Continuing from Part I last week, Karen and Kel continue sharing 12 strategies for confronting disappointment in a healthy and productive way, targeted to anybody confronting the hard reality that they didn’t get the jobs (or grants, or publication acceptances) that they’d been hoping for.
We talk breaking points. Kel suggests to anyone feeling they’ve reached the breaking point at the end of the semester: pause, and appreciate that it’s showing you, you DO have a limit. Sit with that. What’s it mean to hit your limit and really admit it? That is, rather than judging yourself, or scrambling to get past it. Instead, embrace the breaking point. And use it as, conversely, a strength. That is, the place where you say no. No to more expectations, more to more demands, no to more work. And yes to stepping away, taking a break, seeing a friend, resting yourself. When it makes you finally just stop, your breaking point can be an ally. [Become a supporting member for just $3.99 a month and get access to our subscriber only goodies like a permanent 50% off code for almost all webinars and courses, free monthly webinar recordings ($50 value), AMAs, the chance to suggest topics, and early access to the podcast video that we record in our house in Oregon, all on our dedicated podcast member page on Mighty Networks! Not ready to support monthly? Donate here to send along some one-time support. ...
When Karen gave the advice, “stop acting like a grad student,” she was working from a model grad student in her mind who, it turns out when she gave it a bit more thought, was a white male. In today’s episode, Karen and Kel dig into that normative model, and talk about all the ways that the advice on how a job seeker “needs to act” needs to be complicated to account for people who come from different subject positions and are viewed through different racist lenses. Advice about “thinking your department is out to get you” for example, needs to reflect that for many grad students of color, the department really is out to get you. ...
We are delighted to bring the remarkable Allante Whitmore onto the show. The founder of Black and In Grad School (https://www.blkingradschool.com/), Allante, an Engineering PhD student at Carnegie Mellon, and proud HBCU alumna, shares with us her motivations for creating her podcast and website and annual summit helping Black grad students succeed in the academy. We talk time management, finding supporters, good boundaries, code switching, the all-important difference between rest and restorative practices, and how Allante finds grad school inspiration in rap. Kel and Karen just listen in awe. ...
