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Want to know about the PhD checklist items people often forget? These three items are absolutely critical to grad school success!
When starting school, you are often thinking about all of the items you may need to be successful; this may be anything from school supplies to comfortable housing! Below, I will share the three critical items people often forget when embarking on a PhD program. Aside from being helpful for your overall PhD checklist, these items are also relevant for those of you working on your first year checklist and your dissertation checklist.
Overall, these tips will serve you well as you navigate your academic career!
Critical Items for Your PhD Checklist
1) A Place Outside of Your Home to Study
Graduate programs require a lot of time studying. Although you may have a comfortable environment to work at from home, it is important to scope out additional locations that you might study at should you get tired of studying at home. This could be the school library, the student center on campus, a local coffee shop, or maybe even a local co-working space. Whatever you choose, it is important to have the place in mind for when you need a change of scenery during a long study period.
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2) A Mentor Outside of your Home Institution
It is important to people you go to in life for counsel. You will have a mentor within your institution, and it is important to have people you might go to outside of your institution for guidance. Of note, this may or may not be related to guidance about school. For example, this mentor may be someone who helps keep you accountable to maintaining a healthy balance between work and life, or someone who can field ideas about your area of research from a lay person’s perspective.
3) A Social Support Network
This is critical. Since graduate school can be a stressful time of life, social support can go a long way in helping to mitigate stress and overwhelm associated with school. Your social support may be from your cohort or other graduate students. This type of social support is nice because these individuals will know exactly what you are going through and how you may be feeling. You all can also support one another as you move through different graduate school milestones. You may also have various social supports outside of school. This type of social support is very valuable because people outside of your program can often provide much-needed perspective that can minimize stress and help you feel more grounded. When you are engaged in social supports outside of your program you might also be engaged in an activity of somesort that might provide a much needed reprieve from school (i.e., a book club, small group, or local sports league).
This post was all about critical items for you PhD checklist – what would you add?
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