Anyone who has read my blogs know that this is kind of an obsessive topic for me. I think that Professor Marcus’s article offers some very valuable advice, which she offers as a series of lessons learned. Like her, in my 14 years as a professor, I’ve learned a lot and now advise students differently, especially graduate students. To succeed in graduate school, you have to both be good at the field you’ve chosen and also enjoy it. If either of these elements is missing, you’re in for a rough ride and you may be better served by stopping and looking for a different path. But to succeed AFTER graduate school, as in the majority of your life that happens between graduating and retiring, you have to do more than master the subjects you are studying. You have to think about the next step from the beginning of your studies and start to prepare yourself for what comes next. And your professors may be limited in how they can help you, especially if your plans are not to become a professor. In addition to reading books and working on your language skills, you have to go beyond that, become better informed about career possibilities, look at some of the vast resources available on-line, and talk to people outside your own department. I think that one of the most important things we do in our introduction to graduate studies course is introduce our students to a bunch of people on campus who know things professors don’t know. Of these, one of my absolute favorites is our friend from University Career Services. I have watched her help so many people, but too often, people are seeking her help too late. The earlier you start working on career planning, the more experience and skills you can acquire so that when you graduate, you’re qualified for the kind of job you would like to have.
Sometimes I hear people say that having a graduate degree is a liability for getting a job. Nonsense. What is a liability is only having a graduate degree, especially when the degree is a non-professional degree. The world is filled with smart people who have interesting careers and who have non-professional graduate degrees, even humanities degrees! Get out there and find them. Find out what they did to get to where they are. And please, oh please, don’t wait until you have your degree to start figuring that out.