9 Lessons (Tao) that I Experienced and Learned To Survive as a Graduate Student

Believe it or not, if you have not heard of this, I spent 9 years and 9 months of my life as a graduate student. From April 1998 to July 2001 I was at the University of Tsukuba (Tsukuba City, Japan). The program that I was in kindly let me receive the Master’s degree but I struggled through all sorts of my own problems (low writing proficiency, terrible map making skills, poor interview facilitations, lack of reading, and the list goes on…). Despite such potential shortcomings, however, I decided to pursue Ph.D in the United States to complete my educational experience, and for whatever luck and fortune I had in my application I was accepted at several graduate programs and I chose the program which overturned their initial rejection after my school visit. Thus from August 2001 to December 2007, I was at the University of Kentucky, and in the end I successfully received Ph.D degree with enormous assistance by countless people whom I am grateful of.

As my years as a graduate student went by, the group of graduate students that I shared my collegial community life got younger every year. While this obviously means that I got older simultaneously, I felt the importance of sharing my thoughts and learned experience on what is important to be successful in graduate school for younger students, who may be new at the moment but must immediately go through various struggles and challenges without loss of navigable directions. Sometimes I vocally argued to everyone on the student listserv to make them think (and some of which subsequently created further discussions); sometimes I contacted person individually to provide my thoughts; and sometimes I held myself wondering whether to speak up, let the problems remain, or simply wait it to fade away. Arguments were also brought out during casual conversation at graduate student offices and mailroom as well as at various settings such as in class and seminars, weekly Colloquium, Happy Hour, and occasional receptions, weekend parties, departmental picnics, and all other events. Some of you may remember long discussions with me over beers.

In February 15, 2008, I was invited to speak about my experience of graduate program in the United States at “Study in the U.S. Group Advising Session” held by Japan-US Educational Commission (aka Japanese Fulbright Office). Prior to this session I was asked by the organizer to prepare my own answers for following questions:

• How did you choose schools to apply? Where and how did you gather information?
  
• What were the important factors for you in selecting schools?
  
• How did you deal with admissions tests? Do you have any suggestions for students who are concerned about getting higher test scores?
• What did you find the most difficult in the application process? What are the important factors for a successful application?
• How does the academic environment at US universities differ from that of Japan's?
• Emphasizing what you found different from Japan, what do American professors expect of their students? As a Japanese student, what were you expected to contribute?
• How would you characterize the relationship between Japanese and American students? What about other foreign students?
• What advice do you have for students who must find jobs after graduating? Do you have any specific tips on where they can find information on jobs and career matters?
• What did you find the most difficult in the U.S.? What advice do you wish you were given before departing Japan?
• What was the benefit of studying in the U.S.?

The funny thing is, I thought, answers to these questions can really be applicable to any graduate student—no matter where you are from and what you are studying. In other words, besides issues on strategy for applications and studying at country with non-native language, the success of completing programs, I believe, actually are related to what and how you answer these questions. And I think my long years in the graduate school allowed me to address these questions both professionally and personally.

If you haven't read it yet, Dr. Jonathan D. Phillips, one of my most admirable geographer, has a written statement called “The Tao of Earth Surface Systems” on his personal web site. I do not have enough experience or knowledge to write such things on academic world and disciplines, but perhaps what I can write instead is various thoughts and lessons that I learned through spending more than nine years of my life as a graduate student. Preparing to speak at above opportunity made me reflexively consider my own experience. I have seen so many people rise and fell from the program that I was in, and the reason for such matter cannot be simply described by being “smart” or “dumb.” Some shine for success and some make mistakes, leading to various directions for next steps. It is my hope that following statement, however unnecessary or disagreeable or flawed or incomplete, will enlighten the life of being a graduate student and whatever career that one will be pursuing.

1. Know (and Think of) Your Short-Term & Long-Term Goal, and Stick with the Goal that You Believe in

Why did you come to the graduate school? Why did you choose to study that subject (Geography, Social Theory, etc)? Why did you choose to come to the current graduate program? These are a first set of questions that new students will encounter when you come to the new program. Everyone have different answers (want degree, map is god, money shines, great faculty, nice community, only place I was accepted, previous program sucked, etc). And, after you spend weeks, months, and years, you will learn the positive and negative contingencies which are different from what you first envisioned. It may sound strange, but everyone has such experience, and you can’t put yourself in exceptionalism. If you like what is going on, that’s great and rock on. If not, you got to figure out what is going wrong and how to address that matter.

