Episode 1: Life as a Graduate Student in 2026

Suzanne Barbour

Hi, I’m Suzanne Barbour, Dean of Duke Graduate School, and I’m delighted to welcome you to the very first episode of Duke GradCast. This new podcast is one of the many ways we’re celebrating The Graduate School’s centennial year in 2026. Our goal is to tell the stories of the remarkable people who have driven our community forward these last 100 years, to reflect on the discovery, innovation, and impact that define us, and to imagine what the next century will bring. To kick things off, we’re hearing from three exceptional graduate and professional students: Ariana de Souza, a Ph.D. student in Earth & Climate Sciences; Anvita Budhraja, a Ph.D. candidate in English; and Ian Redmond, a third-year student in the School of Law. As you’ll hear, these three students have very different perspectives on graduate school, representing the very different lives of professional students as well as Ph.D. students in the humanities and STEM.
Despite coming from these different worlds, they’ll discover they have much in common, bringing curiosity, insight, and a genuine enthusiasm for their work and for Duke. What drives them as scholars and professionals? How are they finding and building community here? And how do they see graduate education evolving for the next generation? I'll turn it over to Ian, Anvita, and Ariana for their thoughtful and candid conversation.
 

Ian

All right, guys. Let's jump in. My name is Ian Redmond. I'm a 3L at Duke University School of Law.

Anvita

My name is Anvita, I'm a Ph.D. candidate in the English department.

Ariana

I'm Ariana de Souza. I'm a Ph.D. student in the Earth and Climate Science department.

Ian

So, let's talk about how we got here. Does anyone want to volunteer?

Ariana

Sure. I was an undergrad student at UCLA and I did my undergrad in biology. And then after that, I came here.

Anvita

I got my undergraduate degree in English. I took a year off on my professor's recommendation and really thought about what I would like to gain from my graduate education and, yeah, then I came here.

Ian

So, I actually started off in community college in Illinois, I’m from Chicago. I dropped out after one semester, and I decided I had to get my life together. So, I joined the Marine Corps. After I got out, I realized I wanted to try college again. So, I went to the University of Alabama for about three semesters. I moved back home, found a random job on Craigslist as a private investigator; I was doing worker's comp and insurance fraud for about two and a half years. In the meantime, I got married and had a kid, and so I decided I wanted to do better and try to make a better life for my kids long term. So, I decided to go back to college. I enrolled in the Northern Illinois University, graduated summa cum laude, and now I'm at Duke Law.

Ariana

Wow. That's a very impressive. What a story.

Ian

Thank you.

Anvita

Do you find that your private investigator days help you in law school?

Ian

Absolutely. I sometimes think I just see angles other people don't see just based on lived experience. And you kind of learn that people are creatures of habit, and so you pick up on little things. And I think that definitely comes to fruition when I'm like, planning a case.

Ariana

Wow. That's super cool. We should just talk about that. (laughs)

Ian

That's a story for another day, another podcast. So, I guess since we're all grad students, what do you guys think are the biggest challenges in graduate education over the past few years?

Ariana

That's a big question, I think that at least for me, I am the first one in my immediate family to get a graduate degree. I came straight out of undergrad, which I generally do not recommend. I think there's so much that you cannot know about getting a grad degree when you don't, like, when no one in your family has gone through it. And even if people in your family have gone through it, it's such a crazy thing. It's not like a regular job. There's, like, power in different spaces than you think. So, I think it's I think it's really hard to adjust into that space of being like, in my case, I'm in the Earth and Climate Sciences, I'm in the STEM field. So being a student in a lab, having a PI, all of those things are like such a huge thing to just do. Even if you were doing research in undergrad.

Anvita

I also think it's very, varied across disciplines. So, I've heard a lot about, you know, STEM disciplines and their graduate experience with the PI, with the lab, the set up is so different from the humanities. And I can speak for English where it's so much more, independent, so much more individual, it's you and your dissertation advisor and your committee. It really is about how much you want to interact with them. How much you want to take their advice and help. Hopefully you get along because that's what they're there for. But, yeah, I think the biggest challenge or the thing I wasn't expecting was just how independent you get, especially by your fifth or sixth year. You really make your own graduate education in the humanities, because it really is up to you to seek out community. And it really is up to you to seek out peer networks and it really is up to you to seek out faculty mentors. And, if you do that, you know, it's it's excellent. But yeah, you're, you know, you're writing your dissertation for the last three years. And it's a very, sort of, individual process.

