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Welcome to Grievances on Air. This podcast is an exploration of the difficulties and

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benefits of inhabiting grad school.

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By sharing these experiences, we hope to provide information for anyone considering entering

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into this journey themselves.

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Beyond that, through the staging of our particular narratives and perspectives, we want to create

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a collective space for processing the myriad emotions involved in the long process of grad

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school.

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Grief, joy, growth, enchantment, disenchantment, frustration, and maybe even triumph, to name

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a few.

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Your hosts, Mel, Riley, Amy, and Vidula, will share their individual experiences about

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grad school.

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Interspersed between these segments, you'll hear reflections from our colleagues' collective

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and independent experiences, discussing the ups, downs, and everything in between of navigating

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the institution.

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What I wish I could tell myself before entering grad school is that a PhD is not a predetermined

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path.

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There are as many options, opportunities, resources, careers, and journeys as there

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are graduate students.

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So I would tell myself that shifting away from the expertise model of grad school is

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a healthy and valuable way to explore my role in higher education and its unexpected little

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twists.

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You want to explore your specialized research interests in grad school and how they inform

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your work writ large, though grad school is also a time to connect with your aspirations

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in line with those interests, and that may or may not be within the traditional professoria.

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I'm just totally okay.

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I wish I knew how much grad school would come to feel like adulthood deferred.

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This is fine sometimes to not have a quote unquote real job and to spend my time thinking

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and reading and teaching and all that, but other times it feels lonely and childish.

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It was easier to avoid in the earlier years, but now my friends are getting married and

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having children and my family members are asking me my future plans and I feel embarrassed

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almost to not know what my job will be in a year or if I'll even have a job.

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The hardest part about all of this has been the precarity and lack of a clear future,

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which seems ironic given that I entered into grad school because it gave the illusion of

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stability.

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What other job can you get when you're 22 that will promise to pay you for six years

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and give you health insurance?

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At the time, this seemed like the jackpot and it also seemed like it would be familiar.

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I wouldn't have to find that real job anytime soon.

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I wish I had known how much things change over five or six years and that the familiarity

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of being a student could get old.

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But then I also wish I knew that the job of grad school didn't have to be my whole life

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and that life is actually really good outside the academy.

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I saw somebody once derisively say that grad school is just for people who want to extend

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their adolescence.

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They meant that as an insult, but I think they're actually right and it's just and it's

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not a bad thing the way that they said that it was.

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You know, if you are somebody who maybe is a little bit more uncertain of the path that

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you want to take, grad school can be a great way to extend like the timeline that you'll

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take to figure out what it is that you want to do while also doing something that is productive

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in the meantime.

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So long as you're not like in a financially ruinous situation because of it, it can be

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a great way to basically extend many of the benefits of adolescence, like sort of finding

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yourself understanding what is important to you in life and that sort of thing.

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The main value of grad school for me hasn't been anything strictly academic.

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Sure, I love my dissertation project and I love the reading and the teaching and the

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thinking, but I'm most glad to have had this time.

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In the past six years, I've taken up several hobbies and learned a number of new skills

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totally unrelated to writing.

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For example, every month for the past 18 months or so, I've chopped about 10 pounds of cabbage

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and radish and made a batch of kimchi.

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I go to the gym often.

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Sometimes I run, sometimes I rock climb, sometimes I swim.

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Last year I bought a bike and in between editing my dissertation chapters, I'll go on sunny

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meandering rides through my neighborhood.

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I learned to make sourdough last year, a few years late from the pandemic, but nonetheless,

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it has been a gift to learn so much, and about myself too.

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Ironically perhaps, the greatest thing I've learned is that I don't need to be an academic

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the way I once thought I did.

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Yes, I like the work and my project, but I like all the things that it has allowed me

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to do more.

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The value of grad school has been learning that life is not grad school, but instead

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it's making bread and petting my cat if you might be able to hear purring if you listen

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carefully and being with my friends and loved ones.

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It's corny, I know, and I realize that this also contradicts my gripe that being in grad

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school feels like adulthood deferred.

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I like this deferral, I like having this time.

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I guess both can be true though, and I feel ambivalent.

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Ultimately, I am glad that I went to grad school, it has been a great joy of my life

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to have so much time and to have spent it in this way, even if I'm now ready for it

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to be done.

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I also wonder sometimes if this is how everyone feels about what they did in their 20s, and

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if this is a function of getting older more than anything specific to the academy.

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I wish I knew before I came to grad school how responsible I would be for my own education.

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I thought that my professors would be invested in preparing me to be a scholar.

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I thought they would feel responsible for preparing all the grad students in their department

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to be competent and rigorous in their fields, and I thought they would care about all the

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students they admitted equally.

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And it turns out to be that a lot of us are admitted because we're cheap labor.

