Journey to the Center of the Graduate Experience

Introduction: Learning the Rules of the Road For those aiming to enter the professoriate, graduate school is the initiation into the culture of academia (Austin, 2002). The doctoral program experience can be described as a socialization process that emphasizes the acquisition of knowledge about one's academic field or discipline, exposure to various research methodologies, and induction in academic writing (Golde, 1998). This multi-faceted process can be daunting, often leaving students confused as to what aspect is most important. An equally provocative question, however, is how students can maximize this experience while enduring its socialization process. We represent three voices of women of highly diverse backgrounds, who each share the goal of becoming a university professor. The following is a synthesis of our personal reflections, fashioned as advice to other graduate students on how to maximize the graduate experience. Different Travelers, Different Maps On paper, it reads like the beginning of a joke. What do a Puerto Rican cop, an African-American university administrator, and a White school teacher have in common? The answer is they each started down different roads but ended up at the same destination. One is a part-time graduate student balancing a marriage, a career in law enforcement, and doctoral studies. Another is a full-time graduate student who left a career in Human Resources to pursue her educational goals. The remaining traveler is a part-time student and a lifelong ESOL instructor. We each have been drawn to the field of adult education and share the goal of entering academia after completing our PhD programs in Adult Education. Although we have highly disparate backgrounds and experiences, we have identified three suggestions from a series of conversations and journal writings that we believe can be instrumental in helping fellow students maximize their graduate school experience: build relationships, be self-directed, and reflect on your experiences. Build Relationships: Don't Always Travel Alone At some point in our lives, all of us have heard the advice "network ... build relationships ... use your resources." But, what does that mean when it comes to the graduate experience? Based on our combined experiences, we have concluded that it includes taking the initiative to get to know the faculty in your program and spend as much time as possible gleaning information from them. This can be accomplished by learning about their interests and research, observing them in their classrooms, chatting with them about the professional activities and associations they are involved with, and discussing trends in the field. This approach helped us to become more aware of our own interests and needs as students. It also enabled us to communicate these needs and interests to the faculty in our programs and secure their guidance and their support. Building relationships also means getting to know other students in your program. Although we each value independent learning, we have learned that it is difficult to get the most out of our graduate experience by working in a vacuum. It is important for graduate students, especially those who are enrolled part-time or who are not part of a cohort, to collaborate with one another. Adult education programs attract graduate students of incredibly diverse social and professional backgrounds, levels of expertise, and research interests. Working with such diverse individuals enriches the graduate experience. By developing informal study groups and sharing interests, ideas, strategies, and tips with other students within and outside of our department, we exposed ourselves to a plethora of opinions and fresh perspectives. Building academic relationships as a graduate student can foster a lifetime of support for future professional endeavors. Listen to your fellow travelers and learn from their experiences. Be Self-directed: You Are At the Helm "You get out of it what you put into it" could be the motto for our graduate experience. …