Ariana

It can be very lonely.

Ian

Yeah, definitely. I think from the legal side, admissions has changed a little bit. I think it's less credential-based than it has previously been, and it's more about the experiences you've gathered along the way, about your identity and, just what you can bring to the school that's a little bit different than the average student. And even in from the career perspective, I think there's a lot more focus just in general on corporate law because we acquire so much debt. Going to law school, there's this big rush to get as high a paycheck as you can to try to pay off that debt as soon as possible. So you have less people going into public interest field and government work, because the pay scale is just vastly different, in private practice, rather than, public interest. Like, for me, at the forefront of my list of attending schools was how much money am I going to owe? I know people who are $300,000 or $400,000 in debt. You know, you're thinking long term, definitely. There's a little bit of prestige that comes into it, but— for some of the positions, like clerkships and, becoming a judge— but it's definitely about where can I go from this platform? Like, what kind of platform does a school of this program give me? And how can I, you know, stay within a reasonable payment plan for these student loans that I'm going to take out?

Ariana

Do you—? Sorry, do you get a stipend?

Ian

No, I get a scholarship. So, the law school, we—they— interview you, for need-based scholarships and just, academic accomplishments. So, everyone is interviewed when they get in, and, I don't know the exact numbers, but most people get something, right? I guess if I'm being blunt, I got a $90,000 scholarship, so that covered one year, and then I still had a little bit of my GI Bill left.

And so that covered the second year, and I'm on the hook for the third year with interest. So, I'll come out of here on about $100K, which all in all is not bad considering I didn't have any undergrad debt. So, the GI Bill was definitely blessing for me. And the scholarship as well. So, all in all, you know, I'm very happy with my outcome here, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Ariana

Yeah. That's really interesting. As Ph.D. students, we get— it's different depending on all the schools. There was one school I interviewed for, and they said that they couldn't afford to pay me at all. And so, I would just come in, you know, out of the love in my own heart, but at Duke, we get our tuition covered and then a stipend. And the stipend really depends on— you can get it in multiple different ways. You can be a teaching assistant, you can be a research assistant where you're on a grant of your PIs, or you can bring in funding in your own way by applying to grants and having that funding through that. And that will usually match the Duke stipend or it might be higher, depending on what you do.

So, I've had a variety of those different funding sources, but I will say being a Ph.D. student, it is like a— it's a huge privilege, because not everyone can come in being like, “okay, I'm happy with getting like $30,000 a year.” And that's like quite generous in, in our landscape.

Anvita

Well, I mean, speaking to that, if you wanted to maybe talk about resources or support systems, at Duke or elsewhere, that have helped us through this journey.

Ariana

I mean, there's a lot of grants that we apply for. Duke has some support systems in terms of like food resources for students like the Duke Student Pantry, things like that. So, there are options, but I think a lot of people assume that the passion is enough to sustain you. And I think that like, I think that passion can be taken advantage of a lot in these systems for sure.

Anvita

I think it's also different. And you know, Ian, you can speak to it, but, I wonder if it's different in professional schools; for a Ph.D. is there's always the push and pull of you're still a student, in the sense of you are learning, you're expected to sort of, you know, occupy that space. You're pursuing research and inquiry and, you know, you’re a student in that way, but you're also working or providing service in terms of grading or teaching or research assistantships and teaching assistantships or a lot of other things as well. So, there's always the push and pull of that, that we have to navigate. And I wonder if that's different in your experience.

Ian

It's a little different. For instance, the law school does not allow you to work your first year, so that's not even on the table. If you wanted to get some side money, you'd have to either find an outside resource or take out a loan or, just have some, help from family or friends. And I guess going forward, they're more focused on you growing as a professional, so, getting that experience doing clinics, externships, getting a job throughout your summer. So, it's not really so much, what you're doing for the school. It's like how you're bettering yourself for the future. That's really where their focus is. So most of our resources go towards career prospects rather than how to manage yourself and sustain while you're here. Although we do have the Career Center and, you know, some of the same resources like the GPSG Community Pantry, shout out Calvin, who's the director of that.

Ariana

That is amazing. What a great resource.

