Be seen, be heard, be present
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This week’s post is inspired by my “Be Seen, Be Heard” sweatshirt designed by Serena Williams1 and a recent lab discussion on being present and avoiding distractions.
The PhD process is hard enough without worrying about how to stand out or even just successfully make your way through a program. Here, I share a few tips2 (not exhaustive) for how you can be an active, thoughtful PhD community member with whom others want to work and collaborate.
Be seen. Whether you’re working in a lab as a research assistant or wrapping up the fifth year of your PhD program, it’s important (in my experience) to have a physical presence in your lab and/or department (absent a pandemic).
If your department hosts a speaker series, attend! Whether the speaker’s research/expertise interests you is usually irrelevant because there’s always something to learn (e.g., how to manage Q&A, how to craft accessible slides, how to interpret tricky analyses).
When in class, try to avoid sitting in the back of the room, if possible. For many, the back of the room is an invitation to be more easily distracted (at least it was for me). I always felt a bit more accountable when people were behind me. For example, if I had my computer open, I avoided social media (and other irrelevant sites) so that I wouldn’t distract the people behind me. This also helped me stay more focused during classes because I felt I could be “seen” better. During the past year, I’ve kept my video on whenever possible for similar reasons. It’s not always going to be possible to avoid the back of the room or have videos on (and that’s totally fine!). Ultimately, you have to do what is best for you and supports your learning.
If you’d like to work with a faculty member, ask to attend their lab meetings to get a sense of their ongoing projects. Although it may be obvious to you that you’re interested in working with someone, your interest may not be obvious to them. Further, it’s good practice to get a sense of the range of research interests and expertise represented in your department.
Department parties or gatherings, whatever their size, can be super difficult! I struggled with these as a student, but have come to really enjoy them. Try not to miss out on opportunities to get to know your colleagues in more informal settings. One strategy that helped me in the beginning was giving someone a ride to a gathering so I wouldn’t have to arrive alone (and whenever possible, my partner joined me because friends and family were always welcome at our gatherings, which was wonderful!). As mentioned above, it may not be possible to attend for many reasons, including those related to comfort and safety. So, it’s important to check in with yourself to know what is hard versus what is possible.
Be heard. It’s easy to feel like you have very little to contribute as a post-bacc researcher or early-career PhD student, but you do! Your ideas and contributions matter. At the same time, you may want to get a sense of your department and lab norms before jumping in (and that’s totally fine!).
When attending departmental talks, challenge yourself to ask questions during Q&A periods. While a grad student, my psychology area’s brown bag series had the expectation that students would ask the first question. Whether they should or not (that’s a separate question), faculty monitor who engages with speakers and speaks up in these types of situations. I got into the habit of writing my questions down while talks were ongoing so that I wouldn’t have to focus on remembering my questions nor getting the words just right on the fly.
In my experience, students don’t understand how much autonomy they have, which totally makes sense (I surely didn’t as a student). Further, it’s hard to know when you can and cannot advocate for yourself and your colleagues. If something doesn’t feel right, it is appropriate to say something. However, how you go about raising concerns may differ depending on your department/lab/advisor situation. I’ll talk more about advocating for oneself in a later post.
Make it a point to attend office hours to: 1) develop relationships with your instructors and TAs, 2) get additional clarity on outstanding questions, 3) get a better sense of the learning goals for a course, and 4) hear questions from other students (questions you may not even think to ask!). It’s often the case that office hours are on an “as-needed” basis at the PhD level, but not always. In short, it is not unreasonable to request meetings and you should do so when (and even before) any issues crop up.
Be present. Distractions abound. Therefore, it’s important to do what you can to limit them so that you can give your full attention to whatever task is at hand, especially meetings and classes. Being present is truly a skill and can require intentional practice. So, don’t worry too much if you find yourself struggling to “be present” for long periods (or even short periods) of time.
Know yourself and what distracts you. By this I mean, set yourself up for success. For example, I can’t have my phone out during lab meetings, otherwise I will be tempted to check social media. Some people can just flip their phones over, but I need to put mine in my bag on the floor (and during online meetings, I often place my phone in another room).
