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  • Person in blue sweater sits at desk with pens, paint brushes, and notebook ready to write something.

    Three Simple Ways to Ease Into the New Semester

    I’ve always found the transition between break and the start of the semester to be particularly tricky. Help your body and mind ease into the new semester with these three tips! 

  • An open book on a window ledge.

    Thesis Summer Reading List

    A few years ago, we asked campus experts to recommend books for students who are working on their theses. In this year’s installment, their recommendations include books with writing tips, career exploration strategies, and stories to help you escape work to find balance. Here are their suggestions!

  • Thesis Summer Reading List

    No matter if you’re studying for exams or working on your thesis, chances are your summer reading list is full of books and articles that pertain to your research area. But why not mix things up a little by adding a few to help with your writing and research skills?

    Emily asked several campus experts to recommend books that could help students who are working on their theses. Their suggestions range in topic from strengthening your writing and research skills to conquering productivity to finding relaxation. Check out their suggestions!

  • These Are Some of Illinois Graduate Students' Favorite Podcasts

    We asked Illinois graduate students for their favorite podcasts. Here are some of their favorites! 

  • The Faculty Interview

    There’s nothing quite like a faculty interview to get you tied into knots. The stakes are high, the formats can be awkward, and it’s not really like anything you’ve done before. So it’s easy to be scared, anxious, worried, nervous, apprehensive—or just plain super-freaked-out. And that’s normal. But it’s a good idea to be some other things, too. Here are some ideas...

  • The Art of Proposal Writing: Proposal as Roadmap

    In an earlier blog post, I wrote about the proposal as a genre — the story of your journey into uncharted intellectual territory, driven by a vision of your contribution to your discipline and beyond. Your reviewers are excited! They want to help you complete your journey! But, they want some details. The proposal is the roadmap you provide.

    There is no right or wrong way to structure a proposal. There may be disciplinary norms or funder guidelines, which is why it is essential to look at successful proposals in your discipline and read the program solicitation carefully.  Regardless of the structure, there are some commonalities in proposals across all disciplines and funders. Here are some tips for putting together a good roadmap for the reviewers...

  • The Art of Proposal Writing: Proposal as Genre

    Mystery and suspense, a hero going on a quest…why am I talking about this in a blog post about proposal writing?  Because when you write about your research, you’re writing a story of ideas that explores uncharted intellectual territory. As you’ve developed your skills and knowledge of the field, you’ve identified a gap in what we know and a means by which you believe you can fill it. That’s what makes proposal writing a special genre.

  • Teaching and Performing to Find Her Voice

    The Krannert Center for the Performing Arts is a hub for exquisite music, cultural performances, ballet performances, theater, opera and lively events. From performances by musical virtuosos, symphony orchestras, ensemble groups to events like PechaKucha Night and Noche de Baila- Krannert is bustling with performers and audience goers year-round! The Lyric Theater at Krannert brings colorful and vibrant pieces of opera from throughout the ages alive to the audience!

  • Teaching (and Learning) Beyond the Classroom

    For many Illinois graduate students, the classroom is just one avenue for teaching and learning. We asked three graduate students to reflect on their experiences working with programs that served middle school, high school, and incoming graduate students. Although their research interests and programs differ, they shared a common outcome. Through mentoring, they’d learned as much as they taught.  They shared their thoughts with Grad Life.

  • Taking Classes Online? These Tips Will Help

    Online learning has gained a prominent place in our everyday lives since mid-March, when the university switched to a fully online format of instruction due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether you are a returning online student or taking some of your first grad school classes online, staying organized and connecting with your peers online can all help you be successful. SAGE member and PhD candidate Olnancy Tzirides provides tips she’s learned from her research and teaching experience in online learning.

  • People shot at outdoor farmer's market.

    Taking a Break

    Taking healthy breaks in grad school is essential and doesn’t have to take a long time. 

  • Stuck in a Rut: Exploring an Outside Interest Can Shape your Grad School Experience

    “I think a common experience for grad students, particularly at major research institutions, is the single-minded focus on producing excellent research. It’s so easy to get tunnel vision and lose track of what you are excited or passionate about. And, it’s easy to get caught up in a pattern of obsessing about whether you’re smart enough or ‘good’ enough.” Kaye Usry, PhD candidate in Political Science, said. “I was feeling a lot of pressure to meet these expectations that, when it came down to it, I was really setting for myself. It wasn't healthy or good for me.” It was at that point that Kaye started exploring ways to engage with the community and issues that were important to her, outside of her research.

  • A teddy bear hamster runs on a hamster wheel

    Stop the Hamster Wheel: Making Plans in Grad School

    Graduate school can sometimes feel like running on a hamster wheel, like you’re in constant motion but not really sure that you’re getting anywhere.

