how to: get back in study mode

Ten tips for new & returning MA and PhD liberal arts students this fall

A beautiful photo of the Oregon State University Valley Library by Porter Raab on Unsplash

Maybe it’s your first semester in your liberal arts program or grad school adventure.

Maybe you’re a few years in and still figuring out how to do this whole thing.

Maybe you’re simply thinking about going back to school or going to graduate school…or just wanting to do some independent study on your own this fall…

No matter the case: this graduated PhD in literature has some advice about undertaking deep levels of study and how to position yourself as a scholar.

This is the kind of stuff I wish someone would’ve told me, so I didn’t have to figure it out alone. (Though, some of the best parts of grad school are the things you learn all on your own, by doing things you didn’t know you could do or learning things you didn’t expect to learn.)

1. Let readings take the time they take.

Some of your readings will be a breeze and you’ll finish them ahead of schedule. Others may take you two full hours to read a single page. You’re not broken; you’re not stupid. Some readings are just incredibly dense or difficult — and it’s okay to take your time figuring out what they mean.

For those extra-grueling readings: take notes not just about what you think the main points are, but about where or how those ideas lose or confuse you. Creating a map of “where you got lost” can be a helpful tool, should you decide to reach out to a peer or professor for help understanding things.

(I promise it’s okay to ask for help on hard readings, too. I approached a professor the day after completing a grueling set of readings for his class in visual culture and asked if he had 15 minutes to chat with me. He was *thrilled* that I had come to his office hour for help and said that lots of grad students think they’ll look foolish or lazy by asking for help, but the opposite is true. I learned so much in that short conversation that led to a lot more confidence during class.)

2. Fight imposter syndrome with a list.

Imposter syndrome can open the door to believing some pretty unfair things about yourself, like that you don’t belong or you’re not smart enough, or that you’ve really just tricked everyone into thinking you’re smart but you’re actually a fraud; or that you’re the only one who is struggling.

You’re not the only one. You’re not an imposter.

If you’re finding it impossible to get work done inside tidal waves of doubt and feelings that you’re not smart enough, remind yourself that those feelings, while valid, are not facts. Consider writing a list of what you’ve accomplished and basically collecting evidence that proves you’re not an imposter. You might include things like:

• Essays you’ve written and received great feedback on

• Comments or questions you’ve recently contributed to your classes

• Homework assignments that you’ve completed and submitted on time

• Readings you’ve done (reading through your own notes or annotations can be a great reminder that you’re doing the work!)

• Non-school things count just as much — like the loads of laundry you got done over the weekend or the nice cup of coffee you bought yourself

3. Get comfy with discomfort.

Cognitive dissonance, disagreeing with core concepts, not understanding how a certain perspective can even exist…these are all completely normal parts of engaging with the world of ideas, and of learning.

A kind mentor and professor reminded me, in a particularly exhausting stretch of my master’s program, that if this was easy or lovable work all the time, it wouldn’t be rewarding and it wouldn’t have the results it does. It was a good reminder that I wasn’t supposed to be coasting; I wasn’t meant to be having a blast all the time.

Most of graduate study requires sitting inside discomfort: grappling with brand new concepts, dense theory, heavy (literally) readings, and figuring out not just what the books say but what you think about what the books say. Learning to reside inside spaces of uncertainty and unknowns is part of the deal. Settle in.

4. Give yourself planning time.

This took me soooooo looooooong to learn. I have always carried paper planners and kept large desk calendars, but I often used them as places to quickly record appointments, jot due dates, or throw on post-it reminders and library card catalog information for books I never wrote down the full title of and therefore had to look up, again, before checking out the book. But I digress.

Basically: It was more record-keeping than careful planning.

While writing my dissertation, however, I needed to adopt a much more organized approach to my schedule and organize my writing sessions more carefully. When I sat down without a plan, I often walked away questioning what I’d accomplished (and sometimes that led to imposter syndrome: “I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m not any good at this.”) But when I sat down with my calendar and broke my gigantic terrifying writing project into manageable steps and miniature processes, I could see how it would all come together and I felt so much better.

Then, a week later, I could look at what I’d mapped for my day, and it was like my past-self had done my present-moment self a big favor. It was an unexpected trust-builder, with myself. I learned I could not only write a dissertation, I could also map large workflows, organize content types into named buckets, coordinate large sets of research, and track my progress.

By setting aside a block of dedicated time for reviewing your course calendars and assignments, the books you need to read, the papers you need to write, the exams you need to plan for, you gift your mind a framework for fitting it all together.

And if planning or organizing like this makes you feel anxious or clinical…Make it cozy! Light a candle or grab a strand of twinkle lights. Use highlighters or colored pencils to create categories (or just add fun doodles to your notes). You might even invite a friend or two to join you. I often found that planning sessions were made better by a glass of white wine. You do you.

5. Recognize what is rubber and what is glass.

Life, especially in graduate school, has a way of insisting that everything is on fire, all of the time and that everything requires 100% of your attention and your effort. This is simply untrue. Not everything is an emergency.

