the encouragement lounge: Keepers - hold on to those books and papers

Friday, September 18, 2009

Keepers - hold on to those books and papers

Here is a tip for new graduate students: keep final copies of all papers and keep your books. In grad school, it is much more likely that you will want to go back to old papers for references and to draw on various passages that you have written. In addition, in some programs you will need to write a reflective paper toward the end of your studies and/or submit a portfolio. So, keep a final copy of each paper that you write in a separate folder in your documents so that you can easily find final drafts of all papers.

In addition, you may be tempted to sell your books at the end of your course - as you may have done during your undergrad days. However, as with papers, you will very likely need to go back to those books throughout your program, so refrain from selling back those books and keep them for future use.

Cheers all! Good luck with the work!

Harriet

p.s. Tomorrow is Rosh Hashanah, so I will not be online. Back Monday!

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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.