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In the summer of my final year in graduate school, I experienced a health crisis.

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I had a blood clot in close proximity to my heart, lungs, and brain, and it required multiple

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procedures for doctors to remove it.

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Weeks of hospital stays, numerous other surgeries, and long periods of uncertainty dictated my

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life that was once consumed and governed by my academic work.

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Until this point, I had bought into the idea that getting a PhD was about prioritizing

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my work and serving the institution.

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I was more worried about the start of summer classes than I was with having to live my

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life outside of school and take care of myself.

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How would I construct my syllabus?

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Did I upload my slides to Canvas?

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How much writing could I get done today?

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When I faced the reality that my body and my brain, the center of my knowledge, was

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in peril, I was forced to reconcile with the fact that I was reproducing and buying into

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the machine that is the academic institution, and that it was having very real material

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consequences on my well-being.

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This revelation was exacerbated by the lack of flexibility I found in the larger expectations

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of my institution.

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Being encouraged by administrators to remain on normative time when I was realizing how

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precious my time was, reminded me that the academy is so often beholden to its own productivity

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rather than to the actual successes of its students.

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As cliché as it might sound, this experience reminded me anew about how academia is made

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inhospitable, how it leaves so little room for personal struggle, how it asks us, over

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and over again, to commit ourselves to the backbreaking work of serving a fraught mission.

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This is, in my experience, one of the most distressing aspects of graduate school, and

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it is the very thing that I wish I knew before entering my program, that the larger institution

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cares very little, if at all, about the scholars, academics, creatives, and people it intends

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to serve.

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One thing I wish I knew before starting grad school is how important support networks are.

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So I had the opportunity to attend the graduate preparation program six months after starting

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my program, and I built some good friendships there that has lasted throughout my whole

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time in grad school, and it's been very important.

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There are things that we can't control.

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For instance, there was this COVID pandemic, and I think that friends are very important,

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that they help you to navigate through also academics.

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So yeah, that's one thing, very important thing.

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So paradoxical, grad school taught me how to care more deeply for the people around me.

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In the face of hostile environments and situations, I learned to care more intentionally for my

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friends, my students, my colleagues, my family, and for anyone outside of the insular academic

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bubble.

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Having cohort mates who rallied around me when I was bedridden, making me and my family

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meals, checking in, sending support, that was not an academic thing, but a human one.

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And so I draw from them when I say that I prioritize community over productivity, and

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that that has been the most valuable thing that I've learned in my time in grad school.

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In a more practical sense, and a sort of less trauma dumpy one, I found a lot of value in

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the skills I've gained from my program.

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Having new ways to research, understanding how to communicate using digital, visual,

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and oral tools, and getting to practice multiple genres of writing have all been beneficial,

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especially as I think about life after my degree, and as I consider what skills I've

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developed in my grad school experience holistically.

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I think grads aren't taught often enough about how our skills can translate beyond our areas

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of specialization and beyond our academic self.

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And so if listeners take anything from my experience, I hope it's that you understand

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your value outside of the institution.

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I'm new to grad school as well as new to the United States.

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Since the time I have been here, I'm constantly learning new things about the American education

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system, academic culture, American culture in general, as well as its diversity.

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There are many things I wish I knew about grad life before coming to the United States,

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and I believe the list is just going to be longer.

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I'm going to step back a little bit here and share my inhibitions around even applying

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to a grad school.

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I believed only high achievers were accepted in grad school, especially in a first world

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country like the USA.

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Second, I did not think of myself as someone whose research interests were both worth pursuing

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as well as I had the caliber to pursue it.

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Since in academia for a very long period of time, you or your community is the subject

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that is being studied and not the other way around, you don't have the confidence of

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thinking, oh, you know what, I can also turn the gaze around.

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One thing that I have learned in the short period of time that I have been here and interacting

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with other graduate scholars across disciplines is that my research interests are valid.

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What puzzles you in society is not just because of your lack of knowledge, which in itself

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is not a bad thing, like you can not know about certain things and still be okay with

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it.

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And I mean, it is just an opportunity for you to learn more.

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If you spend time with your research questions that you have and work on them and identify

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what is lacking in research, then your research interests are worth pursuing and you are very

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much capable of pursuing them.

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This has been my biggest learning and listening to research interests of other graduate students

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across disciplines has been like, I need to stop doubting myself and in my research project.

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So that has been a biggest learning for me and I wish I had more confidence when I started

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the research project or even before applying to graduate school, maybe I would have applied

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a little sooner.

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One of the things I wish I knew before entering my PhD program was that it is more like a

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job than my bachelor's or my master's were.

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So it can be really easy to fall into this trap of feeling like you are still in school.

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But really it is the beginning of a professional career ranging from the habits you form to

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the way you conduct yourself among peers and professors and advisors to the connections

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that you make along the way in professional venues.