I learned this metaphor from a beloved professor: In life, you’re juggling many balls. Some are made of rubber and some are made of glass. Figure out which is which — and let the rubber ones go, now and then. They’ll bounce. You can pick them up later, when you’re not juggling so much glass.

(And if you accidentally drop a glass one, pause. Give yourself some grace, clean it up, and keep going.)

6. Let your first draft, or first try, be shit.

Don’t expect greatness from yourself on a first draft. Don’t expect to understand every book the first time you read it. Don’t expect the first time you try to write something new to knock your socks off and send you flying into success.

As the wonderful Anne Lamott teaches us, the whole point of a first draft is to get your ideas down. You can work them up into something amazing on your second and third and forty-fifth passes.

This means you need time. If you have an essay due in two and half months, think backward from that date and set a goal for your first draft at least a month ahead of time. And then, let your first try be just that: a first try.

7. Have a conversation with what you’re learning.

Write while you read. Take notes in your books, fill the margins, highlight the important stuff. Carry notebooks, talk into a tape recorder, take photos of books in the library that you want to come back for.

One of the most inviting frameworks for thinking about academic study is that of a “conversation,” or Kenneth Burke’s parlor metaphor. It’s basically this: Imagine you’re at a party all about the topic you’re studying or the book you’re reading. All those partygoers represent the people who’ve read it, studied it, published on it. Maybe the author is there; maybe your professor is there. You walk into this party and maybe, at first, you simply listen. You move among a few circles of chatter, until you find a group discussing exactly the part of the book or the themes in the story or the history of the topic in a way you want to join.

Eventually, you might feel ready to join that conversation—to “put in your oar”—with an essay assignment or a comment in class, or even a chapter in your thesis or dissertation. By framing it all as a conversation, you’ll do yourself the favor or remembering you’re not alone in your thinking, and the best work you can do to get involved is remember who else is in the room with you.

8. Sit outside. Take a stroll. Look at the sky.

Get outside of your own head, now and then. (This might be the single-most important thing I learned during graduate study and it changed everything for me once I embraced it.)

So much of the academic work and writing that we do requires us to sit quietly with ourselves: to read patiently, to write tirelessly, to draft and test ideas and push ourselves to take things one layer deeper. It’s rewarding and beautiful.

But there’s a difference between solitude and loneliness. If you find yourself falling into deep loneliness, especially while you’re writing your dissertation, open a window. Look around you. Find your people.

Go out for pizza and beers. Learn how to belay or free climb. Go halfsies on a brick of fancy cheese. Take someone out for coffee to pick their brain or hear about their dissertation. Create a writing group or a reading club. Ask your friend to go for a walk or an ice cream. Get out and away from your desk. It’ll be there when you get back. Promise.

9. Remember that grad school is where you are, not who you are.

You existed before grad school and you will, despite how you may feel sometimes, exist after grad school. Neglecting yourself for short-term gains may pay off in the short-term, but it can leave you listless in the aftermath. Take time to step away, remember who you are without the academy, and breathe.

Graduate school can be a wholly consuming experience — and some parts of that are absolutely magical. Just keep an eye on the bigger picture. You matter, no matter your academic status.

10. Trust your passion!

You really can’t rely on market trends to hold steady or guarantee you a job. In fact, I watched dozens of colleagues abandon projects they loved for the “hot” topic on the market, only to see that topic fall out of favor in just two years. You simply can’t use SEO optimization or some fancy algorithm or job market report to predict the most “marketable” degree (especially given that departments vary so wildly in their needs and cultures).

Why suffer mental whiplash as you shift your focus over and over again to accommodate forces well beyond your control?

My best learning from grad school was this: I can trust that what I’m fascinated by and curious about is actually fascinating at curious.

Before you abandon your beloved area of interest or topics that matter most to you because of an advisor’s opinion or a peer’s jealousies or fears that you can’t get a job with your specialty, pause. Reflect. Don’t panic.

And when you’re presented with those frequent, figurative forks in the road, ask your trusted inner circle, your mentors, your professors, your colleagues. But always, always, ask yourself, too.

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I treated my graduate degrees as gifts to myself and my mind: I knew I’d never get to live like that again. I knew, despite the grueling pace and exhausting schedule that I would come to long for 3am writing sessions, long library trips with a literal wagon to carry all my books, hot black coffee for an evening seminar, piles of my writing and my students’ essays piled together in pure chaos, bike rides through campus in the pouring rain.

Oh, I miss it so much.

If you are in school: as the new semester opens up before you, enjoy the rush of it. Take a breath, take a beat, and commit that feeling—that rush, that flurry of anticipation, even that twinge of anxiety—to memory. Because it’s so worth remembering and you might miss it, someday, too.

If you’re not in school right now, and maybe missing it like I am (damn, writing this made me so nostalgic!) remember that whatever we learned in grad school doesn’t have to end just because we graduated. We can conjure that magic long after the final semester ends and get back into study mode any time we choose.