the encouragement lounge: You and your professor

Thursday, June 4, 2009

You and your professor - part 3

Give a little somethin' back!

And I'm not really talking about cookies and milk! In the last two posts I discussed ways in which you might keep in touch with your professors and ways in which your profs might help you with your career development.

Today, I'm here to encourage you to give something back to your profs and your school. I'm not talking about cookies and milk, and I'm not talking about donating money. I'm talking about:

Giving to the program: help recruit new students, offer internships, help students and other alumni build their networks...

Giving to you professor: send your prof an interesting article, recommend a book, write to your prof about a twist on your experience of applying theory out in the field, provide feedback about the program...

Giving back to your school and giving back to your prof, help your prof and school for obvious reasons. But this also helps you -- it keeps you on your prof's radar which takes us back to the networking we talked about on Wednesday.

Mutuality rocks! You give and you get. Happy Friday.

Harriet

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Working adult students, on my mind...

I hope this blog will be helpful to friends and others involved in a variety of endeavors. However, I created the blog with students in mind and continue to develop it with that specific group as my focus.

I believe that with the increase in evening, weekend, and low-residency programs, students are working more and more in isolation. If we were all full-time students on campus, we would have the informal support that comes with being able to go down the hall and talk with a colleague, etc. But instead, we are working late nights and weekends at home in front of the laptop.

With that in mind, I hope the encouragement lounge provides brief moments of respite and energizing connection. This does not at all replace valuable face-to-face contact. Many aspects of the academic journey can only be addressed via in-depth conversations with colleagues and teachers. And I would always rather sit down and talk with someone than to communicate online. Nonetheless, my aim is to give you one more channel for quick hits of support.