Survival Stories – Survive Grad School

Surviving grad school as an international student

Here is what our friend and fellow classmate Omar Aldakheel has to say about surviving graduate school as an international student:

Surviving grad school is tough, and surviving grad school as a foreigner is even tougher. I am a 24-year-old multi-media journalism student at the University of Oregon Graduate School. I faced many difficulties during my undergrad and now in grad school, including feeling home sick or struggling with a second language.

One thing I realized is just to stay positive and confident, and that’s what is getting me through. Also, I use my background and experience in my projects to kind of turn my weaknesses to strength. I love the proverb that’s says: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” and that’s what I try to do. I’m Middle Eastern and I use my Arab origin to showcase a lot of stuff.

For example, during my first term in grad school I was assigned to talk about the impact of new media, so I talked about the Arab spring and how social media was used to make revolutions in my part of the world. In another project, I made a travel site for people who are travelers like me, and shared my thoughts and recommendations.

I feel that no matter where you come from, all humans somehow connect. When you are not a native, you can talk about your place of origin and draw examples, and people will identify with the human elements. The point being, we all face difficulties, but it’s the mentality and attitude that changes everything. That’s what I always advise international students to do: Be positive, be proud and be productive. That will hopefully get you through grad school.

Life In Grad School Is Not Normal

I originally asked my friend Lacey to write something for the blog, but she told me her friend Linn actually had a more enticing and unique story. Linn was returning to grad school for her second time. After having such a great experience the first time, her spirits were high and she was generally calm, but as she notes in her story: No two grad school experiences are the same. She is a seasoned veteran at the grad school game, so I hope you will read on, learn from het story, and hear what great advice she has to offer.

High school was a requirement. College was strongly suggested (or rather unavoidable as long as finances lined up). And Grad school was an option, one that lay amongst other options of jobs, internships, travel, ect. Grad school was my choice. I started grad school to work on my Masters in Public Health in 2009. This choice to seek out select skills in public health made me feel like I was joining the influential in my field of choice. I spent two years learning computer software, data analysis and a list of boring (yet impressive epidemiology terms). The two years flew by, mainly due to the self-paced curriculum. Classes and exams were set on the calendar, but a majority of the training was spent on building my own research project and having it all come together for my grand finale thesis. Earning that Masters was a success in more ways than just the thesis. I scored publications, networked, gained friends with similar aspirations, and graduation opened doors to endless public health positions. I chose to spend a couple years afterwards working in the field, helping build international awareness of neglected tropical disease like guinea worm and trichamonas.

I loved the field and its intent and influence, but ultimately I didn’t see my role expanding. So, I chose to return to grad school for a 2nd Masters. Other than needing to locate additional finances, the decision to go back to school was easy because my first experience went so swimmingly. I started my Masters in Physician Assistant the summer of 2012. I was warned at both my interview and orientation that this program was grueling and to prepare both myself and my family for this taxing curriculum. I didn’t appreciate those statements at the time and started the program calm and collected in remembrance of my great first Masters experience. It only took about 6 weeks before I started to crumble under the stress and workload of the program. In comparison, the classroom hours were exhausting, exams came way too frequent and I was stuck in a classroom with 37 other students who were becoming just as cranky and defeated as I was. I wasn’t making connections with classmates as easy as I had in Public Health school.

In my first program I fell into something easy when I met a group of classmates that quickly turned into a community. We fed off each other and supported the other’s ideas. The start of PA school was in such a claustrophobic space with constant stress and demand that I don’t believe my classmates and I ever had time to build connections stronger than study groups. Time was too limited. On top of the constant studying, lack of connection with classmates, I was losing time with my community of friends outside of the program. I had to cancel dinners, excuse my self from birthday parties and when I was available to reconnect with my friends, I felt guilty for not dedicating myself to the books. I never felt settled in my skin that first year, feeling pulled in all direction, and not feeling that I was giving any one part of my life 100%. In my frustrations with the year, I remember talking to a friend back home about how my attitude was deteriorating and her words helped me pace myself to the finish of the year. She told me that the life I’m living currently in PA school was not normal. These challenges were limited to an endpoint and this torture (as I saw it) was not long-term. After giving myself some slack, my first year finished on an upswing.

Now, I’m 4 months into my second year, with 8 months to go. The structure is very different, no more class time or bi-weekly exams. This year, we are on our rotations, spending every 5 weeks at a different hospital or clinic, training and learning medicine with real patient problems. The work is more enticing, rewarding, tangible and never stagnant. This year I get to spend time with patients, doctors, PAs, nurses and hospital staff. I get to spend time with the people I never got to engage with last year and for all these reasons, my second year in grad school is exactly where I want to be. Ask me if I’d repeat that first year, and I’m sure I’d give you a resounding ‘No!’, but that’s probably because last years’ chaos is still too close to me. Give me 5-10 years before you ask me again. But what I will tell you is that grad school comes in many shapes and sizes. No one graduate program experience can allow you to make assumptions of all graduate school experiences. So instead remember these three things: (1) keep charging forward, (2) positive attitude and (3) remember that life in grad school is not normal, so give yourself some slack.