Ian

Calvin is amazing. But, yeah, so we still have those communal resources that we share with most of the other graduate and professional students. But, with our own school, it's definitely more career-oriented.

Ariana

Going back to the question about what success looks like, I think it's so dependent on each student. I think coming into grad school, before you, you know, apply, you really have to think about what you're doing it for. I think personally, I feel like it's so easy to get lost. I'm in my sixth year, and it's so easy within that time to get lost within the project, and to just feel like it's never going to end, and you're going to be doing this for the rest of your life, these same three or four projects, and for me, it's been really helpful to think about what's going to happen after. I think at some point I started being able to think about what comes after, but before, it just like there wasn't even an after for me. It just felt like after my Ph.D., the world ended. Because I think coming and getting a Ph.D. has been such a goal for so long.

I think same thing with probably a lot of college students where it's like, you reach college, your whole life has been about getting to college, and then there's no, there's nothing after. So, thinking about what comes after, going to the Career Center has been really encouraging for me to make it through because I've been excited about actually what I'm doing this for and what comes after.

Anvita

Yeah. I would be curious to hear more about how sort of you're preparing, you know, for what happens after the Ph.D. It's definitely been a process for me as well. I've been trying to sort of envision different ways of what, you know, life can look like after grad school.

So, what has been helpful is, and this is definitely a change in the past, I’d say decade, but looking at peers who've graduated before me and seeing the kinds of lives or careers that they have chosen or created for themselves, that has been very helpful. And there is a diversity now, especially in the paths that they've chosen, and they've been so generous with their time every time I've reached out.

So that has been very helpful, even just to envision, you know, paths after grad school. And so, yeah, I'd be curious how you're preparing.

Ariana

That's a great question. I don't know if I'm preparing. (laughs) My partner asks me all the time, like, am I excited to graduate? And I, I don't know, I, I feel, I put so much energy into finishing, you know, like, I can't really think about what comes after, but, I think there has been a huge increase in diversity, at least in my department, about what comes after. I think previously, you know, you come to a Ph.D. and if you're in like research STEM, then the idea is you're going into academia, you're doing this, and then you're going to get a postdoc or multiple postdocs, and then you're going to become an assistant professor and then tenure, and you get your own lab and all of that stuff.

And that's just the path that I think is assumed. But it's never really been my idea. I've mostly been interested in research, and so I think I've seen a lot more people in my department not really looking towards academia. And I think that's for a variety of reasons. I think people are thinking about wanting to do more applied work, than I think they assume that they can do in academia, or they are thinking about work-life balance a little bit more. I, when I started, I wanted to do government research, so I wanted to work at the EPA or at NOAA afterwards. And, that dream has kind of fallen.

So now I think I'm having to think about, like, what else I could do. And that's been really exciting. I think also having an idea at the beginning and then you kind of get locked into it, but it's been kind of exciting to think about what else there is out there. So, I really try and try and have been learning about, like trying to start with why I've, why I've started research, why I'm interested in research.

What are my favorite things about it, and then seeing how I can continue that in the future.

Ian

That's so interesting that you guys kind of come into your programs not knowing when it's going to end, not necessarily knowing what the actual outcome is. Because, you know, from my perspective, it's more of a beaten path that's been, you know, tried and true for so many years. You come in, you either get amazing grades and you go clerk for a judge, and then you, go to law firm.

Or maybe you start your own, or you can, you know, do a couple clerkships, become a professor. But it's so much more laid out for you and there's just a lot less uncertainty. So, I can’t imagine the stress that that causes you guys like day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year. I definitely could not have done it. I knew, you know, I started law school August 2023, I was graduating May 2026. And so that has been in the back of my mind at all times.

And it has really, you know, led me to do things differently than I think I would do if I didn't know what my outcome was. So, for, like, us, I don't want to clerk, and I don't want to be a professor. And I want to be a trial lawyer, so I've done everything possible to get in court.

Most students take a clinic or two, I've done— well, this will be my third clinic in the spring that I'm taking. I've done the civil justice clinic, the criminal defense clinic, now I'm doing the advanced civil justice clinic, and I also extern at Legal Aid of North Carolina with their housing program, helping people who are facing eviction.