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So I wish I had realized earlier that this time really is the beginning of a career and

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it helps with everything from skill acquisition to confidence to think about it and approach

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it that way.

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Since I have just begun my grad life, I believe I will be able to understand its value only

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at a later stage.

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However, I can speak about what in the past few months have been the most valuable thing

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to me.

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As I reflect on the last quarter, which was my first quarter, I can only think of friends,

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colleagues, faculty who have been supportive and encouraging, thus making my transition

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to grad life easier and challengeable.

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I have felt secure and less homesick in their presence.

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But perhaps the most important thing for me in the kind of support I have got is that

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many of my colleagues, friends have recognized the impact of ongoing war it has on so many

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of us in so many different ways, or just being mindful of the structures of inequality across

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globe.

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They are sensitive to my concerns, they have provided me the space to vent, have shown

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solidarity and understanding that is so rare to find in other workspaces.

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This has also given me the confidence to occupy academic space and I just hope I can also

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provide the same kind of support to incoming graduates in next year or subsequent years.

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I started grad school back in 2017.

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I am from Puerto Rico, a set of islands in the Caribbean that are officially understood

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as a US territory.

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Many of us would say colony instead of territory.

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Only two days after I completed my cross-country transplant to California, Puerto Rico was

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hit by Hurricane Maria, a devastating event that we are still grappling with today.

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Because of the degree of devastation, I lost contact with my family, my friends and most

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of my community.

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It dawned on me little by little, I didn't know anyone in California yet, and I was effectively

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cut off from my community.

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It was a hard and isolating time, but I was able to persist.

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If I could go back in time, I would tell myself how hard it can be to build a new community

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in a new place, not just because of cultural and linguistic differences, but because of

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the difficulty of really knowing who's who, as it were.

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People's deep values aren't exactly something that they write on their foreheads.

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It takes time to figure out who it is that is surrounding you and try to find your people.

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Coming straight from undergrad as I did, it took me a while to understand this shift.

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Some people, and perhaps most people in the institutional space, are simply your colleagues

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and not anything else.

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Perhaps because of this, I would also tell myself to really value and care for the people

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you find that you can actually trust with the deeper and more intimate parts of yourself,

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but to be careful of who you extend this trust to.

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So the valuable things that I took away from my grad program are, first, and this is something

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that I kind of had an implicit sense of but I wish I had been more intentional about,

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is meeting a community of people who are interested in intellectual topics similar to your own,

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or even just in general.

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Grad students are kind of weird and fun because they are really fixated on interesting and

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dense topics.

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If you're the kind of person who really connects well with people who are super curious about

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the world and curious about the world enough to devote years and effort of their life to

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it, then a grad program is a great place to meet other people who are like that, because

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not a lot of people are like that as it turns out.

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Like Riley earlier, a lot of the unforeseen value of grad school for me has been in what

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I've been able to achieve outside of the official curriculum.

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Even though it's not exactly a well-paid venture, once you learn how to juggle the

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obligations of your day to day, you can actually end up with quite a bit of extra time on your

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hands.

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Of course, the mandate of the institution is to produce, produce, produce, but I realized

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early on that if I let myself see to this demand, there would not be much left of my

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soul by the time I was done.

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For many of us coming from lower incomes or international locations, grad school can be

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a first opportunity to experiment with having a room of one's own, in Virginia Woolf's

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sense.

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With this space, time, and strategic use of money, I've been able to expand my craft

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as a musician and a poet.

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Two years ago, while I was back in Puerto Rico on fellowship, I published my first book

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of poetry with a wonderful publishing house on the main island, and I also had a book

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presentation in San Juan, well attended by friends, family, and a few strangers.

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Aside from that, all the music that you've heard throughout this podcast has been produced

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by me.

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The very fact that we've produced this podcast as a part of a university workshop and that

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I'm able to use these skills that I thought were outside academia, now for a sort of academic

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project, this fact might signify that things are changing and that there might be more

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room for our souls in the institutional space beyond the neoliberal mandate of endless production.

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Regardless, I'm not holding my breath.

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At the end of the day, grad school is a job, and untangling it from my personal identity

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has been very relieving for my self-worth and my work-life balance.

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All right, everybody, that's our show.

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I wanted to take a second to thank these people that shared their voices and their insight

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with us.

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These are Tara, Lorenzo, Chelsea, Juan, and my dear friend Mo.

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I also want to thank my fellow hosts, Amy, Riley, and Vidula.

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This is Mel.

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Like I said earlier, I produced this music and I largely produced this podcast.

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Last but not least, I want to thank you, our listener, whoever you are.

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I hope that you've gotten something out of us.

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All right, I guess that's it.

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I hope that you've gotten something out of us.

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I hope that you've gotten something out of us.