Earning An “A” In Life

When you go back to grad school, you contend with how to fit your current life into a school schedule. Sometimes it means breaking up with someone or seeing them less. Sometimes it means not cooking as much or eating out a lot. Sometimes it means working less or not at all. Erin faced these issues as she returned to graduate school to get an MPH. Would she continue working full time while she was in school, so that she continued to get the much needed experience that jobs would look for after she finished school? Such a choice would impact everything from her relationship to her grades. In order to make it all work she had to renegotiate her understanding of success.

After being out of school for almost six years, I went back to school to pursue my Masters in Public Health in the Fall of 2012. At the time, I was working full-time in a demanding (emotionally and time-wise) job in a busy community health clinic downtown. When I first enrolled and looked at classes, I briefly considered going to school half-time, in what would equate to about a three-year plan—two classes/term. Thinking more seriously about what that would entail—a full extra year with three vs. two!—I decided to try to see what full-time looked like from the beginning and registered full-time for three classes. To be honest, my desire to go to school was less out of interest to be a student and more out of a desire to earn credentials that would allow me to move up at my job and perhaps even pursue more advanced employment options. In spite of entering grad school full-time, I was also reluctant to cut back my hours at work for a few reasons. Based on feedback I’d gotten from people I knew who had gone through my program while working, I anticipated a moderate load of coursework that would be challenging but not impossible for folks who worked full-time. Lucky for me, the program made it easy to do this, too, with many classes offered in the evenings. The thing that most weighed on me, though, was perusing through job postings aimed at MPH graduates, all of which wanted, “three or more years experience in the field.” If I stopped working and just went to school, I wouldn’t quite hit that mark and would also have a gap in my employment history to explain. So, I took a deep breath, cut my hours back to about 30/week, and started my full-time public health courseload.

Much of what has happened since has been a blur: long nights skimming articles and cranking out papers, amazing and inspired group study sessions with classmates I am so fortunate to have met in my program, showing up to work alternatively exhausted from being so busy but also energized because my schoolwork compliments my job so well, and taking things one day at a time– only to realize yet another quarter has somehow flown by! I am very glad that I decided to go full-time because, at this point, being almost done, I totally see the light at the end of the tunnel and it feels amazing. This process has definitely not been easy in any way and has involved more sacrifice than I was initially prepared for. I have skimped on everything from eating to time with my partner to sleep in order to make what feels like about 30 hours of work between school and my job fit into a 24 hour day. I have become a master at preparing slow-cooker meals overnight (cooking while sleeping= genius!) and speed-reading on MAX rides. More importantly, I have had to negotiate and renegotiate with myself exactly what, “success,” means to me, realizing it’s not about getting perfect grades in all my classes, or even slam-dunking everything I am charged with at work. Instead, I try to be forgiving, and tell myself I am earning an “A” in life by getting through each day, passing my classes, and holding up what I am responsible for at work. The moments where I recognize that I am actually learning some really innovative ideas, that I am now a part of a community that cares about the same things that I do, and where I see magical opportunities to apply a concept I have been exposed to in a class in the way I do something at work are simply added bonuses that make all this struggle feel totally worthwhile and fuels another day forward.

Dream It And Do It Right

Scott is old high school friend I recently connected with on Facebook. In a call for stories, he was quick to respond. Initially overwhelmed by the length (yep, you’ll have to commit to at least 3 whole minutes), I did a quick glance through and thought it would be fine to post. But as I was getting ready to post it up here, I realized how inspirational it is. How many of us take the safe route, THE WRONG ROUTE, because of external or maybe even internal pressures rather than following our gut and our dreams? Scott listened to his dreams for his foray into grad school. Seems like it worked out pretty darn well for him. Hopefully if you are in grad school you can say like Scott did, that grad school is AWESOME!!

I completed my undergraduate degree at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, and entered the adult world sure of only one thing: I wanted nothing to do with managing hotels or restaurants. Ever. So I was 22 years old, with a prestigious Ivy League education that I had no intention of using, no idea what I wanted to do, and a vague sense that I had missed out on doing anything interesting with my life. I loved music and art, but had declined to get an education in either, because parents, teachers, guidance counselors, etc. had convinced me that there were no real careers to be had in the arts.

I had a scant number of elective courses in college, and I spent all of them on music and writing classes. My concentration within my major was interior design. But with only a few classes in the discipline, I wasn’t even able to get an internship at a design firm. So I took a job that I could get, as a securities administrator at a bank. Then another job as a marketing intern. Then another job as an event planner in a marketing department. Then another one as a marketing coordinator. I dreamt of being a musician, a copywriter, a designer of anything, and every time I interviewed I would get the same response: Where have you written/designed before? Nowhere. Nobody would let me.