So, you know, going up and standing in court as a second-year law student, arguing motions, doing cases in small claims court, that was really big for me and just getting that confidence to go forward and know that, like, this is something I want to do. But for you guys, it's just like, are you able to get those kinds of experiences or is it like, more theoretical, I guess?

Anvita

So, I mean, again, you know, it differs widely. And it really, you know, it's up to you, and what kinds of opportunities you want to pursue. It is a learning process, like you said. So even in the 6–7 years I've been here, I've learned so much about myself starting year 4 that, I kind of had a bit of a panic of, “Oh, if I'd known this sooner, I might have been able to pursue it.”

So, you know, coming in, I kind of knew my focus on, say like, researching a novel, but it was only in my third or fourth year I realized that I'm very interested in urban studies, along with my focus in English. And I had this moment if I if I knew that sooner, I might have been able to take more courses in that or, maybe talk to more professors that way.

But, you know, then trying to sort of build that into both my research and the kinds of other positions I was, you know, had to do. So, I joined a couple of humanities labs that had a focus on researching on cities or urban studies. That helped, you know, that introduced me to professors in different departments, one of whom is now in my committee.

So, I think it really depends. It is like, hopefully, you know, you realize what you like and realize what you're interested in and then you can pursue it. I think towards the end as well, I realized that I do enjoy teaching a lot, so pursuing more than just what's required of teaching in our department, pursuing ways to teach more or mentor more or interact with undergraduate students more.

So that way, you know, working with the Thompson Writing Program, with the courses that they teach to undergrads, you know, that has been a great place for me to figure out that I really enjoyed that. And, you know, that helps me envision in the future, like, lectureship roles that would allow me to continue teaching, not necessarily with the research focus. Or, you know, humanities nonprofits that are sort of like a way to extend my work with humanities labs at Duke could be a place to continue humanities-adjacent, public-facing work that I could do. These are just examples. And you're right, you know, the uncertainty can weigh on you.

And going back to something Ariana said, like, to come to the end of your program, your Ph.D. and like, it is a privilege to look at the work that you've done, the research that you've done, and feel a sense of completion and accomplishment. It definitely is a privilege, because what comes after can weigh on you and can color it and can make you feel like it was all for nothing, or what did I do this for? But it's that push and pull of like, the passion and inquiry as a student and you as a person at trying to enter the workforce or have a career afterwards. I think to come to the end and look with some hopefully pride and joy at the research that you've done, it's definitely a privilege.

Ariana

So coming in, it's crazy, like, how at the end of the time here, like, I just want more time, you know, more time to figure things out. I think that it's so important to come into grad school with an idea of, you know, what you want it to look like because it is so unstructured.

There is very little structure. There are like two deadlines, you know, within the like five, six, seven years that you have here. It depends so enormously on you and so enormously on your PI. It's kind of insane. And so coming in, it can be so helpful to be like, “okay, this is what I want. This is what I want to get out of this Ph.D. This is what I want to do with my time when I'm here.” So, it's really important to think before, you know, about what you want to get out of it.

Anvita

Can I just ask, though, when you are at the point of entering a Ph.D. program, how much did you or can you know about what a graduate, you know, education and experience looks like? Because I had an entirely different conception of what it would be even talking to professors or current grad students at Duke when I came for recruitment and stuff like that, so.

Ariana

Totally, absolutely. No, I completely agree. And that's like, there's so much, I think the term is like “hidden knowledge,” about, like, what a Ph.D. looks like, what this looks like, it's so— it's almost impossible to know. Like I also worked with I worked with postdocs, with Ph.D. students, I had mentors in undergrad, and I still had— I like, I thought I knew enough to be like, “this is what I want.” And to an extent I did, but there's so much that I didn't know. I think really like, again, it's so dependent on, for us, it's so dependent on the labs. So, I always tell people who are looking to join our lab or to looking to join any labs, talk to the students in the lab, talk to your PI, talk to students who have left the lab.

Either they've graduated or they've moved on for other reasons, like they're going to be the ones that are most, you know, able to talk to you about the good in the bad. Because otherwise I think you just hear this, like, they have the same things that they tell you, everyone tells you, but I think that that can be really helpful to understand what this will look like.

And if you come in and you’re really like, you don't have that structure. I think it's very, very easy to get lost and to question a lot about why you're here. And then at that point, I think it's really important that you know that you can leave. I think— I've known a lot of students who have left their Ph.D.

