is a skill that will pay off forever - and now is a great time to start.
Should I work outside of my PhD?
In this, I walk you through what I think were the pros and cons of working "outside" of my PhD. I often wished that someone could walk me through these same concerns while I was in the thick of my degree. It was stressful and scary and exciting trying to balance preparing for my post-PhD career while finishing the degree itself, so here I am now to be the guide I wished I had.
Some background: For the purposes of this post, I am not counting work that I did in the scope of my degree, which includes, most significantly, my teaching load. This concerns my paid employment - some jobs inside the University, but some outside - that I did during my five years as a PhD student and then candidate. Here is a list of the positions that I held during that time, with a brief description of how much time they took:
Web designer - did some very low level freelance web work, maybe 100 hours total over the course of the five years.
Sample Salesperson for a gluten free baked goods company - 4-5 hours, three weekends a month for about a year.
Pet sitting - As the resident animal lover/person who was researching animals, I did quite a bit of pet sitting for faculty in the department. Varied from drop-in feeding visits and dog walks to weeks spent living in faculty member's houses.
Program Coordinator, PFF Seminar - After completing this program as a participant in the summer of 2014, I was asked to interview and subsequently hired as the grad student Program Coordinator, which ranged from 5 hours - 40 hours a week from December - June. I had expressed interest in professional development as a possible career to the leaders of the seminar when I was a participant, which was my foot in the door. I held this position in 2015, and again in 2016.
Program Coordinator, PFF Conference 2015 - After a successful seminar as coordinator, I was asked to stay on and help to manage the one day conference version of the seminar. This job ran from July - late September, and probably averaged 20 hours a week.
Teaching Consultant (General and Digital Pedagogy Focus) - To round out my professional development resume, I interviewed to become a teaching consultant. I planned workshops, observed teaching and gave one on one feedback. With training, consultant round tables, and client work, I probably averaged 10 hours a week in the school year of 2015-2016.
...so that's a lot of work! Here is my list of what I think I gained and lost throughout all that:
WHAT I GAINED:
A ton of experience. When I started to put together my resume after I graduated and was on the alt-ac market, I could make a respectable list of employment without needing to list my teaching or research as the top of my employment history. I could also point to projects I lead, conferences I managed and a variety of "hard skills" needed to do those jobs. Because my committee was unevenly supportive of my alt-ac plans (more on that below,) working in so many capacities also gave me a "deep bench" of letter writers and references for those job applications.
A sense of financial independence. Although my program was very well-funded comparatively, I enjoyed a little bit of extra cash to fund things like my nail polish habit.
Teamwork. I love working with other people, and I found the process of writing my dissertation isolating. Having a place to go where I could work on a shared project, talk with other people about their teaching, and generally bounce ideas off other humans was an important outlet for me.
A place where I felt valued and accomplished. Praise and big milestones can be unevenly dispersed throughout the PhD process, and graduate school in general, so my other jobs did a lot of work to shore up my sense of achievement during those "dry spells." Having other people count on me to deliver products, and deliver them well, helped to counteract the "why am I doing this does anyone even care will anyone read this???" moments of writing my dissertation.
On the job experience in a field I was interested in professionally. Working at the same organization (the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at UMich, in my case) in several different position gave me the most valuable kind of data on the field and the job: time. Working at CRLT (in different positions) for more than two years gave me a chance to see many different sides of the organization, the field of professional development, and to actually do (parts of) the job of a full time professional.
WHAT I LOST:
Time to work on my own research. Although I did manage to get a few (small) publications out while I was in my PhD, this was the biggest thing on the chopping block for me. I couldn't do it all, so publishing while also writing the dissertation was the biggest professional sacrifice. This absolutely impacted my CV, and my future prospects for post-docs and other positions.
Chances to network in my academic settings. Because I was always occupied with other tasks, I often couldn't volunteer for the intangible networking opportunities, like taking visiting scholars to dinner, or go to talks on campus. This severely limited my exposure to scholars outside of my campus and in my field, as I only really got a chance to interact if I was at a conference.
The opportunity to be fully open with my advisor and committee. I got mixed signals from my advisor and some committee members about my work outside of the department, especially with the teaching and learning center, so I kept very quiet about how much I was working there. This made it difficult for a number of reasons, but especially when I was trying to schedule and then meet my deadlines for my dissertation. It is hard to ask for flexibility in hitting deadlines when you aren't being above board about your time pressures. I also lost the chance to have my department celebrate in some of those successes with me, and to have other graduate students see my work, and how I built a path through the degree that suited me and my values.
Time. But at the end of the day, the biggest sacrifice was just the time itself. I always viewed my outside employment as above and beyond, which meant that if I was working at night or on a weekend, it was almost always because I needed to catch up on my outside work. This cut into my personal life, and to be honest, at times made me a little bit bananas and led to my complete burnout at the end of the program.
There is no real point in "regretting" my choices - the time is spent and I got what I got from those experiences, and so much of it was completely valuable and worthwhile. As the conversation grows around alt-ac and post-ac careers, and how to build skills during grad school to serve a wide range of career choices, more and more people will invariably be working alongside their research and teaching. I had very few people that saw the "full picture" of everything that was on my plate as a graduate student, so hopefully by sharing some of what I was up to will help others make more informed decisions about what to take on, and when, while in their degrees.