Sometimes it’s hard to sit still. If fidgeting were an Olympic sport, I think I’d really have a shot at making Team USA! And fidgeting is ok (it actually helps me concentrate). For me, fidgeting looks like tapping my foot or playing piano scales with my fingers under my desk. When necessary, I will stand when working (I have a shelf that is just the right height!) and shift my weight from side-to-side. And, when really struggling to concentrate, I’ll even doodle while taking (unnecessary) notes. The doodling and (unnecessary) note-taking keep me focused on what is being said.
Find joy and new ideas between others’ words. As mentioned above, there’s always something to learn when attending talks or listening to others during lab meetings. Beyond learning about new concepts or ideas, try making connections between your own interests and those of the speaker’s. Build on others’ ideas to generate new study opportunities—this is the collaborative nature of research. And know that by investing in others, others will invest in you (I hope!).
Some homework: Spend some time reflecting on your own practices and habits and identify opportunities for you to be seen, be heard, and be present in your lab, your department, and in your everyday interactions with your friends and colleagues (the latter of which is not entirely exclusive of the lab and department for many people). When doing this, consider binning the opportunities by difficulty (presumably some things you identify will be easier than others) and make a plan for how you can go about navigating each opportunity.
SCHOLAR PROFILE #4: DR. LARA AKNIN
The purpose of these profiles is to highlight and connect you to scholars at different career stages doing interesting and important research and service work.
This week, we get to learn about Dr. Lara Aknin, who is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Distinguished University Professor at Simon Fraser University.
Now, let’s learn about Dr. Aknin’s academic journey.
What are your research interests?
In my research, I study generosity, altruism, well-being, happiness, inequality, and gratitude. You can learn more about my lab’s work here!
Where did you earn your PhD and with whom did you work?
I earned my PhD in Social Psychology at the University of British Columbia, under the advisement of Dr. Elizabeth Dunn (primary) and Dr. Michael Norton (secondary).
Why did you choose your PhD institution and advisor(s)?
I really enjoyed working with Liz (and still do!)! I also loved the balance of direction and freedom I found in her lab.
Please share more about your academic journey.
Ahhh this was a journey! Fresh out of high school I thought I wanted to be an international lawyer and so in my first year of undergraduate studies I enrolled in a Latin class at the University of British Columbia (in Vancouver, where I grew up) thinking that it would help prepare me to study the law. With my first semester approaching, I went to the bookstore to purchase my textbook only to find cartoon drawings of people in togas inside the textbook! After my initial amusement, I started to question my decision of studying Latin and the law, and soon switched classes. I enrolled in Intro Psyc and I was hooked. My section was scheduled for 8am on Tuesday and Thursday mornings through the dark, cold, Canadian winter but I never missed a class. Year after year, psychology was my favorite topic. I realized that I wanted to learn more about how the findings in textbooks came to be, so I volunteered in a number of labs to get a closer look. I tried a developmental lab, cross-cultural lab, cognition lab. All these experiences stoked my interest in psychology and helped me refine my interests. At the same time, I applied to the honors program and was accepted, so I had the opportunity to see the whole life cycle of a project (from data collection through to a final paper) first-hand and that was a thrilling ride!
I graduated with my undergraduate degree in 2005 and took a year off to get some more experience. During that year, I was a lab manager for my 4th year honors supervisor, Dr. Eric Eich, as well as a new and enthusiastic faculty member, Dr. Liz Dunn. I enjoyed working with them both immensely! In Eric's lab I was able to run some really interesting studies on mood dependent memory and assist with literature reviews. In Liz's lab I was exposed to a range of new ideas and blown away by the idea of collecting data outside the lab -- all over campus, at the science center downtown, at bus stops, and online.