They've either left with the master's or not. And I think there's a lot of shame in that within, like, it's called “mastering out.” And that I think has a lot of shame associated with it. But I don't think it should be. I think those students, like, are so brave to decide that, “this is not what I want. I'm going to leave and I know what I want next.” And that's like, that's an amazing thing as well.

Ian

It seems like knowing yourself is really important throughout this Ph.D. process. Just like knowing who you are, what you want to accomplish and like the road you want to take to get there. You did say one word that I picked up on, “misconceptions,” and I do want to talk about that, like common misconceptions coming into your program. So, for us, I have a couple cousins who are attorneys, and I didn't really talk to them much about their law school experience.

But, you know, I was just made to believe from, you know, Reddit posts and just online blogs and things like that. I'd be reading, like, a thousand pages a night. I would have no free time, you know; I'd be in the library 24/7. Lawyers are a bunch of nerds; they don't have any personality. And none of that was really true.

You know, in law school, generally, I can only speak for Duke Law, but, most classes you probably read 30-40 pages a day, and you're probably taking a couple classes a day after your first year. So, I mean, you might be— you might read, like, 100 pages a night, maybe. Usually it's a little bit shorter than that.

You know, for instance, I've had a class this semester, Start-Up law. I mean, most of readings were like 25 pages. So, I think that was a big misconception for me. It is time-consuming, but it's not to the point where you have no free time. You can go out on the weekends and enjoy your Saturday. You know, like, one of the things I did throughout the week, I got all my studying done Monday through Friday so I can enjoy Saturday and Sunday. Some people put in 3- or 4-hours Saturday and Sunday so they have more time throughout the week and they can go out, you know, 7, 8 p.m. and come back whenever they feel like it. So those are the things that I thought definitely, well, I found out were untrue quickly upon starting 1L.

Ariana

Yeah.

Ian

What about you guys?

Anvita

This was not a misconception, but it's definitely, you know, ties into, like, knowing yourself where I found that— and this is, I will caveat that is very difficult because, like we've talked about grad school and your research can be so all-consuming. But I found that yes, knowing yourself and knowing who you are outside of grad school, or if you didn't know that, attempting to carve out a space for yourself that is not a graduate student or a graduate student worker or anything like that, is so important because then that helps you actually sort of find, you know, places where you can relax or find avenues for joy or, or just space outside of your research. And I, I found that, that is actually an excellent way to, to make the friends that you want to because otherwise they just become your peers in grad school. And, you kind of end up talking about the same things or having the same conversations, or complaining about the same things.

But, I think that that is very important. Another not a misconception, but something that definitely surprised me and I would have liked to know sooner, again, if only to work on it, is that, yes, after, like, coursework, which is two years for us, and then a third year, which is sort of our we're taking our qualifying exams, and so we're reading, and, you know, working with our advisor. So, it can get— yes, very isolating, you know, because the work is so independent and so individual, you can choose whether to come to campus or not. You can choose whether to sit in the common spaces in the grad lounges or not. And if you don't, it can be then, it's, again, up to you to sort of reach out to the friends you made or the, the peer networks or the— or like, create a writing group to like, you know, hold you accountable. I think it, as you said too, with the two deadlines, I found that really funny.

It's so true, you know, and so you really have to learn how to be a person who sticks to your own self-created deadlines or find ways to keep yourself accountable, whether that's a writing group, or your advisor, or, you know, like I've been working with the Writing Studio on their Dissertation Assistance Program where, like every week you sit down with someone from the Writing Studio and just talk about your writing, which has been excellent for holding me accountable to just show up every week having written something, [Ariana: That's so cool.] It is. You know, it's so you have to, I think, you know, again, part of again, knowing yourself, I find it difficult to keep to self-created deadlines. So, I find ways to hold myself accountable in this time that I feel so amorphous and a little bit isolated.

Ariana

I think a lot of it I agree was, this idea of what six years was going to look like or five years was going to look like, like you have an idea, you know, you see the people that you're working with or that are mentoring you and you think that it's going to look like that forever.

I think for STEM, and I can't speak completely for STEM, right? For biology or, I'm in marine biogeochemical sciences. And so, for us, we do a lot of field work. And I love field work. I've always loved field work. My lab mate, Alex Niebergall, she mentioned to me when I first joined that a Ph.D. is waves, which is, you know, because we're marine, but there's highs and there's lows in terms of what you work on and how involved you are in your project.

