Helping Students Adapt to Graduate School

Making the Grade

Earle Sibler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781317720348
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Help graduate students cope with the pressures of school, finances, family, and professors!

In order to succeed in school:

• The college undergraduate just has to be able to find and operate an elevator in the campus high-rise
• The master's degree student has to climb the side of the building
• The PhD student doing research with a professor has to jump over the building in a single bound, carrying the professor

That bit of grim humor contains a bitter kernel of truth. Helping Students Adapt to Graduate School is the first book that focuses on the unique problems of graduate students and the best ways to counsel and support them.

Graduate and professional schools are draining - emotionally, financially, and physically. In addition to coping with the pressures of classes and high performance expectations, many graduate students juggle multiple lives, trying to please their professors, maintain their status as adults, pay for books and classes and rent and food, keep up a place to live, preserve their marriages, raise their children, and deal with their parents, all while they work as teaching assistants, resident advisors, or research assistants. When adults return to school, they may find themselves forced into a childlike status, causing considerable resentment or regression and sometimes reawakening old conflicts. Furthermore, the relationship of professors and graduate students is often complex and emotionally enmeshed, tinged with issues of respect, rivalry, and even romance. Not surprisingly, many graduate students find the conflicts overwhelming at times.

With fascinating case studies and lucid explanations, Helping Students Adapt to Graduate School offers a clear look at the special difficulties of graduate students and practical ways the university can help, including:

• fostering a sense of belonging
• providing year-round mental health services
• helping students handle financial pressures and career decisions
• supporting the unique needs of minority, international, married, and older students
• understanding the hidden subtext of faculty-student relationships
• encouraging a balance of family and school

Helping Students Adapt to Graduate School is an essential resource for deans, administrators, professors, and counselors working with graduate students. By illuminating the complex interplay between the university environment and the inner psychological life of graduate students, it will help you provide supportive services to the students in your campus community.

Chapter 1:
Overview

 

 

CHARACTERISTICS OF GRADUATE STUDENTS

Graduate students are not a monolithic group. As insectioniduals, they vary enormously in talents, interests, personality, social skills, financial resources, available support systems and family constellations. Furthermore, the myriad of graduate programs presents distinct challenges and tasks that, in turn, may lead to a variety of emotional stresses and consequent psychiatric crises.

Of course, students in professional schools such as law and medicine will have a markedly different experience than those in other graduate programs such as the liberal arts, sciences or history (Blaine and McArthur, 1961). The program characteristics and academic mission affect the milieu in which the student functions. For example, many law students learn in an academic environment not unlike college with ample administrative support similar to that at a college. In contrast, Ph.D. students in small departments may be immersed in their chosen subject and may have little organized contact with anyone outside their specific field. Part-time students may be enrolled in either a structured professional program or a graduate program that is considerably more flexible in terms of requirements and order of progression. Throughout the report we will use the term graduate student to include both graduate and professional students unless we are commenting on aspects of university life that are specifically related to one or the other.

Graduate students in doctoral programs occupy a critical role as teachers of undergraduates; they often are thrust onto the front lines and forced to deal with the complex emotional problems of undergraduates. If graduate students are having their own emotional difficulties, their problems may have far reaching effects on the undergraduates they teach as well as on faculty who depend on them as research and teaching assistants. Therefore, it is in the university’s self-interest to provide care for this enormously important population on campus.

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[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: “Chapter 1: Overview.” Co-published simultaneously in Journal of College Student Psychotherapy (The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 14, No. 2, 1999, pp. 93-96; and: Helping Students Adapt to Graduate School: Making the Grade (Committee on the College Student, Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry) The Haworth Press, Inc., 2000, pp. 93-96. Single or multiple copies of this article are available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service [1-800-342-9678, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (EST). E-mail address: [email protected]].

Graduate students occupy multiple roles, not only within the university but also within society. They must meet the demands of life outside of the classroom, library, or laboratory as husbands, wives, parents, lovers, teachers and perhaps sons and daughters of aging parents.

CHARACTERISTICS OF GRADUATE PROGRAMS

Graduate programs come in many shapes and sizes. Some programs, usually in professional fields, are clearly defined in terms of duration, formal course requirements and regularly scheduled examinations that students must pass to receive a degree. Others have flexible course choice and require a dissertation or a completed project for graduation. What is considered a completed dissertation may depend in large measure on the dissertation advisor who has great power in this context. In contrast, a professional school student is rarely dependent on the approval of a single instructor.