It was at that last marketing coordinator job that I started having the opportunity to design some banner ads. I also made some demonstration videos of the company’s product. I was eager to learn, and they let me experiment. It was the first time I was happy working. At the same time I was moving from analog 4-track recording to a digital setup at home. When I was laid off from that job, I knew what I wanted to do.

I enrolled in a Masters program in Visual and Media arts at Emerson College. It was AWESOME. Due to my layoff and an unexpected extension of unemployment benefits I was able to be a full time student with no other responsibilities other than to create art with people all day, every day. I experimented, designed, programmed, recorded, wrote and filmed sometimes 60-80 hours a week. I read Deluze and Freud. I studied the language of film. I learned how to frame a picture. How to manage a project. How to tell a story. I learned Flash, Director, HTML, and CSS. I produced my first 2 records for actual clients. I met really creative people who challenged me and pushed me. I saw possibilities where before I only saw dead ends. During the second half of grad school, I had to work full time, and would put in 8 hours a day working before coming home and spending another 8 hours working on my thesis.

To be honest, my work from the second half of grad school wasn’t as good. I didn’t have as much energy. But the portfolio I had created during the first half was what began to get me freelance work. I worked freelance for years. First as an HTML developer, than as a Flash animator, then as a Visual Designer, and finally as an Information Architect/User Experience Designer. My client list….you know most of them. Your 401(k) is likely managed through a system I designed. I have worked in E-Commerce, in commercial brochure-ware, in kiosks and interactive events, in derivatives and money-market trading applications, in big data discovery and more. I think things up and draw pictures of them all day long. And then people actually build them. I work with creative and interesting people; people who are interested in what they do and interested in the possibilities of what could be. Before grad school, I was a lost kid in a dead end world. Now I am a full-time creative professional. Grad school saved my life.

Old Commitments vs. New Priorities

Some of us can slide back into school more easily than others. My friend Laurel did just that. Still, reintroducing a school schedule into your life will alter your routines and future plans in unexpected ways. She came face to face with this dilemma and was forced to make a decision that might have affected her grade. How do you decide between previous commitments and the new demands of school? Here is what she had to say:

Fortunately, graduate school fit pretty seamlessly into my life. I had been out of college for six years and working in public schools for four of those, so I knew I was ready to get back into school and move forward in my career. After sifting my way through the various roles I could play within public education, I reached the conclusion that I wanted to be a high school counselor. The school I attended for undergrad had a School Counseling program that had an excellent reputation amongst the school staff I knew at the time so it seemed like a natural fit. Once the program accepted me, I had to make a decision about staying with my job, which had grown to play a pivotal role in both my personal and professional growth over the years. My heart would have broken to have left it any earlier than was necessary so I cut down my hours as minimally as possible in order to accommodate the internships required by my program.

For the duration of the first semester, I was beat. I spent three days working, two days at internships and entire weekends doing homework. Having been out of school for six years, it took a bit to re-familiarize myself with study habits, balance of time and staying sane, but I have always felt at home in an educational setting, especially a small personal environment like that offered by my program. I also genuinely love the challenge of getting organized within a new system so graduate school offered me the opportunity to navigate a new level of responsibility in which I ended up thriving, especially because I simply let it knock me out in the beginning.

I remember being warned that professors were very strict about how many classes you are allowed to miss each semester. So when I realized that prior to my acceptance into the program, I had already planned a trip only a couple months into the term, I was stressed about having to give a first impression that seemed to demonstrate a lack of dedication. However, it was important to me to keep my life going when I take on any commitment, rather than just stopping everything to let one facet of my life take over. Fortunately, counseling programs frequently emphasize self-care and balance so it never became a problem. Another moment, about a year into the program, that always stuck with me, was when I enrolled in an evening course in early June that only lasted a month or so, but which is the time of year high schools hold their graduation ceremonies. I had a student whose family I knew extremely well and who I had been working with since she was in middle school so attending her graduation was incredibly important to me and to her family. I told the teacher on the first day of class, to which she responded that my grade would automatically drop one letter grade because that was the school’s policy on a short term course such as this one. Incredibly disappointed and somewhat shocked that a program teaching us to be caring, committed educators would punish me for doing so, I went with my gut anyway and missed the class to attend her graduation. On the last day of the course, the professor pulled me aside and told me that she wasn’t going to enforce the policy because of my performance in the class and because I did the right thing. This was one of the more powerful moments for me in the entire program because I had chosen my life and prior commitments over fulfilling some small requirement.

Mine was only a two year program, and I was fortunate to get a job using a transitional license during my second year, instead of completing another internship, which was an exciting but stressful challenge. Diving in and being able to bring that real experience back to my peers in the program built my confidence and still allowed me the safety net of continuing to receive support from my professors while performing the work. Although that job was not my ideal introduction to the career for a variety of reasons, it threw me in and taught me some of the complexities of working in public education. Considering that it landed me where I am now, I have no regrets.