A Marathon, not a Sprint: Part 2.

A common misperception is that grad school is the place to go for floundering, unemployed college grads who do not know what they want to do in life. Some believe that it is the place to go to figure out what you want to do or to prolong adulthood. Although this may be more common in Master's programs, it is never a good idea to enter a Ph.D. program just because you don't know what else to do with your life.

Grad school (for Ph.D. programs) is different from law school or medical school. A very big difference is that our tuition is paid for and we get a paycheck. Being a grad student and TA is considered to be our jobs. Because we will eventually be contributing to the literature in our field, this is considered an investment. When we apply to grad school, we have to outline our research interests in our Statement of Purpose (SOP). These interests are usually categorized into 4 subfields: American Politics, International Relations (IR), Political Theory, and Comparative Politics. My area of research is race and gender politics in the United States. I am interested in issues of representation, public policy, women in government, political participation, and abortion politics. Of course, these interests may change and they do for most grad students. Most of those in my cohort fall into the IR and Comparative category. We have 2 theorists, but I am known as the Americanist. Due to my interests in representation, race, and gender politics, I am a fellow with the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD). As a fellow, I have to take 6 designated CSD courses (this is not in addition to the 18 required courses). Last year I took Political Culture and Democracy; as well as Gender, Family, and the Welfare State. Below is a photo with me and a few other CSD fellows:

As a CSD fellow, I attend CSD dinners and speaking engagements throughout the school year. We bring in professors from other universities to come in and talk about their work. Sometimes they are interesting, and sometimes they are not. We have a large group of faculty members who are affiliated with the CSD. CSD dinners are a good opportunity to build relationships with these professors and other grad students. Many of these CSD professors co-author with grad students. The CSD also brings in renowned scholars and speakers. Last year we invited Mary Robinson (former president of Ireland), Faizullah Zaki (member of the Afghanistan Parliament), and President Jimmy Carter to speak. (I will spare you the list of academics). When President Carter came to campus, I and the other CSD fellows met him at a welcome reception.

I do not have a job in addition to being a student. The general school of thought is that everything that we do is geared towards our completion of the program. We are not encouraged to work, since being a grad student is considered our job. During the summer we are expected to further our research. I have a fellowship from the CSD, and I have a research assistantship from the department. This summer has been very relaxing, and I am told that it usually is after the first year. I have been reading a lot of literature relevant to my research interests. I was also a reader (this means I grade projects and exams) for an Intro to American Government class during the first part of the summer, and I am currently a reader for Intro to Law. I am also a Research Assistant (RA) for a professor in the Sociology department. I am collecting data for her and working with her on my own research. Finally, I worked with a fellow grad student on a poster for presentation at the American Political Science Association (APSA) conference. I will be presenting our work in Chicago in 2 weeks. For this presentation, we analyzed gender recruitment and attitudes among Members of Parliament in European Democracies. We will be turning our results into a paper that we can present at future conferences.