The nature of the curriculum and the support network affect the level of stress that students experience. Professional schools usually have a structured curriculum lasting two to four years, whereas the expected length of time that is needed to complete a graduate school program varies from two years for a master’s degree to four to seven or more years for a Ph.D. (Menand, 1996 a & b) The support structure that is available to students within the graduate school proper also varies greatly with the area of study and the size of the department. Furthermore, the value that university officials assign to graduate programs compared to undergraduate studies will affect the atmosphere of the graduate schools and the amount of attention paid to graduate students.

In this regard, professional school training (M.D., M.B.A., J.D.) may be less stressful in some respects and less difficult to decipher then other graduate programs. Professional schools have very clearly demarcated curricula, time frames, sequences, and expectations. At the end of professional school training there may well be a certification examination (licensure for M.D.s, bar exams for J.D.$) that structure the sequence and timing of knowledge acquisition. Coursework is often pre-ordained and only offered in sequence. Here the faculty have clear expectations for performance, faculty/student relationships, and a sense of a superimposed and sequenced beginning, middle, and end to their relationships.

While administrators may view graduate students as independent adults and conclude that they need little from the institution other than academic opportunity, this can also be a rationalization for not providing much in the way of social and academic support. The great sectionersity among insectionidual students-academic, financial, emotional, and place of origin-is often ignored, leading to the expectation that everyone can fit the same pattern. In departments with small numbers of students or with heavy requirements for insectionidual work, it is common for students to feel isolated and to have less chance of finding compatible friends. This experience contrasts considerably with the collegiality of undergraduate life. Those areas of study that attract international students present even greater problems in socialization because, in addition to difficulties of the program, there are cultural differences to be overcome by both international and U.S. students (GAP Report, 1990; Martinez et al., 1989; Reifler, 1988).

Chapter 2:
Decision to Attend Graduate School

 

 

The process by which students make decisions to attend graduate school offers important insights for understanding their subsequent experience. The thinking involved in this decision varies greatly from one student to another. Some students select a career early in life, stay with this choice during college by taking appropriate courses and apply with confidence to the indicated graduate program. For them graduate study is simply an inevitable step on the way to entering their chosen career. Occasionally, such students may postpone attending a graduate program because of financial or family considerations or because of a temporary period of doubt about the wisdom of their decision, but generally graduate school represents a fixed and relatively uncontlicted choice.

Many professional careers require a period of special training before practice or advancement. Even in areas such as business, in which many succeed without graduate study, there is an increasing tendency to require a higher level of education for entry level jobs. If a higher degree is not actually required, applicants nonetheless think that such a degree gives them a competitive advantage. The current trend toward greater credentialing may make a degree more important than skills or experience (Menand, 1996a). As more insectioniduals believe this, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; the insectionidual with an excellent record without an advanced degree feels at a disadvantage in competing with someone with the same excellent record and an additional degree. This belief may be undergoing some change in the current decade because there are so many insectioniduals with graduate degrees. Some college graduates may feel that the graduate degree is not worth the two or more years it takes to obtain, and they search for other qualities to make themselves desirable in the job market.

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[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: “Chapter 2: Decision to Attend Graduate School.” Co-published simultaneously in Journal of College Student Psychotherapy (The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 14, No. 2, 1999, pp. 93-96; and: Helping Students Adapt to Graduate School: Making the Grade (Committee on the College Student, Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry) The Haworth Press, Inc., 2000, pp. 93-96. Single or multiple copies of this article are available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service [1-800-342-9678, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (EST). E-mail address: [email protected]].

Several other factors may influence the decision to attend graduate school. Some students select graduate study as a means to delay commitment to a career or more generally to postpone facing entry into “the real world.” For some, this delay reflects a realistic, positive assessment of their readiness to commit to a career; for others, it represents a more generalized inability to make commitments that borders on the pathological (Erikson, 1950). For a few insectioniduals, difficulty in commitment is a characterological problem which, in extreme cases, may lead to an extended postponement of any long term decisions about work. Far more often, however, a delay in attending graduate school is an adaptational effort on the part of students to discover or further define their interests, a developmental task that has not necessarily been completed during college. Ideally, these students will clarify their career doubts before beginning graduate study and, if appropriate, return for graduate study with clear goals that will make the academic work meaningful.

Some students may undertake graduate study in lieu of developing a clear future career, or because a faculty advisor encourages them to pursue a particular field. Others turn to graduate school after taking jobs that become unsatisfying or have no potential for advancement. This experience may motivate them to decide that more–or different training–will lead to greater job satisfaction and opportunity. Still others are motivated by a combination of factors and consider graduate study to be generally beneficial even though they are uncertain about a final career goal. It is common for someone to say, “I don’t want to practice law, but legal training will be useful whatever I decide to do.”