What are you trying to accomplish this semester, next semester, and when you are done with your degree program? When you are reading books for seminars or writing thesis/dissertation proposals, it is difficult to have a time to reflect yourself, but these questions are something that will always come back to your own future planning. If you do not seriously ask these questions to yourself and only pile up frustrations, being in the graduate school will lead you to lot of wasted time of life. If you do not like what you are doing, then, why bother? There are always reasons to what you do, and you have to keep thinking about it.

The goal(s) are likely to change time to time, and that is not the bad thing to happen. The important thing is to know what you want to do and how you want to succeed with it.

In my case, when I first entered the graduate program in the University of Tsukuba, I did not envision myself entering the academic world: I wanted to explore various unseen world (both domestic and international) that I missed while being in the basketball team during undergraduate years, and in fact I eventually wanted to be a Geography teacher in high school. Such indecisive attitude put me in great pain for being in the graduate school (1998-2000), but at the same time I did not want to quit in the middle and wanted to stick the best I can, which ultimately forced me to decide what direction I wanted to go. Things have obviously changed since then, and I managed to receive a doctorate at abroad, but this was a result of my change in focus over the years and sticking with the emerging goal which was supported by countless others. Everyone has a different goal at various stage, and although role models may exist, it is important to know what you are doing and for why.

2. Actively Learning from Others

Often I have seen people who seem to avoid speaking to others for intellectual learning. There were variety of reasons for this: Some lacked interpersonal communication skills, some were obsessed with his/her own works and beliefs, some prioritized family issues, and some seemed so confident of him/herself that there is nothing to learn from others. Whatever the reason is, I always thought he/she was missing opportunities.

You are perfectly fine to believe yourself that you are the smartest person in the cohort/grads/department/etc, but that doesn’t mean you have nothing to learn from others. If you believe that there is nothing to learn from others, well, you might not be in the right place. Because graduate school is not a stage for demonstration, but rather a site to learn how you demonstrate yourself. And this learning, as long as you keep yourself open-minded, it won’t end without any age, years, gender, degree, etc. And this is not either/or thing.

Maybe my experience with the disciplined basketball team makes me observe personal relations and learning experiences in vertical and horizontal ways, but it is always helpful to be conscious of knowing what you are learning from who.

3. Nothing is Lost for Asking, but Not Learning is Worthless for Asking

Asking questions will help to solve your concerns, but being ignorant about what you are asking is different. The type of questions that you ask (and especially if the answer is so obviously accessible to anyone) will partly describe characteristics of yourself. With current information age there are so many outlets to ask questions (email, blog, chat, etc). But it is important to always try to be ahead of information that you gather, and know the difference between what you want to learn and what you really know. I think there are lot of meanings behind when people say the phrase "do your homework": you cannot know everything, but you can always be ahead in knowing what you are trying to learn.

4. Look for and Know Your Niches

Nobody is completely same as someone else, and that also applies for research interests. To shine from your part, you need to know what you can do, what others can’t do, and what will be beneficial for your work to shine. Needless to say, these things have to be connected to what you like to do and think, because even if there seems to be any niche, you won’t be able to pursue forever without a passion to do so.

The worst case, in my humble opinion, is to choose any topic in your research and end up hating it, because it will ruin all necessary concentrations. Important difference here is not “hating” but rather “not knowing” what you do. Likewise, if you choose any research interest and see if there are others who are doing the similar stuff, find out what distinguish you from them. Is it your research questions, data, methods, or area, or all? It is important to always consider the originality of your interest, and how that can be differentiated from current ideas and knowledges.