Should I tell my advisor about my mental health?
At the end of my first year of my PhD program, I was completely, utterly, and magnificently burned out. I had one final seminar paper left to turn in, and it was due at noon that day. My anxiety was so out of control that I couldn't bring myself to start the paper until the day before it was due, and I pulled an all nighter (my first) to finish it. I finished it, went to campus to print it, only to find that my endnote software had crashed and I had to redo the bibliography by hand. it was late, my professor noticed, and commented. I felt no relief, only more anxiety. I walked across campus to the campus counseling center, past the undergrads relaxing on the Diag feeling the joy I wished to feel, and requested a same day, emergency appointment. Within a week, I was seeing a therapist off campus (my condition was "more severe" than the short-term counseling services felt comfortable handling) for appointments two days a week. Outside of my partner, who lived with me and was blessedly not an academic, I told no one and attempted to keep up with the work load of my summer research job, exam list preparation, and archival research trips. This was, in retrospect, not the most effective way to manage my own health and kept me from important sources of support. But through continued work with professionals, I eventually learned how to speak about my own mental health in a way that felt safe and professional.
One of the hardest parts of my graduate school career centered around the issue of disclosure. I never felt entirely confident that I was telling people what they needed to know, or that I was safe in disclosing information about my health, mental and otherwise. Some studies estimate that as many as a third of all graduate students are dealing with mental health issues at some point during their graduate studies. As the conversation on campuses about mental health continues to grow, and more and more people call for policies and protections for students and faculty both, but unlike undergraduate students, grad students walk the line between colleague and direct report, often without explicit cues that the roles are switching. So how do you know if you need to disclose a mental health condition to your advisor? Here are my general guidelines, with the explicit acknowledgment that my thoughts are not meant to be prescriptive, but to give you a starting place for thinking through your own relationships.
If your health - mental, physical, emotional - is in jeopardy because of a work deadline or situation, find advocates to help you facilitate the conversation with your advisor. In crisis or acute situations, there are often third parties available on campus to help facilitate these conversations - check your on campus counseling centers, Dean of Students office, or Services for Students with Disabilities office. Just as you might accept documentation for a student in your class of an acute crisis, so too can you offer that same documentation. Even if the conversation is less formal or does not involve documentation, talking to a mental health professional about how to disclose a crisis or acute situation can be a helpful step before talking to your advisor, giving you a script or language to fall back on if the situation is emotional or tense.
You do not need to justify your mental state with details, symptoms, or diagnoses to "prove" the legitimacy of your situation. I often felt the pressure to share more details about a crisis or diagnosis to "prove" that I wasn't suffering from "regular" anxiety and therefore "deserved" the deadline extension or other accommodation. A great rule of thumb is that if you wouldn't share that level of detail for a physical health situation that you are having, you do not need to share it for a mental health situation. If for some reason your advisor or department is pushing for detail that you are not comfortable providing, you can look into obtaining documentation from your health care provider that verifies that you are seeking care without containing details you want to keep private.
Consider building a team beyond your advisor to support your work, especially for long term projects and deadlines. Graduate student advisors are, as we all are, busy people, and very few have the bandwidth available to coach students through the day to day process of producing work. If you only check in with your advisor when major milestones are hit, it might be helpful to build in smaller deadlines with accountability checks to writing groups, writing partners, other committee members, or an outside coach. When the system for enforcing deadlines shrinks to the student-advisor dyad, the temptation to procrastinate, avoid, or ignore work grows, and the relationship can feel adversarial rather than supportive. Having more structure in place to spread out that accountability can help lessen the pressure of the "final" deadline and encourage smaller, more consistent work sessions. You can then keep the day to day challenges of working out of the conversation with your advisor, and seek support from others with less weighted relationships.
Communication (following boundaries that you feel comfortable with) is key. If it becomes clear that a deadline is no longer workable, or that you are in a situation that significantly impacts your work, being in control of the conversation and communication can help to alleviate some of the anxiety of disclosure. Rather than waiting until a deadline or other milestone has been missed to offer an explanation, take the initiative to disclose your situation, and then offer a plan that is workable for you. Email is an amazing tool here - it lets you control the information that you give without the pressure of an in person conversation. Communicating early, and offering solutions that work for you, shows that you are taking responsibility for your work rather than being "caught" when the crisis has already occurred.
Just because you shared details of your mental health in a previous situation does not mean that you are obligated to do so in the future. Being open with other graduate students or peers does not mean that you have to be as open with faculty members. Each situation, and each conversation, is unique. As I was still learning to cope with my anxiety disorder and the pressure of graduate school, I gave more detail than I would later feel comfortable doing. A therapist told me that no one is entitled to details of my mental health just as no one is entitled to details of my physical health. It is my responsibility to take ownership of my own work, my deadlines, and my contributions to the work of the department (teaching, etc) but it is not my responsibility to keep everyone "up to date" on my health unless I felt comfortable doing so. It is appropriate to have different boundaries with different people - openness with some does not obligate you to openness with all.
Mental health challenges is, whether it appears so or not, an increasingly common aspect of graduate school. The more that these conversations happen in safe, productive ways, the more normalized the situation becomes. However, your health, your boundaries, and your needs come first. Hopefully some of these thoughts will help you to formulate your own game plan for how to balance all the aspects of yourself in your professional relationships.