And that when you're in the highs, you're working all the time, like there is something happening for us, like it's potentially preparing to go on cruises. So, we go on research ships and so it's shipping constantly, it's thinking about research ships. It's thinking about like how we're going to set up everything, and it's just taking up every space of your mind.

But then there are also lows where there's nothing specific happening; you're writing, or there's like not something that you're working on. And it can feel so terrifying being in the lows because you feel constantly like you should be working. But you really have use those lows for what it is, which is an opportunity to reach out to your community where like— keeping friendships that you have before grad school is hard.

Like, you have to work at it. You have to put intentionality behind it. You have to reach out to those people. You have to engage, like, you have to make plans. It can be hard to have a life outside of grad school when you're in grad school all the time, and it's really important to have people outside of your department, outside of grad school in general, because they can really sanity check you a lot. And also using those low spaces to take care of yourself, to go to CAPS.

I don't think that I would be here and sane if it wasn't for CAPS, Counseling and Psychological Services. Duke has a really great CAPS program. They've helped me so much. You can go there and you can have a therapist and a psychiatrist, and they can set you up with therapists and psychiatrist out in the community.

You go there, you can have group therapy for free. I cannot emphasize enough how much this is for free.

These services would cost you hundreds of dollars, and they would cost you hundred dollars. If you do them outside of college or grad school. But you can do these for free, and you should because they're there for you. 

Ian

I think that's such a great resource. And, you know, it's certainly not something that's really on the law school's radar. I don't know of any student who's actually utilized that resource, and I'm actually learning about this for the first time today. And, that's awesome. So, we have career counselors who we kind of uses, like our one-on-one therapists, but to have, like, an organized, you know, structural, therapy session. Yeah, a group of people. I think that could be very fruitful. So, I will, thank you for telling you this, I'll spread the word.

Ariana

No, it's so important to have it outside of your department, outside of the Career Center, because, you know, they're going to be like, “Yeah, but you're sad, but you gotta push through it,” right? [Ian: Right, right.] Like you have, they’re actual therapists, they're there to help you. There’re so many difficulties that come with pursuing education when outside things, you know, impact your wellness and your ability to continue research, to continue bettering yourself and pursuing education, if that's. Yeah.

Ian

Shout out CAPS and shout out to Duke for providing such a great resource to us.

Ariana

Yeah. Along with CAPS along with like the support mentally, I think we're fortunate to have is our union at Duke. That is a really great way to build connections outside of the departments. You have people from all of the departments working to support graduate students, working to support international students.

And it's something that's so important in grad school because you are a student and a staff, you know, you're in that space where it's like you should be grateful for even being here, but also like you need to pick up your slack and work for Duke. So, having the Duke Union is such an amazing thing.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have it. Not everyone is fortunate to even be able to bring up the word “union” in a grad school. But, I'm very grateful for the work that Duke Union does at our school.

Ian

Duke University Union, also, they host events for not only grad students, but undergrads as well. And it's such a great resource to be able to go to events and meet people from all walks of life and all corners of campus, you know, even undergrads as well. Another thing is, the Graduate and Professional Student Government, which I happen to be president of, you know, I've met a lot of great people through this organization.

And before that experience, I hadn't met anyone outside of the law school. Truly not a soul. The only people I had talked to were law students. And so, I was able to meet people from all of our 10 graduate and professional schools.

Now I have lifelong friends from the Divinity School, from Pratt School of Engineering, Nicholas, so forth and so on. And so that's just been such a great resource for me. So, I think if anyone's interested in, you know, getting to know a lot of their peers, GPSG is a great resource. But just putting yourself out there, looking on your event calendar, looking at DUU, looking at what other schools have going on and, you know, you can go to other schools, lunches and panels and things like that.

So just saying yes more than you say no, because you never know what doors open up for you. And, you know, you can make lifelong friends and you could maybe, discover something you didn't know about yourself. You know, I came into law school thinking I was going to just stick to the legal field. And now I've had this experience running an organization with 60+ members.