For my case, when I went to grad school in Tsukuba I didn't have specific themes that I wanted to work on, other than choosing the United States as regional interest. (Perhaps domination of ontology hurts your academic goal and always need to think of epistemology?) Result was that I wrote a MS thesis on spatial comparison of language acquisition processes by "language minorities," which turned to be very positivist and I lost interest on this work on the way. I did not want to quit the program in the middle, however, so I pursued further and sought the topic on emerging interests: agriculture and food in the United States. When I first entered Ph.D program, I was thinking of writing a dissertation on tobacco farms in Kentucky (what a lame way of choosing the topic, by the way!), but over the years of observation and studies I ended up writing somewhat more complicated topics, politics of Food localism and place identities in the era of agricultural restructuring in Kentucky. It was never the perfect work, but at least I was fortunate to find a topic that enabled me to pursue and continue thinking. It took me three years to become ABD, and another three and a half years to finish dissertation, but the time I spent to think of my interest and fitting in niches were, hopefully, not that wasteful. I just wish I could have done it little more efficiently with shorter time.

5. “Treasure Every Encounter, for It Will Never (or Forever) Recur”: Reach to Know People Beyond Your Own Network

Great thing about being in graduate school is that you get to know people in fairly in-depth level (if you try). But not everyone will be working at same environment and condition as you will be doing. Graduate school is a great “house (or site)” to be in, but it is still important to learn about neighbors. I truly believe that one of the great thing about American academia is the wall that divides disciplines are much lower, and thus people can network freely beyond your rooted discipline. I had a great time and experience by having friends who are in the programs in English, Sociology, Political Science, and many more. These are people whom you never know when you may re-encounter in future, or they may become critical source of connection to people beyond your everyday networks. (And this, I think, is precisely the mission that UK’s Committee on Social Theory shines with reputation…) You can always protect your interests, thoughts, and intellectual values, but it doesn’t hurt you to know people beyond your everyday network. In fact, I think that was how our program got its own reputation. I remember the time when I used to say to my colleagues "I don't want to say 'I know him/her as we drank at Happy Hour together' after I leave, because we need to know beyond to help out for future success." I learned that I was pursuing ideal in the way I did in Japan, but I don't think that was really bad way to respect and treat your colleagues (who may perhaps be working at the same program?!).

6. Never forget to appreciate others’ efforts

Thank you, thank you, thank you. (Not to me, but to you) Expression is such a common sense, but it seems to me that there are so many people who forget or underestimate importance of expressing appreciation (it may sound weird but I am serious!). This is the first step to establish personal relationship. Unfortunately you cannot expect everyone to thank what you do, but that doesn't mean you should ignore to do so, because ultimately the degree of availability to express appreciation may characterize that person's reputation (evaluation). You don't have to have whole tons of friends if you do not wish to, but you also probably don't want to finish the program by adding more and more enemies. Your expression of thankfulness may motivate opponents to do something more (or same).

7. Do not afraid to make positive mistakes

ecause, what you think is right is what you really learn, no matter how it ends up taking too much time, money, and energy, what you spend will eventually come back to you. People learn from mistakes, and it usually comes from behind. The thoughts of "I wish I had done ...." only comes valid after the mistakes and commitment that you did, and that may not necessarily be the negative things. Being efficient is important, but that should not be the first utmost goal. Or, I can just say that I learn so much from being terribly inefficient and diorganized, as the time I spent in graduate school tells! :) But it wasn't all that wasteful, and mistakes from what I committed on did teach me in many ways.

8. Before begin complaining/blaming, think about positive solutions that you can make.

Someone can help you, but he/she cannot be obedient or completely reliant. This may sound contradicting, but you have to think about how to address concerns. Complains often reduce your stress and motivates for next step, but sticking with that complains will not be the best solution. Always think about what you can do (read, write, communicate, act, etc) to make changes rather than to wait to let things change for you.

9. Know Your Priorities (and where academic goal fits into it).

If you were asked about your "personal priority," what is it? Dissertation? Publication? Family? Hobby? Money? Job? Sleep? Consumption?

The priority differs by people and cannot be violated, but if one confuses his/her priority, that will lead to getting trapped. And I think this is the biggest factor that why so many people end up dropping out. My great friend Vanessa H. once said that as a graduate student you can have one thing that you get to spend energy or time, but it should not be more than two. And I agree. Unless you are content to be a part-time student, academic work is not something you can do as second-hand (though really smart people may do it, but not me!). I know it is hard to do multiple things at the same time, so try your best to put priorities in order and make sure you know how much you can/cannot do about them.

I will begin my teaching at Japanese universities for the first time in April 2008, and I can only hope that what I learned from colleagues and friends at two graduate programs that I went will reflect well in my teaching and future careers. But first of all, I better improve my English grammar...