Many college graduates initially do not apply to graduate school but later decide to undertake further study. For some, this may result from a productive use of time in the service of maturation. At the time these students graduated from college they were not ready to make a clear choice of career or to commit to additional years of preparation that were essential (Johnson and Schwartz, 1989). Others need to earn money to pay off college debts or to save money to help support themselves enough to enter a graduate program. It is likely that most postponements are a combination of internal and external factors. Thus, the college senior who has no particular career goal may decide to take a job for a period of time and, while working, may find an interest to pursue that will require further study. Students who have difficulty deciding whether to attend graduate school may find help through an informative publication of The Council of Graduate Schools which provides valuable guidance on career opportunities, how to choose a graduate school, costs, financial aid and other practical information (Hamblin, 1999).

A woman who has married soon after college may find that her life expectations are only partially fulfilled by raising a family, and look forward to the time when her children are in school and she can become involved in a profession. For still others, the so-called “mid-life crisis” (which may occur at any age from 30 to 60) may encourage them to enter a career that differs from their original occupation. Some students find graduate study an enjoyable activity and decide to turn it into a lifelong occupation. Even though most graduate programs have specified time limits, some students are remarkably creative in extending these limits (Menand, 1996b). Certainly the factors influencing a student’s decision to attend graduate school are crucial to understanding subsequent emotional problems.

Chapter 3:
The University’s Role in Providing Support

OVERVIEW

In many ways, the university is a mini-social organization that can provide a wide range of support for students while they are part of that community. Some educators may feel that the mission of the university is not only primarily academic but also that supportive functions are beyond its scope. This overlooks the fact that when students’ psychological well-being is appropriately supported, they experience a level of satisfaction that contributes to their functioning well academically. While the university cannot act as a surrogate family, it can, nevertheless, provide appropriate support to the needs of adult students in promoting a sense of belonging and supporting a sense of worth. In enhancing the quality of life for graduate students, the university also contributes to fulfilling its mission of enhancing academic performance.

Many graduate schools are developing specific programs to support their students’ overall psychological well-being (Brennan, 1999). In some universities, each separate school may have a dean for student affairs as well as a dean for academic affairs, and there may be university-wide offices that help students with more general issues such as housing, financial aid and career counseling. Variations in the format of how these functions are designated in a given university depends on the structure and history of the particular university and the specific missions of departments and schools.

Some universities have found that establishing an overarching office of graduate student affairs can be useful in supporting all the insectionidual graduate programs. Acting as a central point and not beholden to any given school or program, it often has a twofold purpose. First, it may be active in initiating projects, such as a student-run café, many social programs, concerts, and athletic events. Ideally it will have some funds to help support student events. Often a very small amount of seed money may allow a project to develop in a manner that would be impossible if there were absolutely no funds. Second, it may provide neutral personnel who can hear and act on reports of disciplinary breaches, on complaints of harassment, and help resolve difficulties within a school or department. It may also take the lead in helping insectionidual deans and/or chairpersons when a traumatic event such as a death occurs on campus. Because the office is not specifically connected with the student’s primary locus, it has an enormous advantage in attempting to handle and resolve difficult crises. In some universities such an office includes an ombudsman, who may be a student or a respected faculty member. It is important that students be aware that such offices or resources exist as a place to bring problems and ask for help.

THE TRANSITION INTO GRADUATE SCHOOL: WELCOMING THE STUDENT

The transition into graduate school begins with the application process and the notification that the student has been accepted into a graduate program. How this is done conveys an important message to the student about the university’s concern with the student as a person. Hence, it is important to welcome students with an extensive package of informational materials before they arrive on campus. Such “welcoming packets” may include maps of the campus and surrounding neighborhood, information abut local customs, facts about car registration, state driver’s license requirements, suggestions about parking, information on banking, lists of cultural and recreational activities and voter registration information.

Students have important concerns about living arrangements and it is helpful for universities to maintain a bureau to inform students about available housing. On-campus housing in the first year may facilitate students’ orientation to the university and their particular graduate department. Other specific information is essential for newly arriving students. Does the housing bureau maint...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP)
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Overview
• Chapter 2: Decision to Attend Graduate School
• Chapter 3: The University’s Role in Providing Support
• Chapter 4: Developmental Issues
• Chapter 5: General Aspects of Graduate School Life
• Chapter 6: Diversity in the Graduate Student Population
• Chapter 7: Psychiatric Disorders
• Chapter 8: Provision of Treatment
• Chapter 9: Degree or Not Degree
• Chapter 10: Transition from Graduate School
• Chapter 11: Summary
• Appendix: Review of the Literature
• References
• Index