    There are a ton of one-week deadlines (I have to write that literature review by Tuesday!) and a few five-year deadlines (I’ll defend my dissertation!), but bridging the gaps between those can be tough. And that makes it hard to figure out whether you’re headed in the right direction. Planning can help you build those bridges effectively, preparing you to make choices with your goals in mind so you don’t just keep spinning until you’re dizzy.

    So what makes a good plan? What will help you leave the wheel to the hamsters and make the most of grad school? Here are some approaches we recommend...

  • Staying organized on the job market

    Staying Organized During a Job Search

    In his newest article on Inside Higher Education, Director of Career Services, Derek Attig, gives his tips for staying organized on the job search. 

  • Graduate students dressed in theatrical costumes perform on stage

    Staying Creative During Quarantine

    Staying creative during quarantine can be challenging. New work conditions with more, or less, distractions and commitments, fewer in person arts and entertainment opportunities in your community, and an atmosphere of stress and uncertainty can all negatively affect creativity. In this interview, Nic Morse, Digital Media Specialist (and our in house illustrator!) checks in with Vincent Carlson, a PhD student in Theatre at Illinois to chat about what creativity and engagement with the arts looks like for him during COVID-19.

  • Person doing one-arm push-up with their hand on a laptop. A cat is underneath them.

    Staying Active while Sheltering at Home

    Many of us grew up with a very rigid conception of ‘exercise’ that involves participation in a ‘formal’ exercise program, or joining a gym or fitness club, this kind of exercise almost always involves wearing special clothes, traveling to an exercise facility, and finding time in a busy schedule to fit it all in. There are countless enjoyable and creative ways to build physical activity into a daily routine, even during the cornavirus.

  • Person sitting in a classroom with a laptop, wearing a mask and gesturing with hands.

    Starting a PhD During a Pandemic

    Starting grad school in the middle of a pandemic has not been easy, but the ISE Department has been incredibly supportive! 

  • Sloan UCEM at Illinois Helps Underrepresented Students Pursue Advanced Degrees and Career Paths

    “Illinois is committed to the goal of achieving diversity and excellence,” says Dr. Ellen Wang Althaus, director of Sloan University Center of Exemplary Mentoring (UCEM). 

    The Sloan UCEM at Illinois is one of the eight centers in the country funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. With a one-million-dollar, three-year grant, the Illinois UCEM was created to broaden participation and provide support for underrepresented minority graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. It  provides activities designed to support students toward doctorate completion, such as professional development opportunities, mentoring, research opportunities, workshops, and seminars. 

  • Photo by Rakicevic Nenad from Pexels

    "Shoot for the Moon" and Other Lessons I Learned from My PhD

    Chelsea Yu, PhD candidate in Finance, has learned a lot about herself and being productive through the process of figuring out the best motivational strategies to help support her goals as a PhD student. In this piece, originally published on her LinkedIn page, she explores 9 lessons she's learned during her PhD and how they helped her navigate her way through to candidacy.

  • Dizzying view of a crowded hallway

    SAGE Advice for My Past Self

    We caught up with some of the members of this year’s SAGE (Students Advising on Graduate Education) board to ask them just one question: If you could give your first-year-grad student self one piece of advice, what would it be?

    Their responses were funny, honest, and totally on point.

  • Misty Road and Hot Air Balloons

    Roots, Routes, and Returns: Discovering an Effective Writing Process as a Graduate Writer

    It might surprise you if I were to share that first as an MA student and now as a PhD student in English (Literature emphasis) here at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, I have accumulated several 9 x 12 or 8.5 x 11 spiral-bound sketchbooks and that they have played a central role in helping me discover an effective writing process. So too have I used up the last drops of ink in a fair number of colorful pens and markers when writing across these surfaces. Thinking and writing for me, then, are inextricably linked in a visual and tactile process.

  • Robin Holland: On Taking Chances

    Robin Holland, dual degree candidate in Pathobiology and Veterinary Medicine, doesn’t hesitate to throw her hat in the ring when contests and opportunities present themselves. Robin was awarded People’s Choice at the inaugural Research Live! competition last fall and took home first place in Image of Research the preceding spring.

    As if that weren’t impressive enough, Robin was awarded a prestigious NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) for individuals pursuing dual-doctoral degrees, both a PhD and an MD, DVM, or other medical doctoral degree. This award was created to increase the pool of highly trained clinician-scientists in the biomedical research workforce.

    We sat down with Robin to pick her brain about her career, academic contests, and getting involved. Read on for the interview.

  • Teachers make the world a better place

    Resilient and Ready to Lead, Teachers Make the World a Better Place

    In a time of uncertainty, as instruction and learning transition to digital technologies, College of Education students have an important message to share.

