GradHacker

So last year I was on a Fulbright in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Setting aside all good judgment I agreed to rent a room in an apartment with a group of “mature professionals and graduate students.” Because, conveniently, none of them were home at the time I visited—which was already the first of the month—I had no opportunity to assess for myself just how “mature” was being defined.

As we prepare for a new school year, many of us will write lectures either by choice or because we feel or are told we must. I confess that I don’t like to lecture; I much prefer to facilitate student discussion, which places the responsibility for learning back on the students themselves. We have all experienced mind-numbing lectures and (most of us!) have vowed not to do that to our own students, but how do we break out of the mold in which we have been shaped?

This time last year, I was sitting around my apartment and waiting for the results of my comprehensive exams. I was jittery and nervous, and jumped a mile every time my computer made the “you’ve got an email!” noise. I couldn’t focus on teaching or the zillion other responsibilities that I had, and spent most of the day in an anxious state of stasis. What saved me, surprisingly, was a ball of yarn and two knitting needles I found in the back of a closet.

One of my favorite distractions is podcasts. I love them. They're part of my commute, they're part of my leisure time, and they're part of my work time.

I have a hard time working without music. No matter what grad school-related task I am working on, it just feels strange to be doing it in silence.

Over this past summer, I've been leading a team of archaeologists from the Campus Archaeology Program in a massive archaeological survey across Michigan State University's campus. The goal of the project was to check the area for artifacts and historical features in the landscape prior to construction.

A recent essay on InsideHigherEd discussed how academics commonly disregard deadlines. When reflecting on this, I began to think that this habit begins as grad students.

To cap off our crossover week with ProfHacker, Alex sat down with this week’s contributors for an insightful conversation about their approach to maintaining a productive schedule. Building on this week’s posts, Alex reviews the authors’ suggestions for improved workflow and poses some follow-up questions on the technology and techniques they suggested in their contributions.