Having enjoyed my honors and lab managing experiences so much, I was motivated to apply to graduate school. My ultimate goal was to help people and so I thought that pursuing a degree in clinical psychology was the most direct route because I could become a clinician. Yet, some part of me must have wondered about continuing with experimental work because I applied to both clinical and experimental programs -- which really just delayed my decision. In the end, this strategy didn't help much because I was accepted to both a clinical and experimental program, which required me to make a choice. I thought that clinical psychology was the obvious choice for me because I would be able to work directly with clients. Moreover, the clinical program was on the East Coast, a part of the continent I wanted to explore, but every time I went to click the "accept" button I felt nauseas. I spoke with a few mentors who urged me to reflect on what type of conversations and ideas kept me up at night with excitement. I realized that it was ideas of experimental design and the growing literature on happiness. So, I declined the offer to study clinical psychology and accepted the offer to the experimental PhD program at UBC with Liz Dunn who was doing some really exciting work on what people thought made them happy.
When I joined Liz's lab as a graduate student I was so excited to start running studies. Liz and I met often to discuss ideas, which was SO fun, and it didn't take us long to land on what eventually became my thesis work and first paper -- an experimental investigation of whether spending money on others led to greater happiness than spending money on oneself. We designed a number of studies (some correlational, some experimental) to start probing this question and then I recruited an army of amazing volunteers to help make these study ideas a reality! I think we ran ~20 studies in my first year. It was exhilarating. We learned a lot, narrowed our ideas, ran more studies, and eventually published our findings (along with Mike Norton, my co-supervisor) in 2008. We were very fortunate to have the paper reach a wide audience and the findings are still central to my core interests of human generosity and happiness.
Perhaps not surprisingly then, I spent the majority of my PhD extending research on the central question that began my graduate studies: Can engaging in acts of financial generosity lead to greater happiness than spending money on oneself? This question allowed me to probe my deep interests in prosociality. I looked at whether giving was emotionally rewarding for toddlers and whether financial generosity led to hedonic rewards in rich and poor countries around the world. I also looked into mediators and moderators of the basic effect. These studies served as the focus of my dissertation, which I successfully defended in 2012.
One uncommon feature of my training is that I completed both my undergraduate and graduate studies in the department of psychology at the University of British Columbia, which is an amazing place to be! I also wanted to see how other departments worked and so I completed a visiting term at Harvard Business School with my secondary supervisor, Mike Norton, and a year at Columbia Business School, while writing my dissertation in NYC where my partner was working at the time. Upon graduating, I applied for jobs hoping that one day I'd possibly make it back to Canada. It just so happened that Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Vancouver had posted a faculty position in social psychology that year. I applied, interviewed, and was offered the position. I started at SFU in the summer of 2012 and received tenure in 2018.
How did you navigate the PhD application process?
I am an organized person and so I started planning early! I made lists of the programs and supervisors I hoped to work with. I asked my mentors about the potential advisors; I knew that I wanted to work with someone who had a hands-on mentorship style and was easy to be around. I was lucky that my mentors were well connected and respected, so they were able to give me direction on who was doing great work and would be a great advisor.
I applied to clinical and experimental programs where I could work with supervisors pursuing work related to well-being and positive emotion. I was accepted to both types of programs and had to do some deep reflection on my interests.
Are there any important norms/practices to consider when applying to PhD programs in Canada given your knowledge about practices elsewhere (e.g., in the US)? If so, what are they?
Overall, I think the PhD programs in Canada are quite similar to the US but there are a few notable differences.
Application deadlines tend to be a bit later in Canada than in the United States, often falling in December not November.
Most graduate programs require you to apply to the Master's program, which is the first 2 years of graduate studies, and then continue on to the PhD program. The Master's degree is not a terminal degree but a stepping stone to the PhD program. Most 2-year Master's degrees mean that students write a thesis which is hopefully/ideally nearly ready to submit for publication before they proceed to the PhD program. However, in some rare cases, where the student is struggling or the student-supervisor match is not working, the 2-year Master's degree offers an exit or transition point.
A majority of the graduate level funding opportunities in Canada are provided by the Canadian government and directed towards Canadian students or permanent residents. This means that international students should ask if a potential supervisor has grant funding to help support them and/or apply for the smaller pool of government or private funded awards/scholarships available.