  • Radical Healing / Collective Thriving

    Getting work done looks very different today than it did at the beginning of the Spring semester. For Amir Maghsoodi, PhD student in Educational Psychology, the shift from in-person, clinical counseling training has offered time to deepen his social justice work with the Radical Healing Collective, a group of psychology scholars who work in issues of culture, ethnicity, and race. 

  • Putting the Break Back into Winter Break: Managing Work and Play During Winter Break

    Semester breaks are the perfect time for some relaxation, spending time with friends and family, and filling up on delicious holiday snacks. But for graduate students working on their theses, winter breaks also mean ample time to get some research and writing done. During my seven-year career as a graduate student, I’ve spent plenty of time trying to achieve the best of both worlds. Though balancing data analysis and cookie baking can be difficult, below are a few tips to help you maximize your research time, and still have fun during the holiday season.

  • Punit Singhvi's Asphalt Concrete Brownie with Hot Fudge Sauce

    Doctoral student Punit Singhvi reads aloud his award-winning 2020 Image of Research entry and shares his recipe for success.

  • Podcast: Your Portfolio Will Never Be Perfect or Done

    Landscape designer Saloni Chawla (MLA '18) sits down to talk with us about how she landed her dream job and why she considers it a perfect match.

  • A white cup with purple liquid and a smiley face.

    Podcast: You Can’t Pour from an Empty Cup

    SAGE grad student podcasters interview the Counseling Center’s Kamau Grantham, who gives everyone permission to take care of themselves.

  • Illustration of a woman with a pencil, guitar, mountains and other thoughts above her head.

    Podcast: The Fine Art of Balance

    Theatre doctoral student Vincent Carlson performs "You and Your Work," a poem he wrote inspired by boundary setting and conflicting ideas about work ethic. 

  • Cartoons of adults in a variety of fun activities.

    Podcast: Bringing Childlike Approaches to Self-Care

    Abby shares some techniques to lower stress in elementary school students, such as a 5-4-3-2-1 mapping exercise, that might also work for grad students. 

  • Podcast: A Research Pivot, One Year Later

    It has been a year of COVID. Grad student podcasters share their funniest Zoom stories and Burning Man expert Caitlin Brooks shares insights on the power of community in times of isolation.

  • On the Job Hunt: How to Keep Your Options Open

    In the coming months, facing uncertainty head-on and doing what you can to prepare for multiple possible job outcomes is the best thing you can do for your future self, advises Derek Attig.

  • Katie Frye

    One Story Video: Get to Know Microbiology Ph.D. Student, Katie Frye

    Meet Katie Frye a Ph.D. student in Microbiology and a COVID-19 SHIELD: Target, Test, Tell team member.

  • A picture of Byron Juma, sitting at a picnic table.

    One Story: Byron Juma, PhD Student in Recreation, Sport & Tourism

    Originally from Kenya, Byron has travelled the world in the pursuit of higher education. 

  • New Year, New You: Taking a Holistic Approach to the Academic Year

    New Year, New You: Taking a Holistic Approach to the Academic Year

    New Year’s resolutions always seem out of place on an academic calendar. January is more of a pause, not the fresh start we see advertised in every grocery store checkout. Andrea Bridges is here to convince you that now is the perfect time to do some self-reflection.

  • New Year - New Thesis Goals

    It’s February and your New Year’s resolutions have started to become habit… or fallen by the wayside. Fortunately, there’s still 11 months in the year to make your thesis a priority. The start of the new year and the new semester is a great time to think about what direction you would like your thesis work to go and to make plans accordingly. Below are five tips to help you set (and stick with) thesis-writing goals.

  • A student stands while having a conversation.

    Negotiating the Ups and Downs of Graduate School with Your Mentor

    Communicating openly with your mentor network can be a challenge. There’s no ready-made script for having effective conversations with a mentor, but building communications within a network of mentors allows you to advocate for yourself, source helpful feedback, and ask for the mentoring you need.

  • Navigating Job Offers

    Navigating the Surprising Stress of a Job Offer

    Looking for a job can be pretty terrible, and it’s often a long slog. Amid that stretched-out stress, it’s easy to start thinking of a job offer as a kind of holy grail, a singular solution to all your problems. But what I see over and over again, among the hundreds of graduate students I advise each year, is that the job offer is often its own source of emotional turmoil. A sudden offer, or the sense that one might be incoming, can prompt as much panic as delight.

  • More Than Just Buzzwords: Social Media as a Tool for Personal Branding in STEM

    nspired by nothing more than a joking remark from a colleague on the importance of securing a unique domain name before someone “stole it,” I made my personal website, RituRaman.com, in my second year of graduate school. Luckily for me, launching this website was the first step in an ongoing attempt to develop a coherent web presence and recognizable personal brand.