And so now I'm thinking about, like, long-term leadership. Like, what does that look like for me? And this has definitely shaped my trajectory in my career as well. So, I think there's a lot of different resources for students to connect with. It's just about being intentional and reaching out and doing some due diligence on your own.

Ariana

And I think it's scary or it's unnerving for students to be able to put that time into those services. Because when you're here, your idea is like, “I'm here for research, you know, this is my job. I can't take time away from my research to do— to work at these places or to intern or any of those things.”

But you have to realize, you're here for a job, you're here to do research, but this is also your time, like you are here to do, and get out of this space what you need to get out. And if that is, when you are in those spaces of working with GPSG or, I'm an intern now with UCEM, the University Center of Exemplary Mentoring, working with Sloan Scholars. It's such a great way of getting administrative experience, gaining other types of experience that you can then market yourself when you're looking for jobs. And it's, it is very important. It's, you're here and you're here for it. It's a marathon. It's not a sprint. You literally cannot be focusing on your research all of the time. If you feel like, to keep yourself sane, to keep yourself like, an okay person, you have to give up a little bit of the research or a little bit of making yourself the perfect researcher, then that is a sacrifice that I think it's important to be okay with making.

Anvita

Yeah, I agree, I think spaces, that sort of invite, students from many disciplines, Again, speaking from my personal experience, events at the Franklin Humanities Center that sort of engages students from different disciplines, either panels or workshops, events or even they sort of, you know, give grants, or like student working groups.

You know, again, I completely agree, it does feel like extra work. It feels like “how much more can I take on,” and to an extent, I do have sympathy for that because, all of this, it still is one more thing that you feel like you have to do.

And I have so much sympathy because there are times when I've felt like, well, you know, I would love to do that, but I can't, and it's not fair, almost, to ask me to then do this one extra thing just so that I can have some joy or have a different experience. So, I have so much sympathy for people who feel like that's too much and I completely understand where they're coming from.

But yeah. So, you know, as much as you can to exist in these spaces that there are people from different disciplines. You know, I found it easier, again, you know, to sort of interact with students from the art history department or the history department, rather than people from math, or engineering, or biology or anything like that.

You know, those have been sort of chance encounters an, random friends that I made that I'm very, you know, grateful for. But, there is definitely, I would say, a gap. And also because our experiences are so different as we've, you know, talked about, but also so much more, simple things like, you know, talking to someone from math and realizing just a difference in teaching requirements that are there in their program and mine and having that moment of, “what? You don't start teaching until your third—,” you know, that kind of thing. I think that is sort of also, not a barrier, but there is, you know, there's a bit of a distance there. And then of course, as we found out today with the professional schools, there seems to be so much difference there as well. So, I just wanted to just say that I do, I do understand, when it can feel like too much and when finding a moment to be a person and not a grad student can feel like extra work at grad school. But, yeah, trying to find any kind of space where you can exist, interdisciplinarily or, across, graduate schools. I do.

Ian

Yeah, grad school is it's such a bubble, right? Like you're in your own program, you're dealing with people in that program and you don't really get to meet people outside of that. So, you know, I think going forward, it's important to burst that bubble and try to get as much experience as you can because this is, you know, we're still young, but this is one of the last times in our life where we get to just experience and co-mingle and, you know, learn new people and try new things.

Because once you kind of get in that career world, it's a little bit different. You know, you're not up in the spaces where there's just a conglomerate of different ideas and personalities. And so, I think it's really important for people to try to get the most out of their experience here. Whether you're here for seven years in a program or two years in a, you know, Master’s or MBA program, just trying to meet as many people as you can, building your network while you're here.

Not even for career reasons, but just for, you know, friendships, you know, having friends. And when you fly out to New York or California or Texas, right? Like, “hey, let's meet up for dinner. Like, we haven't talked in a couple years.” Like, those are going to be, you know, great chances and opportunities that you don't want to miss out on just because you stayed in your program. So, I think, you know, it's so important for people to just try to reach out and make friends along the way and really explore everything that their university has to offer.

Anvita

Well, it was really nice to meet both of you, and, this has been a great conversation. It was a pleasure talking to you.

Ariana

I actually want to be friends with both of you. 

Ian/Crosstalk

Yes, yes.

Ian

No. This is so great. I appreciate the conversation with you guys. We should definitely grab lunch sometime.

Ariana

Yeah, that'd be sick.

Ian

Yes.