Canadian post-secondary institutions are subsidized by the Canadian government and so the discrepancy between the top and other tier institutions is not nearly as extreme or steep as in the United States. This probably matters most for undergraduate studies but may also relevant for graduate studies because, while there certainly is a difference in abilities to attract funding, etc., this may not be as extreme or unequal as many people expect from the US comparison.
What is one bit of advice you'd like to give new (first-year) PhD students?
Find mentors who help bring out the best in you and believe in you. Then keep them near. These mentors can be lab mates, students in your cohort, or your supervisor. Grad school can be a roller coaster but finding people who help you hone your ideas, make ethical choices, seek greater insight, find balance, and take risks is how I stayed on track.
Is there anything else about you or your journey that you’d like to share?
I don't know if this is about my journey per se, but I hope it's a helpful mindset: Make the decision to see other academics as collaborators in search of a greater truth, not competitors.
Many thanks to Dr. Aknin for sharing more about her academic journey!
RESOURCE SPOTLIGHT
In this section, I highlight resources you may find helpful as you navigate the PhD application process as well as the PhD itself. This week, I’m sharing a couple resources for those interested in pursuing PhDs in psychology and one on fee waivers for a select number of schools.
If you’d like to see a specific resource appear here, please share the relevant information via this survey. And remember, I maintain a running list of resources here.
Big Ten Academic Alliance (FreeApp): FreeApp seeks to increase graduate education access for students who possess qualities and experiences that enhance the diversity of the intellectual, cultural, and social environments at Big Ten Academic Alliance universities. It is open to all qualified candidates. Those who have been traditionally underrepresented in graduate education, including racial and ethnic minorities, women in STEM, first-generation college students, and individuals who have faced adversity, such as societal, economic or academic disadvantages are strongly encouraged to submit a waiver request. Through this program, prospective students can request a graduate application fee waiver for Ph.D. or Master of Fine Arts programs at participating universities.
As a graduate of a Big Ten school (Go Blue!), I’m excited to share this resource, which is designed to help defray costs associated with grad school applications. Note that there is a priority deadline (November 15), so check out the list of participating schools and request the applications sooner rather than later!
Mitch’s Uncensored Advice for Applying to Graduate School in Clinical Psychology: This brief guide is designed to provide an overview of different types of possible career options in the mental health industry, as well as specific information about the application process for a common option: the clinical psychology doctoral (Ph.D.) program.
I’ve worked with many students interested in pursuing clinical psychology and this resource is one that I routinely share. I am not a clinical psychologist, nor am I very knowledgable about clinical science, but this document has helped me learn quite a bit about the application process!
Yale Psychology Bootcamp: On June 30, 2020, the Psychology Department Committee for Diversity and Inclusiveness, in collaboration with the Office for Graduate Student Development and Diversity, hosted a three-part bootcamp for undergraduate students and recent graduates interested in applying to psychology PhD programs. The three videos below provide more information about what you can do with a PhD in psychology, how to make yourself a competitive applicant for psychology PhD programs, and how to apply to psychology PhD programs.
This three-part webinar series covers: 1) careers in research psychology, 2) how to get experience in research psychology, 3) how to apply to graduate school in research psychology. For this reason, this series is great for anyone thinking about applying to psychology PhD programs and for mentors themselves to get a sense of how they can better guide students interested in research psychology.
How to reach me: You are always welcome to email me (letstalkgradschool@gmail.com) or find me on Twitter @tweetsbymidge.
1-on-1 sessions: Interested in some additional mentorship? Sign up for 1-on-1 sessions to discuss your questions regarding the social science PhD application process and/or completing a social science PhD more generally! Sign-ups will happen via Calendly and you can check periodically for updated openings. Sign up here!
Note: For right now, I’m going to test out a few times on Mondays, but my availability may change. As it stands, sign-ups are available 14 days in advance of meeting. Additionally, I am requiring that those requesting 1-on-1 meetings subscribe to this newsletter. This is because I will likely reference material from posts during meetings and I’d like you to have that information handy.
Until next time!
Margaret
The undisputed #GOAT.
These tips are based on my experiences in linguistics, psychology, behavioral science, and marketing departments and may reflect discipline/department norms that are not representative of those in your field of interest.