    Before I continue, I would like to acknowledge that terms like “personal brand” can often come across as meaningless buzzwords used by millennials to justify a relatively self-centered use of social media. When used without context, they make me cringe and feel pretentious – and I understand if they make you do the same – but this blog post isn’t about the philosophical clash between personal modesty and taking selfies. Rather, this post is about crafting your online presence in a way that best represents your personal history, your interests, and your future goals.

    Now that we’ve moved past the obligatory disclaimers, I will attempt to distill the social media lessons I’ve learned over the past few years into a few pithy steps.

  • A mind map graphic. The graphic reads: Mind Mapping: How it can help you, how to use it as a prewriting tool, and how to get started.

    Mind Mapping as a Prewriting Strategy

    Starting a writing project can be stressful, but developing prewriting strategies can help us be creative, build momentum, and get the most out of writing sessions. John Moist shares strategies for using mind maps as a prewriting tool.

  • A mentor converses with a graduate student in the lab.

    Mentorship Is Intentional: Establishing a Mentor-Mentee Relationship in Graduate School

    Claire Baytas (PhD, ’23; comparative literature) is back with a second post in our mentoring series that focuses on the processes of choosing a mentor, agreeing on mutual expectations, and maintaining productive lines of communication.

  • Meet the 2023 - 2024 SAGE Board Members

    SAGE is a graduate student advisory board and leadership opportunity fostering active engagement with Illinois Graduate College programs and initiatives.

  • SAGE

    Meet the 2020 - 2021 SAGE Board Members

    Students Advising on Graduate Education (SAGE) is a student advisory board and leadership opportunity for graduate students at Illinois that fosters active engagement with Graduate College programs and initiatives. SAGE board members enrich graduate student community, build leadership and administrative skills, and strengthen Graduate College services and programs. As we embark on a new academic year, we are excited to introduce our 2020 - 2021 SAGE board!

  • Meet Our Fellows: Safiyah Muhammad, Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow

    Ford Fellow Safiyah Muhammad says that she learned to teach from the best – her mom. Her mother homeschooled her before she was old enough to enroll in kindergarten and served as her fourth grade teacher as well. “She never limited me in what I could do. She never told me I was too young. She was my very first and obviously most impactful teacher,” Safiyah said. With the help of the Ford Fellowship, she hopes to channel that feeling into her work as a researcher, teacher, and scholar at Illinois.

  • Raquel Escobar

    Meet Our Fellows: Raquel Escobar, Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow

    Graduate education prepares you for many ways to positively impact the world around you. For Raquel Escobar, recent doctoral graduate in History, the opportunity to have a broad and active impact on the community comes through a Mellon/ACLS Public Fellowship. The fellowship allows Escobar to marry her scholarly expertise in history, memory and public humanities with a position at the Humanities Action Lab (HAL) at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

  • Meet Our Fellows: Nubras Samayeen, American Association of University Women

    When she finishes her degree at Illinois, Nubras Samayeen may be the first woman in Bangladesh to hold a PhD in Landscape Architecture. This is the realization of a goal she's had since she was a child and is, in no small part, something she's doing for her own two young daughters and for other Bangladeshi women who, like her, have unconventional dreams. Here’s her story.

  • Matthew Klopfenstein at the newly-opened Zariad’e Park, with the Kremlin in the background

    Meet Our Fellows: Matthew Klopfenstein, Fulbright Fellow in Moscow

    Matthew Klopfenstein has spend the last seven months deep in the world of Russian archives exploring how the deaths of female pop stars in the early 1900s entered the public realm and became national phenomena. Read about Matthew's day to day life as a Fulbright Fellow living in Moscow, Russia.

  • Matthew Boudreau

    Meet Our Fellows: Matthew Boudreau, NCI Pre/Postdoctoral Fellow

    “All of us, unfortunately, have a personal experience with cancer impacting a friend or family member. It touches a lot of our hearts. I saw the depths of what we could not treat through a life experience of a friend,” Matthew Boudreau, PhD Candidate in Chemistry said. “I think that was the first spark for me to become involved in cancer research.”

  • Meet Our Fellows: Matt Haugen, Fulbright Fellow studying Chinese Sport Industry

    Last April, after nearly a yearlong process and an arduous wait, Matthew Haugen was notified that he had been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, which would allow him the opportunity to complete his dissertation research project studying sport education in China. His fellowship experience ultimately encouraged him to pivot his dissertation research project to better represent and inform the future he sees for himself as a scholar.

  • Lauren Hagler, Illinois Sloan Scholar

    Meet Our Fellows: Lauren Hagler, Illinois Sloan Scholar

    Lauren Hagler fell in love with Chemistry during her first general chemistry class at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia.